The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game
Encyclopedia
The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game (a.k.a. LOTR TCG) is a collectible card game
produced by Decipher, Inc.
Released November 2001
, it is based on Peter Jackson
's The Lord of the Rings
movie trilogy and the J. R. R. Tolkien
novel on which the films were based. Decipher also have the rights to The Hobbit
novel but have not yet released any cards based on it. In addition to images taken from the films, in 2004 Weta Workshop
produced artwork depicting characters and items from the novel absent from the films for use on cards.
The game also has an online version that maintains identical gameplay as well as a market economy. However, since the game's print run has ended, sales for online cards have been stopped and the servers closed in June 2010.
In 2002, LOTR TCG won the Origins Award
s for Best Trading Card Game of 2001 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Card Game 2001.
by reaching the ninth site. Each of his or her opponents, the Shadow Players, use their Shadow cards to prevent this by attempting to kill or corrupt the ring-bearer, or by forcing the Fellowship to slow down long enough for their Fellowship to race to victory. At the end of each turn the position of Free Peoples player rotates to the next player in turn. The game is won by the first Free Peoples player to survive to the ninth, and final, site or the last player whose Fellowship is left alive or when you corrupt the opposing fellowships ring-bearer.
An innovative mechanic called the twilight pool is used as a costing mechanism for cards. Each card has a numerical cost (which can be zero). When the Free Peoples player plays a card, tokens are added to the twilight pool equal to the cost of that card. The Shadow players, however, remove twilight tokens equal to the twilight cost of their cards in order to play their cards. Thus the more powerful cards the Fellowship the Free Peoples player plays, the greater the threat from the Shadow players.
Throughout a game, a player will play companions (or Free People characters) to help defend the ring-bearer. When it is his turn to play as the Shadow player, he then can play minions (or Shadow characters) to attack the opponents companions. The Free People's player (the defender) has the opportunity to choose which of his companions will fight in one-to-one duels, called skirmishes, with the opponents minions. This is called assignment. Since the Free Peoples player wants to defend his ring-bearer, the only way a Shadow player can attack the Free Peoples player is by playing more minions than the Free Peoples player has companions, thus allowing the Shadow player to assign extra minions to any companion he chooses, including the ring-bearer, or by using minions whose game text allows the Shadow player to assign them to the ring-bearer.
However, the Ring-bearer does not only face minions on his journey to destroy the Ring. The Ring-bearer has to resist the temptation of the Ring. In the trading card game, when the ring-bearer succumbs to the temptation of the Ring, burdens are added. Each companion has a given resistance stat, and whenever a burden is added, each companion's resistance is lowered by one. Once the ring-bearer's resistance reaches zero, he is corrupted by the power of the ring and the player is eliminated from the game.
For the Free Peoples side, the most common strategies are tank, choke, minion wounding and mass healing.
Tank: Tank decks try to play as much as possible and build up as many companions to combat the opponents Shadow side with force.
Choke: Choke decks, the opposite of tank decks, try to put out as little twilight as possible, denying the opponent resources to play their minions, and clogging their hand with unplayable Shadow cards, thus hampering set up of their Fellowship.
Archery/Minion Wounding: Minion wounding decks try to use "archery fire" and direct wounding to destroy the minions (Shadow characters) before they even have a chance to attack.
Mass Healing: Mass healing decks rely on cards that heal companions, under the theory that if the Free People's removal of wounds can out-pace the Shadow player's placement of wounds, the Fellowship will be unkillable. 'Refuge', a card from the set Black Rider is critical to most of these decktypes, as it allows the player to cycle his Free Peoples side while healing his or her companions in order to set up the Shadow side.
For the Shadow side, the most common strategies are beat-down, swarm, bomb, archery/wounding and corruption.
Beat-down: Beat down decks focus on making one or two minions very powerful, with the intention of killing all of the companions one by one; eventually killing the ring-bearer.
