The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game – The Woodland Realm
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game – The Woodland Realm Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Expansion Symbol
The cards in The Woodland Realm can be identified by this symbol (a tree) before each card's collector number.
Build Your Own Adventure
There are two ways to create your own scenario: Quick-build or Advanced-build. If this is your first time playing The Woodland Realm, follow the Quick-build rules.
Quick-build Rules
The Quick-build rules allow you to build your own adventure in minutes using only the contents of this set. To create a Quick-build custom scenario follow these 3 steps:
- Create your quest deck by choosing one stage 2 and one stage 3 and placing them in numerical order under stage 1.
- Create your encounter deck by choosing 7 different encounter sets and shuffling them together. Each encounter set is identified by a different number.
- Choose what type of game to play: cooperative or competitive. To play a cooperative game, simply follow the standard game rules. To play a competitive game, see page 4.
Note: If you wish to surprise yourself in cooperative play, you can randomly choose your encounter sets and quest cards.
Advanced-build Rules
The Advanced-build rules give players greater flexibility to customize a scenario. The quest deck is built using the same rules as Quick-build, but the encounter deck is built by selecting individual encounter cards instead of entire encounter sets. To create an Advanced-build custom scenario, follow these guidelines:
– The deck must be exactly 35 encounter cards (not counting the double-sided Spider Den / Mendor card).
– The deck must include a minimum of 10 enemies, 10 locations, and 10 treacheries.
– No more than 3 copies of each non-unique card can be included in the deck.
– No more than 1 copy of each unique card can be included in the deck.
– The deck cannot have more than 21 total cost worth of encounter cards. The cost of each card is denoted in the box on the lower right side of the frame.
Note: When building a custom scenario, you can choose encounter cards from both The Woodland Realm and The Wizard's Quest, but you cannot mix quest cards.
Competitive Rules
The Woodland Realm was designed to encourage competitive play for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. These rules are intended for games of 1v1 or 2v2. A 1v1 game allows players to test their best solo decks against their opponent's custom scenario, and 2v2 maintains the cooperative aspect of the LCG as teammates work together to outrace the opposing team. The team that defeats their scenario first wins!
Setting Up a Competitive Game
In order to play a competitive game of The Lord of the Rings LCG, each team must bring the following:
- A player deck for each team member
- Enough threat dials and tokens for each team member
- One custom scenario for the opposing team to play
Important: Before the game begins, teams trade custom scenarios so that the adventure you play is the one your opponent created, and vice versa.
Playing a Competitive Game
To play a competitive game using The Woodland Realm, follow these rules:
– Randomly determine which team will go first, and follow the standard Setup rules of the game.
– During the game, each round is broken into three phase groups:
- Resource Phase & Planning Phase
- Quest Phase & Travel Phase
- Encounter Phase, Combat Phase & Refresh Phase
– Teams alternate their play through these phase groups. The first team begins by playing their Resource & Planning phase. Then, they observe the second team as they play through their Resource Phase & Planning Phase. This process continues through the other two phase groups until the second team finishes its Refresh Phase and the first team starts a new round.
– The team that finishes the scenario first without the other team finishing in the same phase group wins the game.
– If the first team completes their scenario (or is eliminated) during a phase group, the other team must play through that same phase group.
– If both teams complete the scenario in the same phase group, the team with the lower score wins. If the scores are also the same, the game ends in a tie.
– If a single team is eliminated, the surviving team wins the game.
– If both teams are eliminated in the same phase group, the game ends in a loss for both teams.
Rules Clarifications
– In a competitive game, each team's game is completely separate from the other. Cards in play in one game have no impact on the other team's game and vice versa.
– Effects that refer to the number of players only count the number of players on the active team. (They do not count the opposing team.)
– In a cooperative game, when a card effect says "the opposing team chooses" or "the opposing team searches," the first player should resolve that effect in the manner that will provide the greatest challenge for the players.