Uncut Sheets

Not to be confused with the card block posters handed out as a part of The Countdown Collection.

Three framed Rare Foil uncut sheets, for Realms of the Elf-lords, Ents of Fangorn, and The Return of the King.

Uncut Sheets are the sheets of card stock upon which card images are printed. Sheets which are deemed acceptable are then later cut or punched, and the resulting cards are sorted into packs, either by hand (as was done for Starter Decks) or more automatically (as was done for Booster Packs).

Decipher was fond of awarding Uncut Sheets as awards (for both tournaments and various promotional retail programs), as they were easy to procure, had a striking poster-sized form factor, and in many cases were an incidental byproduct of the manufacturing process. Following Decipher's decline, many stored uncut sheets were sold off to resellers, and over the years some versions of these sheets that were not ever intended for redistribution (such as printing proofs or defects) have cropped up as well.

Dimensions and Details

English uncut sheets were 28.375 inches by 39.5 inches, which is approximately size B1+ paper, and arranged in an 11x11 grid. Printing was done in 5 layers; first a standard CYMK print for the card template + portrait, and then another black layer for the text; this was done so that international versions of the cards could be produced just by changing one of the print layers to minimize the work involved. Foil cards were produced by printing onto diffraction-foiled paper, and an additional blocking ink layer was printed first to mask out the foil effect before the CYMK + text layers were printed on top as normal.

From the start of the game's lifetime until at least Bloodlines, printing was performed by Teagle & Little (which has since been acquired, and its acquiring company appears to be defunct). Printings for later sets were performed by PBM Graphics Inc (later acquired by Consolidated Graphics).

Many details of released product had their origins in the practical realities of the limitations of these sheets. For instance, base sets were usually 365 cards, made up of 121 Rare, 121 Uncommon, and 121 Common cards, meaning that a complete set could be produced by printing exactly 3 sheets. (The 2 extra cards were Premium cards, and were placed on separate Starter Deck sheets which did not overlap with these more standard layouts.) Were the sheets produced differently, then the set count would most likely change to fit that reality, rather than the other way around.

International sheets are a very different story and vary wildly. Decipher did not manage the printing of most non-English product, and so the various international partners would adapt each set to a form factor compatible with local print operations. Some international sheets mimic the English 11x11 layout (albeit with much larger or smaller margins due to different paper sizes, going for B1 or possibly Arch E3), but many have a 10x10, 10x11 or 12x10 arrangement, which complicated matters. This was particularly true where the Premium cards were concerned, as most Starter Decks were not produced internationally. Even when they were, international starter deck sheets sometimes produced 2 decks of the same variety on one sheet, which would require 2 unique sheets to produce both decks.

Known Sheets

6 sets are approximately accounted for, and 6 more have enough samples uncovered that re-deriving the remaining sheets is possible. If you have any rare or high quality images of sheets, we would highly encourage you to contact the Player's Council or upload high-quality images of your sheets here to the wiki. An up-to-date spreadsheet of all known sheets can be found here.

In particular, please let us know if you have any of the sheets marked as "not found" in the gallery below.

Gallery

Click through to any image to see a larger version.

• Promotional
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  Treebeard, Guardian of the Forest (0P21) to Frodo, Resolute Hobbit (0P27)

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  Glorfindel, Revealed in Wrath (0P50) to Gorgoroth Swarm (0P55) , including the Book Cards

• 

  Uncut Oversized promo cards

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• The Fellowship of the Ring
• 

  FOTR Commons EN

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  FOTR Common Foils EN

• 

  FOTR Uncommons EN

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  FOTR Rares EN

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  FOTR Rares ZH

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  FOTR Starter Decks EN

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  FOTR Block Tengwar

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