Swarm: Swarm decks have an opposite strategy of a beat-down: their goal is to play as many minions as possible as cheaply as possible. While one swarm minion might not be very powerful by itself, each minion is very cheap which allows many to be played, easily outnumbering the companions and assigning themselves to the Ring-bearer.
Bomb: A bomb deck combines the strategies of both beat-down decks and swarm decks. Instead of focusing on one or two powerful minions, they play several minions of medium strength. The goal of a bomb deck is to destroy the weaker companions, and then swarm the Free Peoples player.
Archery/Wounding: Archery and wounding decks rely on wounding companions outside of the skirmish so much that they die from their wounds. A variation of this strategy focuses on wounding the ring-bearer and killing him.
Corruption: Corruption decks focus on adding enough burdens to corrupt the ring-bearer, or playing cards that require certain conditions to be met to corrupt the ring-bearer outright.
Mill: Mill decks focus on playing minions that will discard cards from either your opponent's hand or their draw deck.
Cards were sold in eleven card booster packs consisting of one rare, three uncommon and seven common cards. In approximately one in six packs a common was replaced by a foiled version of a random card from that set. Each set also had two sixty-three card starter decks containing two copies of a promotional face card, three random rares and sixty fixed commons/uncommons (sets 5 and 6 had sixty card starters with three alternate image rares in place of the random rares).
Between the second and third expansions of The Return of the King
block an extra set, Reflections, was released. This consisted of 52 new cards, all foiled, half of which were designated rare plus and half rare. The new cards took material from all three films and material produced by Weta specifically for the game and did not belong to any block. Reflections boosters contained three of the new cards (with one R+ every 2.4 packs) and sixteen repackaged random cards from the first six sets. One of these old cards was always non-English.
Additionally, a system of rotation was announced to be introduced to the game. Starting in March 2005 the entire Fellowship block ceased to be legal for use in the Standard tournament format. Then, each November the oldest block remaining will also be "rotated out". Decipher claimed this helped keep the card pool down to a manageable size and would keep established players buying new cards. Detractors claimed it was a money grab and didn't like being forced to purchase what they felt were inferior cards.
The seven month delay of The Hunters expansion release (from November 2005 to June 2006) made the game suffer a significant drop in popularity amongst its players as well as eventually force Decipher Inc. to remove the expansions The Great Eye and Shelob's Lair from its intended expansion since Decipher's license for Lord of the Rings related material was scheduled to expire on June 30, 2007. Following the release of the final expansion Age's End in June 2007 the game was discontinued and Decipher was forced to stop all production, distribution, and advertising.
The LOTR Online TCG software included collection management and robust deckbuilding features. For this reason alone many players have used the software to construct decks and print decklists.
In 2005 Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) bought Worlds Apart, but continued to support LOTR Online TCG.
On May 22, 2007 SOE-Decipher announced the closure of all support for the Online gaming system. The http://lotronline.decipher.com/download/LOTR Online TCG software was available and the SOE servers ran until June 30, 2010 when they were shut down for good, though no new cards could be purchased after May, 2007.
Deluxe Draft Box, The Wraith Collection, and Age's End
) were not available in booster packs. Where two dates are listed, the first date refers to starter decks and the second to booster packs):
Decipher Inc., dropped the following two expansions from their release schedule:
In addition a number of boutique products have been released:
2007 World Championship Controversy
There has been much of a debate as to the legitimacy of the 2007 World Champions (Vince Accetturo & Chris Thompson). Since the rights to produce the Lord of the Rings TCG was not renewed by Decipher, there was no legal way for the company to promote a World Championship, but they did still hold an unofficial event where the 2007 World Champions were crowned. The event was still held in Indianapolis, IN at GenCon on Friday, August 17, 2007 at 11:00 AM. The field was bested by Vince Accetturo and Chris Thompson, both members of the player group Team Bison Bucks. They decided to split the championship in the finals.
