Worlds 2024

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The 2024 iteration of the logo.

Worlds 2024 was the second World Championship for the Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game ran by the Player's Council.[1]

The event was purely digital, being exclusively ran on GEMP (although some in-person events awarded invitations to their winners). The World Championship proper was split across 2 consecutive weekends, with qualifiers spread throughout the prior year. There was no cash prize pool, but various physical and digital awards were issued, including sealed card product and Pins.

Due to this digital nature, all games for the entire circuit have replays available to watch in Gemp. Unlike Worlds 2023, both the Group Stage and the Top 8 Championship Tournament were streamed live.

Format[edit]

The bones of the format were unchanged from Worlds 2023: the Group Stage compromised a Swiss event with more rounds than strictly necessary to ensure a conclusive result, and the Championship Tournament was a double-elimination knockout tournament. The Group Stage was tweaked to have 10 rounds instead of 8, with the 2 other rounds being Single-serie Movie Block Sealed.

Both of these events required players to bring separate PC-Fellowship and PC-Movie decks for different parts of the event.

  • Group Stage
  • Championship Tournament
    • Double-elimination Best-of-1 bracket, seeded by placement during the Group Stage
      • This means that everyone starts in the Upper Bracket, and after losing 1 game move down to the Lower Bracket. Losing a match in the Lower Bracket eliminates you from the tournament.
    • Upper Bracket play matches using the PC-Movie deck
    • Lower Bracket play matches using the PC-Fellowship deck
    • Finals between the top 2 were a Best-of-3. The first game was PC-Movie, after which the loser of each game chooses the format of the following game.


These procedural details and others were detailed in a video published by the Player's Council:

Prizes[edit]

Prizes were sponsored by:

  • CategoryONEGames (vouchers)
  • John Drinkwater (Decipher Pins)
  • Dale Miller (promo/foil collection donation)
  • Harry Duff / Custom Craft Awards (plaques + trophy deck boxes)


  • Competitors (3rd - 8th Place):
    • 1x Race to Mount Doom Pin
    • 6x Assorted Booster Packs from various sets
    • 1x $5 CategoryONEGames Voucher
    • 4x Top 8 Competitor Promo (Physical + Digital)
    • 4x World Championship Promo (Physical + Digital)
    • Assorted single promos + foils
    • 1x Competitor Plaque
  • World Challenger (2nd Place):
    • 1x Custom World Challenger Deck Box
    • 1x Race to Mount Doom Pin
    • 1x Sealed The Fellowship of the Ring booster box
    • 6x Assorted Booster Packs from various sets
    • 1x $20 CategoryONEGames Voucher
    • 4x Top 8 Competitor Promo (Physical + Digital)
    • 4x World Championship Promo (Physical + Digital)
    • 1x Challenger Plaque
  • World Champion:
    • 1x Custom World Champion Deck Box
    • 1x Race to Mount Doom Pin
    • 1x Sealed Mount Doom booster box
    • 1x $30 CategoryONEGames Voucher
    • Choose and help design the 2024 WC Promo
    • 4x Unique Top 8 Competitor Promo (Physical + Digital)
    • 4x Unique World Championship Promo (Physical + Digital)
    • 1x Champion Plaque

In addition, more boosters and singles were raffled off randomly to viewers who viewed the Group Stage and Championship Tournament streams.


Qualifiers[edit]

To enter the Group Stage, a player had to earn an invitation through one of the following methods:

  • By being the 2023 World Champion or World Challenger
  • By coming in 1st or 2nd place at any monthly PC Weekend Qualifier League
  • By coming in 1st place during the Format Championships to be ran in August 2024
  • By coming in 1st place at qualifying physical events run by the community
  • By entering and performing well within the Walk-on Qualifiers in September 2024

There were a total of 32 slots allocated for invitations: 2 issued to the 2023 World Champion and World Challenger, 8 for Weekend Qualifier League wins, 6 for Format Championship wins, 4 for in-person events, and the remaining 12 reserved for the Walk-ons.

Weekend Qualifier Leagues[edit]

Every month a 3-day league would be ran on GEMP, beginning at 1700 UTC on Friday and running until 1700 UTC Monday (Thursday evening to Sunday evening US time). Up to 6 games could be played during each league, and decks could be altered freely between matches. The 72-hour events straddled the line between casual and competitive, with nothing besides the honor system enforcing match-fixing or other abuses.

Both the winner and the runner-up would receive an invitation to the Group Stage. If either of these players had already qualified, the invitation would be awarded to the next in line.

Due to the ability to update decks between matches, only the most recent version of a decklist is shown in the report threads below; the linked replays may show a slightly different version as a result.


