Rules and Rulings

When playing The Lord of the Rings TCG, there are a variety of resources that define the Rules of how the game is to be played. When questions about how individual card interactions occur, it calls for the local game authority to make a Ruling, which is later reviewed and incorporated into the rules in an official capacity, if warranted.

While the game was still being printed, Decipher itself maintained the rulebooks and issued rulings, but in 2005 and later their capacity to continue this effort was dramatically depleted, and after the last ruling was issued in 13 August, 2007, no further official rulings were ever made. This left individuals and groups to fend for themselves when deciding how to address various rules issues as they cropped up.

In 2025, the Player's Council formed the Rules Council, with a Legacy Rules Team to manage Decipher-era formats and a Modern Rules Team to manage PC formats. At the bottom of this page you can find each of their rulings

History

When the Lord of the Rings TCG first launched with set 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, only two rules documents existed: the Starter Rulebook that gave every new purchaser of a Starter Deck or Deluxe Starter Sets a brief rundown of how to play the game, and the slightly more fleshed out Expanded Rulebook available online as a PDF. The Expanded Rulebook did away with any starter-only considerations (such as ending the game at site 7 and permitting players to re-shuffle their discard pile into their deck once per game) and added additional rules entries or expanded existing entries to explain the nuances and edge cases deemed unnecessary for a first-time player's teaching experience.

As issues with the rules were identified, Decipher would regularly release Answers to Frequently Asked Questions as a supplementary extension to the rulebooks online. This was an evolving process; as entries were added to the FAQ document, they would be slated for insertion into new versions of the other Rulebooks in an attempt to keep the rules reference up-to-date.

Eventually these documents evolved into the Comprehensive Rules and Current Rulings Documents, which were better organized but which fulfilled the same basic role as their earlier incarnations. Current Rulings Documents would be issued to contain all of the latest rulings by Decipher, and then on a regular schedule (initially every 6 months) the Comprehensive Rules would be refreshed to include all CRD entries. Starter Rulebooks continued to exist as a cut-down version of just the most important rules, but even they would be updated as various core elements to the game shifted.

With the Comprehensive Rules 4.0, the game entered the Shadows era, which besides including changes to cultures and the site path also utilized set rotation for the first time, meaning that Fellowship Block rotated. Decipher thus removed all individual card ruling for cards in those sets (as they were no longer legal for use in Standard).

As Decipher's staff dwindled, the spare attention that could be given to the rulebook eroded. 4.0 was the last edition of the Comprehensive Rules to be produced, although CRDs continued to be updated for 3 more years. This took its toll on the last few CRDs, which sometimes accidentally dropped rules entries from past editions. As a result, to understand the last word as received from Decipher, one must refer to multiple documents spread across multiple years of release.

Post-Decipher Rulebooks

There are three main documents maintained today by the Rules Council, which cover different purposes:

• Comprehensive Rules 4.1
  • This document consolidates all official Decipher sources: past and current editions of the Comprehensive Rules, all CRDs, the Tournament Guidelines, and all mistakenly dropped rulings that were not superseded. This document contains no alterations to Decipher's rulings, only puts everything in one place so that it can be easily referenced.

• Comprehensive Rules 4.2, aka Community Rules
  • This document is a reorganized version of 4.1, with all Decipher rulings rearranged for easier reference. In addition, community rulings as ratified by the Legacy Rules Team are included, so that everyone can be on the same page for legacy gameplay purposes. There are also additional breakdowns and examples alongside the original entries, to improve understanding.

• Comprehensive Rules 5.0, aka PC Rules
  • This document builds off of 4.2 and includes changes and alterations as issued by the Modern Rules Team to facilitate PC formats. This includes the rules for new mechanics, rulings on how errata are to be interpreted, as well as specific areas where Decipher rules have been stricken out. In general PC formats are more liberal at altering the underlying rules.

PC Rulings

When the Legacy or Modern Rules Teams issues a ruling, it is recorded here on the wiki for posterity. Anyone may request that the Rules Council review a rule or issue; if the issue has any meat to it (i.e. it isn't just "you missed this section where it's clearly written out"), then the appropriate Team will create a new article on the wiki and a decision will be made. If a change is warranted, then the appropriate version of the Rules will receive an update, and if necessary GEMP will be updated to match.

See the table below for all past and current Rules Council rulings.

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