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Lord of the Rings Playing Card Game

spiderskull — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:07:19 -0800

We're trying to find the rules for a Lord of the Rings themed playing card game, and we can remember about 90% of the rules. We've searched online to no avail (including Card Games Website). Hopefully someone here knows.

So far, this is what we can remember:

You use a regular deck of playing cards. Ace is high, order of suits is spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs (highest-to-lowest)

The objective is to collect an ace, a queen, and a king which will allow you to "visit Mordor" and try to destroy the ring. If the suit of the queen matches the suit of a randomly selected, but hidden (to everyone except the person trying to destroy the ring) Mordor card, then you win

There's a small pile in the center, where the players are competing for the top card that's face up, with the basic rules of War. We'll call this the target card.

Every player has a small pile of soldier cards, with the top card face up. This is the player's soldier that competes against other soldiers to win the target card. The player with the highest soldier card at the end of the turn gets to take the target card, unless someone plays one of their character cards (described below).

Everyone initially starts with 5 cards and you put them into a diamond formation (face down), where each of these character cards serves a specific purpose when played:
- An archer, which can shoot an opponent's soldier card if it is a higher number than the soldier
- A hobbit, which can steal the target card if it has a lower number
- A mage, which forces another player to put their current soldier card at the bottom of their pile, and reveal a new soldier, providing that the suit of the mage is different from the soldier it's attacking
- A hero, which we forgot the details of, but we think can take out all face-up cards that it is higher than
Order of play each turn is determined by the order of the soldier cards, from lowest to highest. So, if there's three players, the one with the lowest soldier card goes first

Players can immediately retaliate if their soldier is attacked

The round is over once all of the target cards are claimed, and a new round begins
- To start a new round, all of the players can choose which cards take the roles of archer, hobbit, mage, and hero. The remainder of the cards become the soldier pile (which need to be shuffled).
- At this point, if anyone has the queen-king-ace combo and wants to go to Mordor, they can test their chances
- The new target card pile is taken from a central unused deck, and has N cards, where N is the highest number of soldier cards any player has, plus one.

Each player has a separate discard pile. All attacked soldiers, target cards acquired, and character cards go here.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Are there other card games with this name?

A small warning: we tried playing with these rules, but the game seemed unbalanced, and we were filling in the gaps as went along. Any small rule change to the hero's role seemed to have a drastic impact on gameplay.

When did the word 'fire' first start being used as meaning 'discharge your weapon'

0217174 — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:06:55 -0800

When did the word 'fire' first start being used as meaning 'discharge your weapon' I'm just curious, cause I thought it must of started after gunpowder was invented, right?? Cause I was watchin Lord of the Rings (gotta love tnt marathons) and when they were battling and the org commander guy yells "FIRE!" I was like, hey they wouldn't say that. Cause they still use bows and arrows in that movie. There wouldn't have been a concept of FIRE.

Anyone care to clarify?

Is it safe? Good...how about now?

cps — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 22:54:06 -0800

Dramatically intoned, repeated uses of the phrase Is it safe? in movies...more inside. So I was watching Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring last night, and early on Gandalf (after his investigatory trip) asks Bilbo "Is it safe?". Then I remembered being struck by that phrase's repetition in The Way of The Gun.

As a movie quote, it is of course best known from Marathon Man. Now I'm wondering whether it shows up in other movies in a similar way -- heavy, dramatic, enigmatic and/or repeated. (Bonus question: is its use in any particular movie a tribute, or is it just such a dramatically cool question?)

[Obviously this is Not an Urgent Question, it is to satisfy my curiosity and possibly, fates/time/inclination willing, for a pet project idea. Any leads appreciated.]

Any Anglo-Saxon influences in Lord of the Rings?

mattbucher — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 11:20:43 -0800

Help me find a well-written article explaining the Anglo-Saxon roots/influences found in The Lord of the Rings. I figured there would be some article in a smart source/magazine published around the time the first movie came out (something linking it to Beowulf or Tolkien's study of the Middle Ages), but I'm coming up with nothing. Can any LOTR-hardcores point me in the right direction?

Help me find books that are made as nicely as they're written.

ikkyu2 — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 16:05:16 -0800

BookBindingFilter: I greatly enjoyed reading this edition of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Some of the enjoyment was doubtless due to Tolkien's deathless prose, but I was surprised to find myself also enjoying handling, looking at, poring over a really beautifully crafted edition, with careful binding, stuck-together pages, a little built-in bookmark, etc.