2010 World Championship
With no official governing body for the game existing after 2007, no official World Championships could be held. No group stepped up to attempt an unofficial World Championship event until 2010 when the Star Wars CCG Players Committee decided to run a de-facto World Championship for Lord of the Rings at their annual Worlds Weekend event. Brian Fred was crowned champion as the only undefeated player at the event, in which close to 20 players participated.
Collectible card game
thumb|Players and their decksA collectible card game , also called a trading card game or customizable card game, is a game played using specially designed sets of playing cards...
produced by Decipher, Inc.
Decipher, Inc.
Decipher, Inc. is an American gaming company based in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. They began with three puzzles called "Decipher" then moved on to party games and Pente sets, but since 1994 produced collectible card and role-playing games. Their longest-running offering is the How to Host a Murder...
Released November 2001
2001 in games
This page lists board and card games, wargames, miniatures games, and table-top role-playing games published in 2001. For video and console games, see 2001 in video gaming....
, it is based on Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson
Sir Peter Robert Jackson, KNZM is a New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, known for his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy , adapted from the novel by J. R. R...
's The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy
The Lord of the Rings is an epic film trilogy consisting of three fantasy adventure films based on the three-volume book of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are The Fellowship of the Ring , The Two Towers and The Return of the King .The films were directed by Peter...
movie trilogy and the J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
novel on which the films were based. Decipher also have the rights to The Hobbit
The Hobbit
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, better known by its abbreviated title The Hobbit, is a fantasy novel and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald...
novel but have not yet released any cards based on it. In addition to images taken from the films, in 2004 Weta Workshop
Weta Workshop
Weta Workshop is a special effects and prop company based in Miramar, New Zealand, producing effects for television and film.Founded in 1987 by Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger as RT Effects, Weta Workshop has produced creatures and makeup effects for the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys...
produced artwork depicting characters and items from the novel absent from the films for use on cards.
The game also has an online version that maintains identical gameplay as well as a market economy. However, since the game's print run has ended, sales for online cards have been stopped and the servers closed in June 2010.
In 2002, LOTR TCG won the Origins Award
Origins Award
The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the game industry. They are presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for the previous year, so the 1979 awards were given at the 1980 Origins.The Origins Award is commonly...
s for Best Trading Card Game of 2001 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Card Game 2001.
Game concept
The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game is a game for two or more players, each of who uses his or her own deck consisting of equal numbers of Free Peoples and Shadow cards, with a minimum of 30 of each. On a player's turn they are considered to be the Free Peoples player and their Fellowship and Free Peoples cards both in their Support Area and on their characters are active. A player uses his Free Peoples cards to attempt to traverse the site-path and destroy the One RingOne Ring
The One Ring is a fictional artifact that appears as the central plot element in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy novels. It is described in an earlier story, The Hobbit , as a magic ring of invisibility. The sequel The Lord of the Rings describes its powers as being more encompassing than...
by reaching the ninth site. Each of his or her opponents, the Shadow Players, use their Shadow cards to prevent this by attempting to kill or corrupt the ring-bearer, or by forcing the Fellowship to slow down long enough for their Fellowship to race to victory. At the end of each turn the position of Free Peoples player rotates to the next player in turn. The game is won by the first Free Peoples player to survive to the ninth, and final, site or the last player whose Fellowship is left alive or when you corrupt the opposing fellowships ring-bearer.
An innovative mechanic called the twilight pool is used as a costing mechanism for cards. Each card has a numerical cost (which can be zero). When the Free Peoples player plays a card, tokens are added to the twilight pool equal to the cost of that card. The Shadow players, however, remove twilight tokens equal to the twilight cost of their cards in order to play their cards. Thus the more powerful cards the Fellowship the Free Peoples player plays, the greater the threat from the Shadow players.
