Keeping the Beacons Lit

"It was just at this time that Gandalf reappeared after his long absence.  For three years after the party he had been away.  Then he paid Frodo a brief visit, and after taking a good look at him he went off again.  During the next year or two he had turned up fairly often, coming unexpectedly after dusk, and going off without warning before sunrise... Then suddenly his visits had ceased.  It was over nine years since Frodo had seen or heard of him, and he begun to think that the wizard would never return and had given up all interest in hobbits." 

~ The Fellowship of the Ring

Book I, Chapter II: The Shadow of the Past

It is certainly an extended timeline that Tolkien establishes in the Fellowship of the Ring prior to the hobbits departing the Shire and the first steps of the quest to destroy the One Ring.  While this time span seems to be relatively short in Peter Jackson's movie, briefly showing Gandalf riding to the White City to study the darker events of Middle-earth's history, this process actually took well over 10 years in the novel.  

As a whole, this exposition reminds me somewhat of how my experiences and (relatively brief) history with the Lord of the Rings LCG is like.  Similar to Gandalf's visits to the Shire, I will often have periods where I enjoy playing the LCG at a fairly often pace, usually coinciding with new releases of adventure packs or deluxe expansions, but then I will go through very long periods where I don't play or perhaps even think about the game (although these droughts have never quite lasted nine years yet, nor have I ever thought once of giving up all interest in hobbits!)

So, that leads me to the overall topic of this post: what keeps the motivation to play this continually expanding card game alive?  One way of answering that question is perhaps going over the pros and cons of the game itself.  I am genuinely curious as to what everyone finds to be the best and worst aspects of the game, as well as how often they spend playing it on a weekly or perhaps even monthly basis.  I'll do my best to cover the characteristics that I find to be most appealing as well as the ones I distinctly dislike.  

Beginning with one of my favorite attributes of the Lord of the Rings LCG, I would undoubtedly say that the abundantly prevailing reason I play, collect, and enjoy this card game is the very fact that it is an immersive way to enjoy Middle-earth and all the interesting characters and stories within it.  When I first received the game in July of 2013, I was well behind on its initially print debut.  Likewise, I had never played a card game before and had no real history in tabletop games at all for the matter.  But I did my very best to grasp the basics and thankfully, I finally managed to beat the Hill Troll on the 5th or 6th try!  I was hooked.  I immediately started buying up all the adventure packs and expansions I could find, but that leads me to my first negative of the game.

If you aren't a long time fan or collector of this series, it can be brutally difficult to get into.  While I was only just a bit over a year late to the party (the dragon fireworks had long ceased,) I found it very hard to complete the existing collection at that point.  I now know that Fantasy Flight Games does periodic print runs of most of their card and board games on a cycle by cycle basis.  Once they complete and sell their initial print runs on a new product, it can be months if not years before they reprint them.  Unfortunately, I got into the game at a bad time for getting many of the earliest adventure packs, namely from the Dwarrowdelf Cycle.  I searched, searched, and searched the internet for any place that sold them, but all to no avail.  They were simply impossible to find at the time.  To my great fortune, a set finally appeared from an eBay merchant, and I was able to complete my collection.  Several months later, the Dwarrowdelf Cycle was reprinted and available; however, I cannot attest to how long they were available from that point on.  All in all, I suppose this vicious cycle of releasing and disappearance suggests the popularity of the game, but it can be frustrating, especially for players just getting into the game.  Thankfully, I am completely caught up now, and when new content is released, it is often ordered that very same day.  

