Decipher Levels the Playing Field

In a moves designed to insure the longevity of its popular Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game, Decipher has announced a rotation schedule that will remove early releases from Decipher Standard Play tournaments, while also releasing expansions that are not directly tied to a specific movie, but which contain all the saga's major characters and which provide for new strategies and avenues of play. The company's plan is to provide an entry point for new players and to level the playing field for all players while still allowing older cards to maintain their value. Newer expansions such as Shadows, which was released in November, and Black Rider, which is slated for a March 18th debut, expand the ways in which the game can be played and include elements and characters from the entire trilogy.

Trevor McGregor, Decipher's Organized Play Coordinator, explained the new rotation policy, which takes effect on March 25th, one week after the release of the Black Rider Expansion, "The rationale behind rotation is simple. Without set rotation there is a substantial investment both financially and in play experience to get into a game. With set rotation, we can keep the pool manageable. The sets that rotate out are still playable, but in their own tournament format."

On March 25th cards from a number of early releases including The Fellowship of the Ring, The Mines of Moria, and Realms of the elf-Lords will no longer be legal in Decipher's Standard Play, which is the company's main form of tournament play. The cards from these first three series will still be allowed in events designated as "Expanded Format," "Fellowship Block," "Open Format," and of course, casual play. Decipher uses these blocks as tournament formats to allow players to compete in a specified card pool and tournament directors and retailers may run any block tournament that they wish, though most Decipher championship events use the Standard Play format.