Community Events[edit]

While the majority of games played by this point are done digitally, many fans still meet up in-person to run their own local events. Event runners were given the option to register their event, which would grant an invitation to the winner. No specific requirements were made regarding size, format, or venue. While 4 invitations were allocated, only 3 were claimed.


Format Championships[edit]

Being that the World Championship itself was played with PC formats, the opportunity was given to players to prove their skill in the more long-standing formats by hosting competitive events for each of those major Decipher formats. Each event utilized Gemp's ad-hoc tournament system, meaning anyone could enter with a valid deck and go through a variable number of Swiss rounds based on participation. The winner of each event earned an invitation.


TS was once again used instead of Expanded since PC-Expanded was already a crazy format with very little outside of the most broken combos being addressed.

Walk-on Qualifiers[edit]

The last chance to earn an invitation, the Walk-on Qualifiers filled in all remaining invitation slots. Each player who came in first at a Qualifier event was automatically invited, and the remaining invitations involved sorting all Qualifiers into a normalized scoring structure and inviting based on performance within this structure[2]. In spite of reducing the total number of slots to 32, nearly every person who participated in a Qualifier was accepted to the Group Stage.

Unlike the Decipher-ran Day 1 events, the Walk-ons were a series of events spread across multiple time zones to maximize the availability of the player base. 6 total events were ran: one for each of the PC formats, in both AM and EU time zones.

Unlike last year, PC-Expanded was dropped from the event and was replaced with Single-serie Movie Block Sealed, with players having 25 minutes to rip and open packs, then 5 minutes to register decks. Due to a coding issue with this new feature, players who attempted to register during the 5 minute window were completely ignored, meaning that only people who registered early were able to participate. As a result, a make-up event was performed to compensate.


The World Championship 2024[edit]

The main event took place over two consecutive weekends. The Group Stage was a grueling 10-hour Swiss on October 19th, 2024, and the top 8 players from that event moved on to the Championship Tournament the following Saturday on October 26th.

A total of 32 players were invited[3], but only 28 ended up showing up for the Group Stage itself.

The Group Stage[edit]

The Group Stage was an 10-round Swiss tournament with 3 phases: the first 2 rounds were played in Single-serie Movie Block Sealed, the next 4 rounds were played in PC-Fellowship, and the last 4 rounds were played in PC-Movie. This meant that players had to prepare decks for both formats and also build a deck on the fly, proving that they had developed mastery across multiple strata. The score was preserved between rounds without resetting. As the Sealed rounds went first, the inherent randomness of which cards players pulled dampened the inherent random assignments of the Swiss system, meaning that the constructed formats had better skill pairings across the board.

All players who made it into the top 8 were dubbed the World Competitors and moved on to the Championship Tournament the following weekend.

There was snafu in round 6 where a gatecrasher was able to enter the event over halfway through, a feature intended to prevent issues at the very start if someone missed the deadline by a few seconds. This led to Thayli playing (and defeating) the gatecrasher, and thedast7 receiving a bye. Since neither player was in the running for the top 8, no action was taken besides booting the gatecrasher.

Unlike the previous year, it was established well ahead of time that all replays + decklists would be published immediately following the end of the event, and the event itself was streamed live:

The Championship Tournament[edit]

The top 8 Competitors from the Group Stage returned the following weekend for a 6-hour double-elimination knockout tournament. All undefeated players (i.e. those in the Upper Bracket) would play using their PC-Movie decks, while all players who had lost 1 game (i.e. those in the Lower Bracket) would instead play using PC-Fellowship. As they had a week to study the replays + decklists of their opponents from the Group Stage, players were able to fine-tune (or completely swap out) their decks as they deemed wise.

The final confrontation between the last two Competitors was a Best-of-3 match, which deviates from the usual double-elimination arrangement. The first game was played in PC-Movie, but after that point the loser of the previous game would get to pick which format to play the following game in. The winner would be crowned the World Champion, and the runner-up would be dubbed the World Challenger.

As with the Group Stage, the Championship Tournament was streamed live (though Competitors were instructed to avoid watching the stream). The stream includes a post-match interview with the now two-time World Champion, basmelis.


Aftermath[edit]

As one of the rewards of his victory, the World Champion basmelis will have the chance to select the 2024 WC Promo, but as of time of writing this is still ongoing.

Several weaknesses in the meta of the PC-Movie format were identified as a result of the 2023 Worlds, which as of time of writing are in an ongoing process of being addressed. In particular, the overrepresentation of the Gondor culture and the tutoring cards of Saved From the Fire (8R20) and Denethor, Lord of Minas Tirith (10R28) stuck out. These and other cards will be addressed in a post-WC errata batch.


References[edit]

  1. ↑ The 2024 World Championship
  2. ↑ The Walk-on Qualifiers
  3. ↑ 2024 World Championship Invitees



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
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