World Championship
The World Championship (often simply abbreviated to Worlds) is an annual event ran late in the year with the intent of crowning the best player in the world as the World Champion. Decipher ran the event from 2002 all the way until they lost the license in 2006 (and had an unsanctioned event in 2007). In 2010, the Star Wars Players Committee held a side-event during their own Worlds and crowned a World Champion for the LOTR-TCG. Beginning in 2023, the Player's Council has taken up the torch and ran a digital Worlds on GEMP.
So long as Decipher ran Worlds, the event was always tied to Open, the format that represented the most recent state of the game. The original release schedule had Worlds running at the end of every third set, which made Worlds a snapshot of the first real competitive play within a given block. As a result, every Worlds involved a different playing field, but some side-events would be ran to crown champions of more restricted (yet popular) formats. The SW-PC event in 2010 used Movie Block, and the Player's Council's own event in 2023 utilized a mix of PC-Fellowship and PC-Movie.
The Decipher-ran Worlds tended to follow a multi-day structure, where Day 1 would have a series of open qualifier events, a Day 2 where the best players from Day 1 (and prior invitees) fight for the top 8 spot, and then a Day 3 where the top 8 would enter a knockout tournament to determine the World Champion. The PC's digital events echo this arrangement, but instead of placing all 3 events back-to-back in a single long weekend, each day is covered by an event held in separate weekends.
Tournaments[edit]
| Event | Dates | Format | Location | Winner | Runner-up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Worlds 2002 | Oct 31-Nov 3, 2002 | Fellowship Block | DecipherCon 2002 • Chesapeake, Virginia | Mathieu Brochu | Alex Tennet |
| Worlds 2003 | July 24-26, 2003 | Towers Standard | DecipherCon 2003 • GenCon Indy • Indianapolis, Indiana | Michael Dalton | Robert Schiermeyer |
| Worlds 2004 | Date | Movie Block | Location | Emir Delic | Josh Cornwell-Mott |
| Worlds 2005 | Date | War of the Ring Standard | Location | Kyle George | Lee Clarke |
| Worlds 2006 | Date | Format | Location | Christian Kriesel | Seth Maser |
| Worlds 2007 | Date | Format | Location | Vince Accetturo / Chris Thompson | |
| Worlds 2010 | August 13-15, 2010 | Movie Block (no GLR) | SWCCG Worlds • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | Brian Fred | Casey Anis |
Worlds 2023 
|
Oct 14 + 21, 2023 | PC-Movie / PC-Fellowship | GEMP | basmelis | thefaker |
| Worlds 2024
|
Oct 19 + 26, 2023 | Movie Block Sealed / PC-Movie / PC-Fellowship | GEMP | basmelis | rbranco |
| The Lord of the Rings TCG World Championship
| |
|---|---|
| Decipher | 2002 • 2003 • 2004 • 2005 • 2006 • 2007 |
| SWCCG Players Committee | 2010 |
| LOTR-TCG Player's Council
|
2023 • 2024 |
