Multiplayer

General Breakdown

Multiplayer is the general term used to describe games played with 3 or more players. Such games have a tendency to be longer than a standard game, and include a turn order that has all but one of the players as Shadow players, and only one Free Peoples player at a given time. Many cards were not designed with Multiplayer in mind (in fact, there are a number of cards which are said to interface with Multiplayer very badly), but a few were designed with Multiplayer in mind, such as Cast It Into the Fire! - an [ELVEN] event that allows for card draw that scales off of the amount of opponents in a game.

Turn Order and Playing Sites

As previously mentioned, only one player is the Free Peoples player at a given time. At the end of turn, the Free Peoples player hands on that title to the next player on their left. The order of Shadow phases during a Multiplayer game starts with the first player to the right of the Free Peoples player. At the end of a Shadow player's shadow phase, they pass it off to the next Shadow player to their right. The same order applies for all other phases, except the Free Peoples player also has an action in those phases, and in those cases, the Free Peoples player gets the first action.

When playing sites, the player who plays the next site is the player to either the right or the left of the Free Peoples player, determined by the arrow marked on a site. For example Rohirrim Camp has an arrow pointing to the left, meaning that the player to the left of the Free Peoples player plays the fellowship's next site, but Stables has an arrow that points to the right, which means that the player to the right of the Free Peoples player plays the fellowship's next site.

Twilight and Playing Cards

As always within the LotR Trading Card Game, whenever a Free Peoples card is played, that card adds twilight equal to its cost, and whenever a Shadow card is played, it removes twilight equal to its cost. However, the difference in Multiplayer arises here: all players share a single Twilight Pool, which means that twilight conservation is a shared effort. All Shadow players must strategize (although they are not permitted to share specifics on what cards they have in hand) around the amount of twilight to try and retain after a player's turn in order to try and win. However, this fundamentally also forces the Free Peoples player to try even harder to avoid flooding: after all, multiple enemy hands means far more potential shadow cards on a given turn (and a single good Moria turn can leave enough excess twilight for other shadow players to launch powerful assaults of their own).

Multiplayer Specific Rules

Despite the latent inter-strategy of Multiplayer as a format, no player is allowed to look at another's hand (except in the case of a card such as Our List of Allies Grows Thin or Glamdring, where a player's hand is revealed). All other players are considered Opponents, whether using Free Peoples or Shadow cards ^{requires confirmation}.

https://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php?topic=23.15 A big thanks to all the people in this thread for information.