Rarity

Rarity
Name	Common
SortOrder	1
Abbr	C
Sets Used In	1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18
Notes	One third of a set's normal cards, released as 7 of a booster pack's 11 cards.

Rarity
Name	Starter-only
SortOrder	2
Abbr	S
Sets Used In	11 • 12 • 13 • 15 • 17 • 30 • 31 • 32
Notes	Later sets replaced the rarity for all cards in a starter box as S instead of the (misleading) C or U they had before.

Rarity
Name	Uncommon
SortOrder	3
Abbr	U
Sets Used In	1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 15 • 17 • 18
Notes	One third of a set's normal cards, released as 3 of a booster pack's 11 cards.

Rarity
Name	Premium
SortOrder	4
Abbr	P
Sets Used In	1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 15 • 17 • 18 • 19
Notes	Every set had two starter boxes with 2 copies of a Premium card which were only distributed in those boxes.

Rarity
Name	Rare
SortOrder	5
Abbr	R
Sets Used In	1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19
Notes	One third of a set's normal cards, released as 1 of a booster pack's 11 cards.

Rarity
Name	Rare Plus
SortOrder	6
Abbr	R+
Sets Used In	9
Notes	Reflections was an all-foil all-Rare set released in 18 card booster packs, which were filled with overstock from previous sets. 2 cards would be Rares, and once every 2.5 packs one card would be randomly replaced with a Rare Plus.

Rarity
Name	Rare Foil (Legends)
SortOrder	7
Abbr	RF
Sets Used In	11 • 12 • 13 • 15 • 17 • 18
Notes	Legends cards were inserted randomly into boosters and were foil versions of certain popular rares, and were only produced during a set's initial print run.

Rarity
Name	Legends Masterwork
SortOrder	8
Abbr	O
Sets Used In	12 • 13 • 15 • 17 • 18
Notes	Actually a ring symbol rather than an O, these indicate a Legends foil that contain an alternate-color template for a more striking visual difference.

Rarity
Name	Promotional
SortOrder	9
Abbr	P
Sets Used In	0
Notes	Everything from tournament prizes to DVD bonus pack-ins to Decipher store rewards.

Rarity
Name	Megasized Promo
SortOrder	9
Abbr	M
Sets Used In	0 • 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 10
Notes	Oversized cards used for promotional purposes.

Rarity
Name	DGMA Tournament Prize
SortOrder	10
Abbr	D
Sets Used In	0
Notes	Cards issued as prizes for DGMA-sanctioned events.

Rarity
Name	Tournament Foil
SortOrder	11
Abbr	TF
Sets Used In	0
Notes	Overseas promos printed by international distributors as tournament prizes.

Rarity
Name	World's Apart Digital
SortOrder	12
Abbr	W
Sets Used In	0
Notes	Used for cards which originated on the Lord of the Rings Online platform ran by Worlds Apart for Decipher.

Rarity
Name	April Fool's Day
SortOrder	13
Abbr	AFD
Sets Used In	0
Notes	Used for a handful of joke cards.

Rarity
Name	Saint Patrick's Day
SortOrder	14
Abbr	SPD
Sets Used In	0
Notes	Used for a handful of joke cards.

Rarity
Name	Free Peoples Pack
SortOrder	15
Abbr	FP
Sets Used In	30
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: base mix-in Free Peoples Pack

Rarity
Name	Beatdown Pack 1
SortOrder	15
Abbr	B1
Sets Used In	30 • 31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Shadow beat-down pack 1

Rarity
Name	Beatdown Pack 2
SortOrder	15
Abbr	B2
Sets Used In	30 • 31 • 32 • 331
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Shadow beat-down pack 2

Rarity
Name	Beatdown Pack 3
SortOrder	15
Abbr	B3
Sets Used In	30 • 31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Shadow beat-down pack 3

Rarity
Name	Swarm Pack 1
SortOrder	15
Abbr	S1
Sets Used In	31
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Shadow swarm pack 1

Rarity
Name	Swarm Pack 2
SortOrder	15
Abbr	S2
Sets Used In	30 • 31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Shadow swarm pack 2

