A very warm welcome my friend!
Sit down and enjoy a tea and a game of cards with us. I must also have some cookies in my backpack. Let’s talk and enjoy a good and beautiful night. The stars are bright. Legends tell that the first thing the elves saw when they awakened were the stars. You can imagine that the night they were born they must have seen these beauties up in the sky, in a similar night-sky we have today. I can imagine all the songs they must have created and sung that day!
By the way, speaking of fairy-folk, it seems like my old elven friend Nimreidhreth has gone into the more vain side, since I got a request from him asking for some dyes to use on some clothes he bought in Rivendell.
“I am tired of carrying dwarven armor. It’s like carrying rags that are a hundred times heavier. They do protect, but there is nothing I trust more than elven-craft. I thus tried to get armor worthy of my position and my race, visiting my cousins in Rivendell. The search has been fruitful.”
Nimreidhreth’s new look: a true Ered Luin Warrior
I still see, though, that he wears some shoulderpads that remind me a lot to dwarves. Well, there is not much more to tell, we will play a little while more. I hope to see you next time.
Until then, fare well.
[I have been looking through some of my old Tolkien stuff while entering the new page called The Middle-Earth Network, finding many interesting things I already had forgotten about. Maybe with time I’ll present parts of my collection, since there is some interesting pre-and post-movie stuff lying around. I hope that when you read it, at least for the older fans of Lord of the Rings, it may bring you some memories.
Interestingly enough, with the appearance of the new LOTR-based card game (Tolkien Examiner announcing it), I found my old collection of cards that were created even before the movies came out. I bought it a few years ago while on a trip to meet my family in Germany. The main reasons I had bought it was because it was playable for one person and it was of my favorite book. Back then I was already into Magic: The Gathering, but with the LOTR CCG I tried to get something for myself and maybe get a friend or two play with me. The latter failed.
The main objective of the game is to collect points. Yes, there is no need to bring the one ring to Mordor. It was more about the adventure than finding the One Ring, and you could find other cool rings you could play out from your hand. The idea was to travel with your custom made party around Middle Earth and collect the treasures (and different magic rings!) while the evil guys tried to beat you down. The system per se was not bad, although I found myself often winning the game in solitaire mode. Maybe it was because I never really got the rules fully.
I liked the idea of retaking the party of The Hobbit and then travelling with them to Gondor. Or just get Hama, Bard and Radagast and move them to Moria to see what they discover in the deeps caves (maybe a dwarven ring!). It was kind of an open world game, that let the player experiment a bit in Tolkien’s world, even though it may not be 100% lore-accurate.
With it came a good remake of the map of Middle Earth and two beautiful dice with an Eye of Sauron on the side of the one. The map turned into a poster, later came off the wall totally torn, while the dice got lost in my long role-playing career.
Just take a look on some of the cards I had there on hand (please don’t mind that they are in German):
As you might see from the slideshow, I tried to get some interesting things that are directly related to the basic books. I found out that you could include every wizard into your fellowship, even Saruman (the idea was that any character, even Gandalf, could corrupt). Also, I had most of the dwarves of The Hobbit, almost none of the Fellowship, and a few of the supporting cast with many more I don’t know who they are. So I skipped those last ones.
It was, all in all, a good game. The art was good (not as good as in Magic), the gameplay was fun and the idea you could create a party for any reason you might think (even dragonslaying!) was cool. Too bad that the follow up game, based on the movie, was terrible: I never liked the system, and putting photos of the movie into the picture boxes was for me a too lazy way to make a tradable card game that would sell big.
Games are played by all; even by the Enemy!
I have high hopes set for the new game, and as soon as I get some coins in my hands, I will try to find it and test it. The idea of it being constructed like “questpacks” and not being tradable just gives it another way to play it. I hope thus to have some in the next two months. Until then…
All Hail!]
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