Editing The War of the Ring Anthology

[[File:product anthology WOTR 01.jpg|350px|thumb|right|A WotR Anthology box]]
[[File:LOTR-TW13S046.0_card.jpg|thumb|right|500px|A [[Tengwar]] version of {{Card|13R46}} which was included in this Anthology.]]

'''The War of the Ring Anthology''' was a collector's product released on 19 October, 2005 with an MESP of $39.95 USD<ref>Original Decipher announcement of The War of the Ring Anthology as preserved on the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20070318204907/http://lotrtcg.fanhq.com/Articles/Article.aspx?ID=862</ref>.  

It consisted of the following:

* 18 cards which had been rewritten in the Elvish [[Tengwar]] script
* 1 storage box which could hold up to 600 cards
* 6 [[War of the Ring Block]] [[Booster Pack]]s
* 1 random [[War of the Ring Block]] [[Starter Deck]]


== Announcement ==
{{Quote
|title=Decipher Announcement
|source= [http://web.archive.org/web/20070318204907/http://lotrtcg.fanhq.com/Articles/Article.aspx?ID=862 Announcing The Lord of the Rings TCG The War of the Ring Anthology]
|text=The War of the Ring Anthology for the Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game is packed with treasure that any Lord of the Rings fan will desire! In the collector's storage box, designed to hold over 600 cards, players and collectors will find 18 foil [[Tengwar]] language cards, including the best cards from the [[War of the Ring Block]]. Also included are a random starter from the War of the Ring Block and six booster packs (two each from [[Shadows]], [[Black Rider]], and [[Bloodlines]]).
}}
{{clear}}

== German Version of the War of the Ring Anthology ==
German Tengwar cards for the first three Anthology sets were exactly the same as all other languages--namely, the same as the English version (there wasn't much point after all in re-transcribing a language that, realistically, practically no-one could read). However, the German War of the Ring Anthology are in fact transcribed in German, unique to all non-English language tengwar cards.

The German Tengwar cards are noticeably more amateur than the hand-written ones made by Daniel Reeve. The mode used doesn't appear to follow any known Tengwar mode, meaning that the authors likely just assigned letters to tengwar at random. There is also a curious combination of vowels-as-glyphs and vowels-as-diacritic, possibly indicating that diacritics were used as direct translations of German diacritics. On top of this, the lore font appears to have some missing letters, meaning that at times it will default to the game text font's letters, causing a jarring formatting switch partway through words.

Seeing as these cards were only "discovered" to exist in 2020, it's unknown whether any other overseas printers produced their own versions as well.


== Tengwar Cards Included in The War of the Ring Anthology ==
{{CompactTranslationThumbnailTable
|filter= C.SetNum IN (11,12,13) AND CR.LanguageCode = 'TW' 
|sort=CR.ID, C.CardNum, CR._rowID
}}

== German Tengwar Cards ==
{{CompactTranslationThumbnailTable
|langCode=TG
|filter= C.SetNum IN (11,12,13) 
|sort=CR.ID, C.CardNum, CR._rowID
}}

== Gallery ==

<div><ul> 
<li style="display: inline-block;"> [[File:product anthology WOTR 01.jpg|500px|thumb|none|A WotR Anthology Box]] </li>
<li style="display: inline-block;"> [[File:product anthology WOTR 05.jpg|500px|thumb|none|An opened WotR Anthology Box, showcasing the Sealed tengwar cards]] </li>

{{#widget:YouTube|id=lZACs8Rdebg}}

</ul></div>

{{References}}


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{{Product Table}}
@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 |text=The War of the Ring Anthology for the Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game is packed with treasure that any Lord of the Rings fan will desire! In the collector's storage box, designed to hold over 600 cards, players and collectors will find 18 foil [[Tengwar]] language cards, including the best cards from the [[War of the Ring Block]]. Also included are a random starter from the War of the Ring Block and six booster packs (two each from [[Shadows]], [[Black Rider]], and [[Bloodlines]]).
 }}
+{{clear}}
-== Quality ==
-There is a dip in craftsmanship in the WOTR Anthology compared to those of previous blocks.  The most obvious difference is the lack of any included booklet, which is no doubt a direct result of the layoffs at [[Decipher]] leading to fewer employees available for design and proofing.
-There is also a change in the quality of the Tengwar itself, which appears to have gone from being hand-lettered to utilizing a static font, as can be demonstrated by a close inspection of {{Card|Aragorn, Ranger of the North|TW}}, {{Card|Aragorn, Wingfoot|TW}}, {{Card|Aragorn, Elessar Telcontar|TW}}, and {{Card|Aragorn, Strider|TW}}.  Here are those cards titles together (in order) for comparison:
-[[File:tengwar-aragorn-comparison.png|thumb|500px|none]]
-Each of the previous blocks have clear variations between the different letters of "ARAGORN", even between the two As and two Rs of the same card. Note the differences in shape and the length of the leading strokes, which are evidence of being made by hand (albeit by a skilled calligraphist).
-The Strider entry however lacks any sort of variation between letters, and the glyphs are spaced to avoid overlap.  It's unknown where exactly Decipher obtained the font being used on these cards (it might even have been Reeve himself), but it clearly wasn't made by hand as was previously the case (and indeed, no mention is made of Reeve in the above announcement for this particular Anthology).
-This wouldn't be anything more than a curiosity, except that it resulted in two different versions of WOTR Tengwar cards:
 == German Version of the War of the Ring Anthology ==
@@ Line 39: / Line 26: @@
 Seeing as these cards were only "discovered" to exist in 2020, it's unknown whether any other overseas printers produced their own versions as well.
-<gallery widths=400px heights=600px mode="packed">
-File:LOTR-TW12F035.0_card.jpg|English Tengwar version of {{Card|Watch and Wait}}
-File:LOTR-TG12F035.0_card.jpg|German Tengwar version
-</gallery>
-Notice the missing letter in the lore, which is both times replaced with the glyph used for the number 7 from a separate font.  Although these do not use any existing German modes, they are presumed to be German based on the verbiage used.  Note the word used in the type bar, which follows a pattern of 1 - 2 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 4, which would line up with an amateur transcription of the German word "effekt", the term used for [[Condition]].
-It is completely unknown why these cards were transcribed, but the method at least can be guessed at: since this Anthology was the first to utilize a font instead of hand-lettering (see previous section), that font must have been transmitted to Decipher's international partners, and the German distributor must have decided for one reason or another to use these to re-write the cards from the ground up in a German-ish mode.
 == Tengwar Cards Included in The War of the Ring Anthology ==
 {{CompactTranslationThumbnailTable
-|filter= C.SetNum IN (11,12,13) AND CR.LanguageCode = 'TW' AND CR.Subset = 'S'
+|filter= C.SetNum IN (11,12,13) AND CR.LanguageCode = 'TW'
 |sort=CR.ID, C.CardNum, CR._rowID
 }}