WETA's 5-Card The Lord Of The Rings Promo Set Is Very Cool!

The Good: Interesting concept, Good images, Playability
The Bad: Only a support set, Cannot be played on its own.
The Basics: A decent, if underwhelming, support set, the WETA 5-card Promo set is necessary for collectors, but hardly great for investors or most players.



Sometimes, I enjoy reviewing things like The Lord Of The Rings WETA 5-card promotional set released for the Trading Card Game. Whatwith consisting of only five cards, there is little to say about it!

Basics/Set Composition

WETA Workshops, the production company that created the special effects for The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy continued its work with some concept images and ideas to flesh out the world beyond the movie for The Lord Of The Rings Trading Card Game. That creativity led to a five-card set of gaming cards to supplement the “Reflections" card set.

The WETA 5-card Promo set consisted of 1 Artifact (Radagast's Staff), 3 Companions (cards that define one's unique Fellowship, in this case Ghan-Buri-Ghan, Anarion, and Erkenbrand) and 1 Possession (Tom Bombadil's Hat). The cards feature images creates explicitly for the card game and did not appear in the film. The cards are all for the Fellowship player and include 2 Gandalf, 1 Gondor, 1 Rohan and 1 Shire Affiliation cards.

Playability

This is a supplemental set and does not contain nearly enough (or the right) cards to play The Lord Of The Rings Trading Card Game.

Rule Changes

There is no rule book with the WETA 5-card Promo set so one needs to have prior knowledge in order to play the game. The cards are written such that the rules as updated in "Siege Of Gondor" apply. There are no new rules in this set.

Highlights

As a supplemental set, this set largely relies upon other cards, like Radagast's Staff may only be played by Radagast, making it a nice bonus but pretty esoteric.

Easily the most universally playable, useful and powerful card in this set is Anarion, Lord Of Anorien. For a paltry three twilight tokens, this Gondor warrior may be brought into play. He is powerful with his strength of seven and vitality of three (a rival of Aragorn!). Moreover, he has a special skill that is great for anyone playing with a Gondor deck. Whenever a Gondor Event is played during the Skirmish phase, Anarion lowers the strength of minions skirmishing him by an amount equal to his vitality! An unwounded Anarion becomes able to sap the strength of some of the most powerful adversaries, like Ringwraiths!

Collectibility

This set was sold as the five-card set, so it is easy to acquire. It was widely available and remains relatively inexpensive on the secondary market in the $20.00 range. This is not an incredible investment set.

Overview

Fans of The Lord Of The Rings and the trading card game will enjoy the WETA 5-card promo set for the additional characters and concepts it uses to shake the game up with, but it is hardly essential, save for completist collectors who have to have everything anyway!

This set was preceded by "Siege Of Gondor" (reviewed here) and followed by "Reflections" (reviewed here!).

This set of cards is now available in my online store!  Please check out my current inventory of them by clicking here!

6/10

For other card reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



| | |