Speaking of content, that is assuredly another one of my favorite aspects of this card game.  From my very first days with the core set and on until today, I have remained astounded by the quality of the artwork on the cards themselves.  While a very select few are duds in my opinion (I'm looking at you, Erebor Battle Master) the vast majority of the cards in this game do an amazingly diverse job of representing the fundamentals of Tolkien's lore in a physical form.  The hobbit characters and locations are plump and peaceful, the Riders of Rohan are fueled with dynamic energy, and the Orcs and Goblins are always gnarly and just asking to be beheaded by a strong Dwarven Axe.  As I previously said, prior to this game I had very little experience with collectible card games, and therefor, I can't really compare the artwork of this game to others.  Yet, overall, I would be very doubtful that very many other card games could come close to this one on their level of artwork.  

Since we're on the topic of artwork and content, let's go ahead and expand that to cover the storylines and unique experiences the game provides.  I'll be quite forward in saying that I enjoy the quests designed to represent the books more than the newly created ones that are set in the same time span.  The two Hobbit deluxe expansions as well as the Black Riders are absolutely amazing.  I feel as though they have truly captured the sense of adventure and theme present throughout the stories they're intended to represent.  However, that's not to say that I dislike the standalone quests designed by the experts at Fantasy Flight Games.  They, too, are very enjoyable for the most part; however, there is one aspect about all of the quests that can sometimes prove to be frustrating: the vastly varying degrees of difficulty. 

I know many readers are going to instantly question my decision to consider variances in difficulty as a negative of the game.  Doesn't this allow for various skill levels to play the game and appeal to more people overall?  Well, yes, I suppose that it does, but let me explain my reasoning.  As said before, I enjoy the thematic narratives of the game the most.  Equipping Boromir with a Gondorian Shield, Horn of Gondor, and soon-to-be-released Captain of Gondor attachment, followed by a quest to reclaim the ruined city of Osgiliath is just beyond awesome.  But then... when, during the first couple rounds, I've been defeated and many of my plans and hopes for the approaching the quest have been utterly destroyed by compounding shadow effects or surging encounter cards, I get rather bummed out and, well... frustrated.   

Many players will see this as a chance to tweak their deck and try to conquer the quest again and again until they manage a victory.  Likewise, they're also more than willing to bring Frodo and Glorfindel to some of the most dangerous places in Middle-earth due to their very powerful abilities.  To that end, this game definitely has some powerful cards and synergies, but it gets very tricky to include many of them in certain decks if you're hoping to keep a thematic cohesion within that deck.  This goes back to the age-old debate of thematic gamers verses power gamers (a topic brought up by one of the developers in a recent article.)  I'm not going to try to sugarcoat it in any way: I'm a thematic gamer.  I like to have the experience of creating unique stories rather than calculating the cold statistics of winning and losing.  But, with all that in mind, the great variances in difficulty can create a very challenging atmosphere for thematic players a lot of the time.  Now, easy mode has recently been formulated by the developers, but I do my best to steer away from it because it often requires you to remove many unique cards from the encounter deck.  Even though they're brutal, I don't want to take them out of my pathways of experiencing the story itself!  Overall, I believe this is a very difficult topic to both discuss in detail and correct.  I enjoy the thematic aspects of the game the most, but I also enjoy winning and prevailing over the dark forces of Mordor.  Yet, these two occurrences don't always go hand in hand.  

I suppose I'll end this post on that note.  I could go on to discuss minor things and features that I find enjoyable (and the ones not so much) but I've covered the big ones, I think.  

It has been about four or five weeks since I've even had a chance to play the Lord of the Rings LCG.  I've been quite busy with my final semester of undergraduate education, working on my senior thesis, studying, and all the other fun commitments of a full-time student.  Thus, I've had little free time to spend building decks and questing throughout Middle-earth.  Graduation is quickly approaching, however, and I foresee several weeks of free time in my near future; so, I wanted to jump right back into playing and enjoying the game.  I also hope to have the time to complete new posts covering thematic decks as well as the upcoming Ring-maker Cycle.  The Dunland Trap will be here before we know it, and I am more than ready for new content and new adventures!

Thanks for reading, and please leave behind a comment detailing your favorite and least favorite aspects of the game as well as how often you get a chance to play it.