Throughout a game, a player will play companions (or Free People characters) to help defend the ring-bearer. When it is his turn to play as the Shadow player, he then can play minions (or Shadow characters) to attack the opponents companions. The Free People's player (the defender) has the opportunity to choose which of his companions will fight in one-to-one duels, called skirmishes, with the opponents minions. This is called assignment. Since the Free Peoples player wants to defend his ring-bearer, the only way a Shadow player can attack the Free Peoples player is by playing more minions than the Free Peoples player has companions, thus allowing the Shadow player to assign extra minions to any companion he chooses, including the ring-bearer, or by using minions whose game text allows the Shadow player to assign them to the ring-bearer.
However, the Ring-bearer does not only face minions on his journey to destroy the Ring. The Ring-bearer has to resist the temptation of the Ring. In the trading card game, when the ring-bearer succumbs to the temptation of the Ring, burdens are added. Each companion has a given resistance stat, and whenever a burden is added, each companion's resistance is lowered by one. Once the ring-bearer's resistance reaches zero, he is corrupted by the power of the ring and the player is eliminated from the game.
Deck strategies
As the game expanded, several basic deck strategies were identified and developed. As decks are separated into Shadow and Free People sides, the two sides are to some extent interchangeable, but the best decks usually contain some synergy between both types of cards.For the Free Peoples side, the most common strategies are tank, choke, minion wounding and mass healing.
Tank: Tank decks try to play as much as possible and build up as many companions to combat the opponents Shadow side with force.
Choke: Choke decks, the opposite of tank decks, try to put out as little twilight as possible, denying the opponent resources to play their minions, and clogging their hand with unplayable Shadow cards, thus hampering set up of their Fellowship.
Archery/Minion Wounding: Minion wounding decks try to use "archery fire" and direct wounding to destroy the minions (Shadow characters) before they even have a chance to attack.
Mass Healing: Mass healing decks rely on cards that heal companions, under the theory that if the Free People's removal of wounds can out-pace the Shadow player's placement of wounds, the Fellowship will be unkillable. 'Refuge', a card from the set Black Rider is critical to most of these decktypes, as it allows the player to cycle his Free Peoples side while healing his or her companions in order to set up the Shadow side.
For the Shadow side, the most common strategies are beat-down, swarm, bomb, archery/wounding and corruption.
Beat-down: Beat down decks focus on making one or two minions very powerful, with the intention of killing all of the companions one by one; eventually killing the ring-bearer.
Swarm: Swarm decks have an opposite strategy of a beat-down: their goal is to play as many minions as possible as cheaply as possible. While one swarm minion might not be very powerful by itself, each minion is very cheap which allows many to be played, easily outnumbering the companions and assigning themselves to the Ring-bearer.
Bomb: A bomb deck combines the strategies of both beat-down decks and swarm decks. Instead of focusing on one or two powerful minions, they play several minions of medium strength. The goal of a bomb deck is to destroy the weaker companions, and then swarm the Free Peoples player.
Archery/Wounding: Archery and wounding decks rely on wounding companions outside of the skirmish so much that they die from their wounds. A variation of this strategy focuses on wounding the ring-bearer and killing him.
Corruption: Corruption decks focus on adding enough burdens to corrupt the ring-bearer, or playing cards that require certain conditions to be met to corrupt the ring-bearer outright.
Mill: Mill decks focus on playing minions that will discard cards from either your opponent's hand or their draw deck.
The movie years
For the first three years the game's releases followed the movies. A 365 "base set" was released each November containing material from the upcoming movie. These were followed by two 122 card expansions at four month intervals. Each base set and the following two expansions formed a "block" named for that base set.Cards were sold in eleven card booster packs consisting of one rare, three uncommon and seven common cards. In approximately one in six packs a common was replaced by a foiled version of a random card from that set. Each set also had two sixty-three card starter decks containing two copies of a promotional face card, three random rares and sixty fixed commons/uncommons (sets 5 and 6 had sixty card starters with three alternate image rares in place of the random rares).
Between the second and third expansions of The Return of the King
The Return of the King
The Return of the King is the third and final volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, following The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.-Title:...
block an extra set, Reflections, was released. This consisted of 52 new cards, all foiled, half of which were designated rare plus and half rare. The new cards took material from all three films and material produced by Weta specifically for the game and did not belong to any block. Reflections boosters contained three of the new cards (with one R+ every 2.4 packs) and sixteen repackaged random cards from the first six sets. One of these old cards was always non-English.
