Editing Rule of 4

{{SplashImage|LOTR-EN01S006.0_card.jpg|Eat your heart out, Ancestral Recall.}}
{{RulesQuote
|source=The Rule of 4
|text=Some card effects allow you to draw cards in the fellowship phase. You cannot draw (or take into hand) more than 4 cards during your fellowship phase.
<br><br>This applies to cards taken into hand by any means. This does not apply to cards drawn “at the start of each of your turns.”).''
}}

'''The Rule of 4''' was one of the few core rules that was not in the game when it first debuted with [[The Fellowship of the Ring]].  As shown in the rules excerpt above, it's a straightforward limitation: the Free Peoples player is not permitted to put more than 4 cards into their hand per Fellowship phase.  This includes drawing from the draw deck ({{Card|Saved from the Fire}}), recovering from the discard pile ({{Card|Birthday Present}}), or taking cards into hand from play ({{Card|The Shards of Narsil}}).  

Cards that play directly from the draw deck or discard pile do not count towards this rule, only cards placed "into hand".  This also does not affect cards drawn "at the start of your turn" ({{Card|Gandalf, The Grey Pilgrim}}), as this happens before the Fellowship phase.  No limit is placed on any other phase, meaning that the Shadow player remains able to draw an unlimited number of cards.

[[#Limited by the Rule of 4|See below]] for a full list of all cards affected by the Rule of 4.

== History ==

Initially, there were some very potent card draw options available from the first set, most notably 4x {{Card|Ottar, Man of Laketown}} with 4x {{Card|Elrond, Lord of Rivendell}}, which permits 18 cards to be cycled by themselves, +4 per Fellowship phase that both cards are in play.  Combine this with {{Card|Delving}}, {{Card|Wealth of Moria}}, or {{Card|Questions That Need Answering}} / {{Card|Risk a Little Light}}, and there is some very solid, yet bounded, card draw that can easily over the course of the game cause you to draw most or all of your draw deck just from card effects (ignoring reconciles).  

With the release of [[Mines of Moria]], however, cards were introduced that not only improved the card draw available to the Free Peoples player, but permitted combos that were ''unbounded'', that could infinitely cycle cards in and out of your deck.  Since in the end all the Free Peoples player has to pay is Twilight, which has no cap, these actions could be repeated as much as desired.  

The combo potential of the cards released in Mines were exposed in an article by tedv on Game Player's Network on March 28, 2002 (22 days after the release of Mines of Moria).  The entire article analyzes all the draw engine potential of the new set, and concludes with a bombshell infinite loop:

{{Quote
|title=The Advent of Combo Decks: Card Drawing Engines 
|source=[https://web.archive.org/web/20021223143201/http://www.gameplayersnetwork.com/card/strategy.asp?gm=lotr&id=452 by tedv on Game Player's Network].
|text=I hinted at such an engine earlier: "Honorable mentions go to {{Card|Hugin, Emissary from Laketown}} and {{Card|Dear Friends}}, both of which can be used to set up some sort of combo win later." So what is this combo?

* 3 {{Card|Dear Friends}}
* 2 {{Card|Wealth of Moria}}
* 1 {{Card|Hobbit Appetite}}
* 0 Cards in deck

It's just that simple. In abstract, the loop works like this. 3 Dear Friends will put 6 cards in your deck. 2 Wealth of Moria lets you draw those 6 cards. This costs you 5 cards and 3 Exertions. So each time you run the loop, you're essentially exerting Frodo 3 times to put any Fellowship card in you discard pile back into your hand.

If you play with {{Card|Isildur's Bane}}, Frodo can exert 4 times, and each time you play Hobbit Appetite, you heal 4 wounds from Frodo. So if you run the loop 4 times, this will exert Frodo 12 times and let you reclaim 4 cards from your discard pile. If you reclaim the same Hobbit Appetite 3 times (to heal frodo 12 times), then you gain one free card without using any exertions (but adding a bunch of points to the pool). You can repeat this loop as often as you like to gain back any set of cards necessary to win the game. 
}}

tedv then goes over several variants of the draw engine, and then of course caps it off with some suggestions for win condition cards that can be used to skip the Shadow phase, increase the move limit to an arbitrary level, or perform one of several Shadow kill combinations.  

On April 11, 2002 (14 days after tedv posted his article), [[Decipher]] announced that, rather than issuing an errata to any of the individual cards involved, they would be adding the '''Rule of 4''' to halt this and future combos in their tracks.  Only the Fellowship phase was targeted, and this was their reasoning:

{{Quote
|title=Reasons for the Rule of 4 
|source=[http://web.archive.org/web/20021227082031/http://www.decipher.com/lordoftherings/articles/ruleof4reasons.html Michael Reynolds, LOTR TCG Designer at Decipher TCG Studio]
|text= As the Free Peoples player, you can add unlimited twilight tokens. Your resources are infinite in a sense. The design theory behind this, however, is that, for each card you play, you give the Shadow player more resources that can be used against you. While this theory is true to a point, it degrades once the Free Peoples player adds more than 20 twilight tokens in a fellowship phase. Ask yourself: How many times is a Shadow player able to spend that many twilight tokens in a Shadow phase? Not often.

Therefore, once a Free Peoples player hits that threshold of 20 twilight tokens, everything they play after that truly is 'free'. The twilight tokens added at this point will typically not be spent by the Shadow player.

Obviously, there are several ways Decipher could have addressed the problem. We could have added a rule that allowed the Shadow player to remove 3 twilight tokens to draw a card. While this may have solved the problem, it would not promote our theory of fun, interactive gameplay. How much fun would it be to watch your opponent take a 15 minute turn, only to turn around and take your own 15 minute turn? Allowing both players to take long turns slows the game down and, quite simply, is not what LOTR TCG is about.

In the end we decided to choke this problem by limiting the number of cards the Free Peoples player can take into hand in a turn. After the Free Peoples player draws 4 cards, that player is left with what he or she can play from hand, thus no longer having access to unlimited resources. 
}} 

Thus, none of the tactics suggested by tedv were ever able to be used at a sanctioned tournament.

== Further Reading ==

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20021223143201/http://www.gameplayersnetwork.com/card/strategy.asp?gm=lotr&id=452 The Advent of Combo Decks: Card Drawing Engines] by tedv (March 28, 2002)
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20021218074046/http://www.decipher.com/lordoftherings/articles/ruleof4.html The Rule of 4: Stopping the Abusive Engine in The ''Lord of the Rings™'' TCG] by Michael Reynolds (April 11, 2002)
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20021227082031/http://www.decipher.com/lordoftherings/articles/ruleof4reasons.html Reasons for the Rule of 4] by Michael Reynolds (April 11, 2002)
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20021214154133/http://www.decipher.com/lordoftherings/articles/ruleof4followup.html#godhand Why "4" in the Rule of 4?] by Michael Reynolds (April 22, 2002)


==Cards Limited by the Rule of 4==

{{ThumbnailTable
|filter= C.Side = 'Free Peoples' AND CR.Subset = 'S' AND C.CardType NOT LIKE 'Follower' AND (CR.GameText RLIKE '(Fellowship:{{!}}Fellowship or {{!}}At the start of (your{{!}}the{{!}}each) Fellowship{{!}}Each time you{{!}}When you play)' OR CR.Subtypes HOLDS 'Fellowship') AND CR.GameText RLIKE '(?<!opponent )(?<!Shadow player )(draw a{{!}}draw \\d{{!}}draw X{{!}}into hand)' AND C.CollInfo NOT IN ('15R29') AND {{FilterNonDecipher}} AND {{FilterReprints}}
|sort= {{CultureSort}}
}}


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