Tournament Foils
Tournament Foils refer to a specific set of overseas cards branded with the TF rarity. These cards were printed and distributed by Decipher's international partners and thus never had any English card equivalents. Due to the variety of their distribution and the insulation of those markets from the US, they are among the rarest and most difficult cards to obtain.
TF cards were printed in German (by Universal Cards), French (by Hexagonal), and Italian (by Nexus Games). There are reports that German TF cards were all distributed as tournament prize support, with TF1 and TF2 being low-grade rewards for participation. Italian distributors apparently also handed theirs out as prize support, but also offered the complete set for purchase. In France, TF1 and TF2 were distributed as part of a purchase program (buy X packs, earn points to redeem for promos), while TF3 and TF4 were rewards proper for tournaments. In each case, 13TF5 appears to have been rarer than the others, possibly coming in at the tail end of the game's life and thus making it to individual distributors but not further disseminated among the remaining players.
The vast majority of the known information about these cards is taken from this thread on TLHH.
There were in total 9 TF cards: 4 were reprints from Black Rider and 5 were reprints from Bloodlines. They were as follows:
- 12TF1 Confronting the Eye (12C45)
- 12TF2 Brutal Easterling (12S55)
- 12TF3 Troll’s Keyward, Keeper of the Beast (12R105)
- 12TF4 Coif (12R111)
- 13TF1 Gimli, Lord of the Glittering Caves (13R5)
- 13TF2 Banners Blowing (13U61)
- 13TF3 Assault Commander (13R158)
- 13TF4 City of Kings (13U187)
- 13TF5 Gríma, Footman of Saruman (13U92)
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Uncut German Rare Foil sheet from Black Rider showing 12TF1 - 12TF4 along the top, with the normal RF and O cards from set 13 taking up the rest of the sheet. -
Uncut German Rare Foil sheet from Bloodlines showing 13TF1 - 13TF5 in the 4th row from the bottom, with a column for Grima. Curiously, 3 copies of each are present except only 2 for TF1 (perhaps because Gimli was already a standard RF card).
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