Rarity
Name	Swarm Pack 3
SortOrder	15
Abbr	S3
Sets Used In	30 • 31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Shadow swarm pack 3

Rarity
Name	Pack A
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HA
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack A: Bilbo

Rarity
Name	Pack B
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HB
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack B: Dain

Rarity
Name	Pack C
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HC
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack C: Esgaroth

Rarity
Name	Pack D
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HD
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack D: Mirkwood

Rarity
Name	Pack E
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HE
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack E: Thorin

Rarity
Name	Pack F
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HF
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack F: Bilbo

Rarity
Name	Pack G
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HG
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack G: White Council

Rarity
Name	Pack H
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HH
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack H: Wizard

Rarity
Name	Pack I
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HI
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack I: Balin

Rarity
Name	Pack J
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HJ
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack J: Blue Mountains

Rarity
Name	Pack K
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HK
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack K: Rivendell

Rarity
Name	Pack L
SortOrder	15
Abbr	HL
Sets Used In	31 • 32 • 33
Notes	Hobbit Draft Game: Supplementary Pack L: Travellers

Rarity

The Rarity of a card represents how frequently it was distributed in booster packs and other means. This official rarity is printed in the Collector's Info in the lower-right hand corner, and is usually represented by a single letter, though other combinations are possible. Like in most trading card games, not all cards in the same rarity class are created equal, so determining a card's worth is more difficult than merely looking at the printed rarity.

A summary of each rarity and what it means is given below.

Standard Rarities

First, a word on how most cards were distributed (as this was the primary means of manipulating a card's rarity). Cards had two primary means of distribution for most of the game's run: booster packs and starter boxes.

Starter packs, 2 per set, were specifically designed for new players and came with a specially-designed deck centered around a particular companion. That companion was marked with a special rarity, Premium (P) and always included two copies per box (in Fellowship of the Ring, those two Premiums were Gandalf, The Grey Wizard, and Aragorn, King in Exile). The other cards included varied, but were always the same for a particular box, except for 3 random Rare (R) cards to mix things up.

For Shadows and Black Rider, all non-rare cards included in the Starter Packs were given a rarity of S, in an attempt to normalize rarity labels (since Common and Uncommon cards included in a Starter Pack were of course much, much more common than other C/U cards only released through boosters). This was only true for these two sets, however.

Booster packs, on the other hand, were the primary way of getting cards (as it is with most TCG's), and the primary waterline by which rarity was judged. Each booster pack contained 11 cards, made up of 7 Common (C), 3 Uncommon (U), and 1 Rare (R) card. There were the same number of each rarity in each set; base sets like Fellowship had 121 of each, while expansions had 40. This meant that, if you were to collect a complete collection of 121 rares from a base set entirely from booster backs, you would have about 363 uncommon cards, and 847 common cards. This assumes you never got any duplicate rares, and if you wanted a complete playset (4 of each card, which is the maximum you can have in a particular deck), your Common/Uncommon set would quickly approach quintuple-digits--and that's just for one set!

In addition, each booster pack had about a 1 in 6 chance of having one of the cards randomly replaced with a full-foil card of a random rarity. This meant that collecting full foil sets was significantly more unpredictable, and also could result in some interesting booster packs: for instance, this could result in a booster with two rares (one of them foil, replacing one of the common or uncommon cards). Due to the mechanics of inserting foils into early sets, it was possible - though very unusual - to open a pack with more than one foil card plus an ordinary rare.

In the Fellowship of the Ring set (and presumably for all movie-block sets), the odds of which card was inserted as a foil varied based on its rarity, which was as follows :

• 1 Common foil every 13 packs
• 1 Uncommon foil every 18 packs
• 1 Rare foil every 26 packs

Each of these chances was calculated independently, which results in each booster having a ~17% chance of having at least one foil, which is where Decipher's 1 in 6 chance calculation came from.

So, in summary, Common (C), Uncommon (U), Rare (R), and Premium (P) were the "standard" rarities that the vast majority of cards in the game were granted.