Can anyone suggest other books I might like for these same reasons? Genre's not important; I'm a cheerful omnilege.

Motivational speeches by Sean Aston's characters

Fuzzy Monster — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 08:55:42 -0800

MovieFilter. In The Goonies, Rudy and Lord Of The Rings characters played by Sean Astin deliver impassioned inspirational speeches. In what other movies has he done this? Does Sean Astin give impassioned inspirational speeches in all of his films?

Best (dinner) food for a LOTR Marathon?

dirtynumbangelboy — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:25:11 -0800

LOTR Marathon and Dinner. Suggestions for food? [MI] A good friend of mine knows for a fact that he's getting the extended ROTK for Christmas. This is what we Martha fans call A Good Thing. He also owns FOTR and TTT extended editions. Accordingly, when he's back from his holidays, we're going to throw away a day of our lives (seriously, we're talking about 12+ hours of movies here!) watching all three movies, back-to-back-to-back.

What I need is food suggestions. It'll just be the two of us, but he's a really close friend, so I really don't mind going a little crazy in the kitchen. The only suggestion for LOTR-themed food he could come up with was mutton and ale, which I suspect I'll translate into a dinner of lamb (of some description; a whole leg would be a bit much) braised in some sort of delicious beer over a nice long slow heat, quite possibly served on some sort of trencher-like bread product. My usual kitchen-fu has failed me. Suggestions, anyone?

The first person who says 'onion rings' gets a day playing with an angry Oliphaunt.

Lord of the Rings Questions

invisible ink — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 01:30:56 -0800

IDontHaveTimeToReadTheBookFilter - I have some questions about the LOTR movie trilogy that can only be answered by those who have actually read the books. (mi+) Answer however many you can, thanks in advance to everyone who responds - all of these have been nagging me for the longest time.

The Fellowship of the Ring
1. In the beginning when Cate Blanchett is talking about how all the rings were being made, who was making them?

2. After the first Ring was lost, why didn't Sauron order one of his groupies to just make another one?

3. How does Gollum lose the ring - in other words, how does Bilbo find it?

4. How did Sauron go from being a giant ugly-looking creature to some glowing eye? When Isildor chopped off his finger, why didn't he just stay in that same form (minus the finger)? And while I'm at it, how did he get there? (I'm assuming someone had to construct that interesting-looking contraption for anchoring his fiery eyeball).

5. How old was Frodo when the Ring came to him? (i.e. in human years, how old would he have been?)

Return of the King
1. Why was the fate of the Ring particularly tied to the fate of Arwen, but not to any other elf? In other words, why was she on the verge of death, but her father or Legolas weren't?

2. Why did Frodo have to leave the shire? Obviously, the burden of destroying the Ring had changed him, but why did he have to leave all of his friends and the place where he grew up? And where was the ship taking him and the others to?

I want to introduce the world of comics/graphic novels to my 12 year old daughter.

davebush — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 14:51:06 -0800

I want to introduce the world of comics/graphic novels to my 12 year old daughter (I used to read Creepy, Eerie and Heavy Metal when I was her age but I haven't touched a comic book since). I just ordered "The Complete Moonshadow" simply based on the cover art and some glowing reviews I found. My daughter's taste leans heavily toward LOTR style literature. Recommendations welcome.

What was the issue that Sean Austin was highlighting when LotR won at The Screen Actor's Guild?

feelinglistless — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:07:05 -0800

Can anyone explain the issue that Sean Austin was highlighting when LotR won at The Screen Actor's Guild? I only caught the last half hour and missed what Tim Robbins said before.

Gay Hobbits

konolia — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:06:14 -0800

Yes, this is a dumb question, but here goes:

Is there anything I can do to convince my son that the hobbits in LOTR are not gay? (Not meant to slam gay mefites, but I doubt gay hobbits would be true to the books. Besides, he's sure he's right and I like to prove him wrong occasionally.)

Do I need to see LOTR movies 1 and 2 before I see 3?

matteo — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 17:37:27 -0800

LOTR 3. Will it make any sense at all to the viewer who hasn't seen Episode 1 and 2?