Shadows and beyond
In November 2004 the new base set, Shadows, marked an overhaul to the game. All sets would contain sixty rare, uncommon and common cards each. Instead of foiling every card, each expansion would only have eighteen pre-selected rare foil cards that would be randomly inserted now into one in every seven booster packs. Shadows also had four, rather than two, different starter decks. The material used for the cards would also now cover the entire trilogy instead of being tied to the films' releases.Additionally, a system of rotation was announced to be introduced to the game. Starting in March 2005 the entire Fellowship block ceased to be legal for use in the Standard tournament format. Then, each November the oldest block remaining will also be "rotated out". Decipher claimed this helped keep the card pool down to a manageable size and would keep established players buying new cards. Detractors claimed it was a money grab and didn't like being forced to purchase what they felt were inferior cards.
The seven month delay of The Hunters expansion release (from November 2005 to June 2006) made the game suffer a significant drop in popularity amongst its players as well as eventually force Decipher Inc. to remove the expansions The Great Eye and Shelob's Lair from its intended expansion since Decipher's license for Lord of the Rings related material was scheduled to expire on June 30, 2007. Following the release of the final expansion Age's End in June 2007 the game was discontinued and Decipher was forced to stop all production, distribution, and advertising.
Lord of the Rings Online TCG
In 2003 Worlds Apart partnered with Decipher to produce an online version of the Lord of the Rings TCG. The online game's rules matched the physical games rules, but utilized tradeable virtual cards that could be purchased through the system via starter decks, booster packs, or in draft. In addition to casual play, the online LOTR TCG system supported tournament play, league play, and sealed play including draft. The online system introduced a number of cards and formats that were online-only (for example, King-block draft packs), and offered players exclusive physical promotional cards and online avatars and movement tokens for participating in online events.The LOTR Online TCG software included collection management and robust deckbuilding features. For this reason alone many players have used the software to construct decks and print decklists.
In 2005 Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) bought Worlds Apart, but continued to support LOTR Online TCG.
On May 22, 2007 SOE-Decipher announced the closure of all support for the Online gaming system. The http://lotronline.decipher.com/download/LOTR Online TCG software was available and the SOE servers ran until June 30, 2010 when they were shut down for good, though no new cards could be purchased after May, 2007.
SDA
Though not sanctioned or approved by Decipher, the free software SDA has been developed to work with LOTR TCG card databases and supports most necessary game mechanics. Availability of SDA is limited, as Decipher has sought to eliminate it from distribution.Products
When the game's run had ended in mid-2007 nineteen sets had been released. Three of expansions (Expanded Middle-earthMiddle-earth
Middle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales....
Deluxe Draft Box, The Wraith Collection, and Age's End
Third Age
The Third Age is a time period from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings. The history of Middle-earth is to be taken fictionally as a history of the real Earth....
) were not available in booster packs. Where two dates are listed, the first date refers to starter decks and the second to booster packs):
- The Fellowship of the RingThe Fellowship of the RingThe Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It takes place in the fictional universe Middle-earth. It was originally published on July 29, 1954 in the United Kingdom...
(November 6, 2001) - Mines of MoriaMoria (Middle-earth)In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, Moria was the name given by the Eldar to an enormous underground complex in north-western Middle-earth, comprising a vast network of tunnels, chambers, mines and huge halls or 'mansions', that ran under and ultimately through the Misty Mountains...
(March 6 & 13, 2002) - Realms of the ElfElf (Middle-earth)In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Elves are one of the races that inhabit a fictional Earth, often called Middle-earth, and set in the remote past. They appear in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, but their complex history is described more fully in The Silmarillion...
-lords (June 19 & July 3, 2002) - The Two TowersThe Two TowersThe Two Towers is the second volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. It is preceded by The Fellowship of the Ring and followed by The Return of the King.-Title:...