Promotional Cards

Promotional cards were given out to promote up-and-coming sets and were usually alternate-image versions of previously existing cards. For instance, Faramir, Son of Denethor (P), was packaged with Collector's Editions of The Two Towers movie. Promotional cards were almost always exact duplicates of other cards (except for the card image itself), and so were considered the same from a game judgement standard. There are several important exceptions, however, including 0P56 through 0P60 and 0P62 through 0P67. Most promotional cards have a P rarity, but towards the end of the game's lifespan a few promotional cards with D rarity were printed and handed out.

This meant that for players who focused on the game, Promotional cards were not particularly worth the effort getting, whereas for collectors it was practically a whole new set to collect. This was enshrined by the fact that all Promotional cards are part of set 0, and this is the only way to differentiate a Premium card from a Promotional card. The effective rarity of Promotional cards varied wildly; some were tournament prizes, some packaged with other products, some packed into every deluxe DVD set of Lord of the Rings sold. The most hard-to-find cards are generally considered to be 0P62 - 0P67, a set of cards released as a tie-in to the digital Customizable League Cards for Lord of the Rings Online TCG; since few people participated in the promotion (due in part to Decipher/World's Apart delaying the first few by several months), very few of these ever made it out into the wild.

Decipher also printed several oversized cards; these cards were given a rarity of M (and were of course not tournament-legal).

Rare Plus

Rare Plus (R+) was a rarity unique to the Reflections set, which was released between Siege of Gondor and Mount Doom. Half of the all-foil 52-card set were Rare, while the other half were Rare Plus. These were distributed in 18-card booster packs composed of 2 random rares from Reflections and 16 random cards from all previous sets (this was a way for Decipher to dump some of their overstock). About once every two-and-a-half packs, a card would be replaced with one of the Rare Plus cards, in a manner similar to foil cards, and thus the name: not quite a rare, not quite a foil (though all Reflections cards were foil).

Legends and Legends Masterwork

Starting with the Shadows set, alternate versions of select cards were reprinted as the "Legends" series meant to represent particularly popular cards or concepts. This increased the total number of cards to collect while at the same time making these additions quite rare, as eventually during the set's lifetime these alternate cards would be discontinued. Legends-series cards were always foil, and marked with the RF rarity to differentiate them from their non-Legends counterpart. RF cards were inserted at an approximate rate of 1 every 7 packs, replacing the random rare .

With the release of Black Rider, Legends were joined with the Legends Masterwork series, indicated by a ring O as the rarity. These cards were more than just foil, however; each card used a new card template with a completely redone color scheme and sometimes a card image that "popped" outside its frame. The visual difference is appropriately striking. Some uploaded images on Decipher's website for Black Rider show an * for a rarity symbol, but this was likely a placeholder image and was never printed this way. Legends Masterworks were inserted at an approximate rate of 1 every 35 packs (i.e about one per booster box), which when combined with the chance for a Legends RF meant that post-Black Rider sets had an approximate 1 in 7 chance for a foil of some flavor .

Tournament Foil

Tournament Foil cards were distributed during the Shadows block as rewards for winning official tournaments, or in some cases as a reward for purchasing a certain amount of product (earlier, tournament winners received random foils.) There were 9 in total; all were foiled versions of cards from Black Rider and Bloodlines. These cards are unique in that they were not distributed by Decipher, but by their partners in France, Germany, and Italy, and so were printed and handled entirely overseas. As might be imagined, these are among the rarest of cards due to the separation of markets.

• See this thread for more information.

Virtual Cards

There are a number of cards within the database for set 0 that were never actually printed. Some of these, such as Faramir, Captain of Ithilien (AFD), Goblet of the White City (SPD), Green Dragon Mug (SPD), and Rohirrim Stein (SPD), were jokes released on Decipher's website for April Fool's Day and Saint Patrick's Day, respectively.

There were also a number of cards made exclusively for the LotR-O system that may as well have been joke cards. Versions given as tournament rewards were given rarity D (a letter also used for printed promotional cards in 2005-2007), and cards that were a part of the "Triumph and Menace" mini-set were given a rarity of W (a rarity generally used for other virtual cards as well, but are not represented here in the wiki).