(November 6, 2002) - Battle of Helm's Deep (March 12, 2003)
- EntEntEnts are a race of beings in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world Middle-earth who closely resemble trees. They are similar to the talking trees in folklore around the world. Their name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for giant....
s of FangornFangorn forestFangorn in J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium, was a forest located in the fictional world of Middle-earth and was the home of the tree shepherds, the Ents. It was named after the oldest Ent, Treebeard or Treebeard after it. Tolkien did, however, state that there was confusion about the two...
(July 2, 2003) - The Return of the KingThe Return of the KingThe Return of the King is the third and final volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, following The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.-Title:...
(November 5, 2003) - Siege of GondorGondorGondor is a fictional kingdom in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, described as the greatest realm of Men in the west of Middle-earth by the end of the Third Age. The third volume of The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, is concerned with the events in Gondor during the War of the Ring and with...
(March 10, 2004) - Reflections (May 12, 2004)
- Mount DoomMount DoomMount Doom is a volcano in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. It is located in the heart of the black land of Mordor and close to Barad-dûr, it is approximately high. Alternative names, in Tolkien's invented language of Sindarin, include Orodruin and Amon Amarth...
(July 14, 2004) - Shadows (November 3, 2004)
- Black Rider (March 18, 2005)
- Bloodlines (August 12, 2005)
- Expanded Middle-earthMiddle-earthMiddle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales....
Deluxe Draft Box (February 17, 2006) - The Hunters (June 9, 2006)
- The Wraith Collection (August 26, 2006)
- Rise of SarumanSarumanSaruman the White is a fictional character and a major antagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. He is leader of the Istari, wizards sent to Middle-earth in human form by the godlike Valar to challenge Sauron, the main antagonist of the tale, but later on aims at gaining...
(March 1, 2007) - Treachery and Deceit (May 2007)
- Age's EndThird AgeThe Third Age is a time period from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings. The history of Middle-earth is to be taken fictionally as a history of the real Earth....
(June 2007)
Decipher Inc., dropped the following two expansions from their release schedule:
- The Great Eye
- Shelob's Lair
In addition a number of boutique products have been released:
- Oversized Cards (August 2001 - Summer 2003)
- Promotional Cards (Spring 2002 - Summer 2007)
- The Fellowship of the Ring Anthology (July 23, 2003)
- The Two Towers Anthology (February 25, 2004)
- The Return of the King Anthology (September 2004)
- The War of the Ring Anthology (September 2005)
Organized Play
| Year | Champion | Runner Up |
|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Mathieu Brochu | Alex Tennet |
| 2003 | Michael Dalton | Robert Schiermeyer |
| 2004 | Emir Delic | Josh Cornwell-Mott |
| 2005 | Kyle George | Lee Clarke |
| 2006 | Christian Kriesel | Seth Maser |
| 2007 | Vince Accetturo & Chris Thompson | |
| 2010 | Brian Fred | Casey Anis |
2007 World Championship Controversy
There has been much of a debate as to the legitimacy of the 2007 World Champions (Vince Accetturo & Chris Thompson). Since the rights to produce the Lord of the Rings TCG was not renewed by Decipher, there was no legal way for the company to promote a World Championship, but they did still hold an unofficial event where the 2007 World Champions were crowned. The event was still held in Indianapolis, IN at GenCon on Friday, August 17, 2007 at 11:00 AM. The field was bested by Vince Accetturo and Chris Thompson, both members of the player group Team Bison Bucks. They decided to split the championship in the finals.
2010 World Championship
With no official governing body for the game existing after 2007, no official World Championships could be held. No group stepped up to attempt an unofficial World Championship event until 2010 when the Star Wars CCG Players Committee decided to run a de-facto World Championship for Lord of the Rings at their annual Worlds Weekend event. Brian Fred was crowned champion as the only undefeated player at the event, in which close to 20 players participated.