Playing the game is fun and all, but after having played it for several years, you would be forgiven if you thought that it felt a bit repetitive to see the same player cards over and over again. And while I always advise you to step out of your comfort zone a bit and try to make different cards work, the truth is that many of the cards will still end up in many of your decks. So, if we are going to be seeing the cards over and over again, we might as well spice things up, right?
That is where alternate art cards come in. These cards work the same as the originals but feature different artwork or a different format than the regular cards. A good example of this being done by FFG themselves is the Collector’s Edition, released back in 2018. This box contained two player decks and two quests, all with a different format than the traditional cards. This made it easier to distinguish the cards from their regular versions, and the zoomed-in artwork refreshed some cards, like Unexpected Courage, a little bit.
But the real alt-art cards we know of are the official cards that were handed out between 2014 and 2020 with the Fellowship kits and during the GenCon events. These alt-art cards featured popular heroes (and Lorefindel), who received brand new artwork that was placed on the card. The rarity of these cards and the novelty of having the same hero look a bit different has since catapulted the price of these official alt-art cards. Especially those handed out during GenCon events are rare, as they were only available at a single place in very limited quantity. The official alt-art heroes are:
- Leadership Aragorn
- Tactics Legolas
- Tactics Gimli
- Tactics Boromir
- Leadership Faramir
- Celeborn
- Galadriel
- Lore Glorfindel
- Spirit Eowyn
- Lore Bilbo
- Gandalf
- Arwen Undomiel*
- Sam Gamgee*
- Tactics Beregond*
- Elrond*
*These cards were rereleased in the Fellowship 2020 kit, but still have the same artwork. The layout has changed a bit in order to make the artwork take up more space on the card, but they are technically not alternate art cards.
Due to the insane prices that some of the official alt-art cards go for, the community has taken it upon itself to make alt arts of their own. This gives them more freedom to make whichever cards they want, including non-hero cards. Over the years, the community has been using this process to get more novel cards or even decks themed around a particular franchise or artist. These cards are either used as proxies or to have a deck you really like made without having to sacrifice cards from your collection all the time. In this article, I will go over some of the alt-art cards and the process behind getting your hands on these!
Making your own cards
Many people wonder how the community is able to make so many alt arts themselves. The truth is that you do not need any Photoshop skills to do this; all you need is a single program. That program is called Strange Eons and can be found using this link: https://strangeeons.cgjennings.ca/download.html. The program allows you to rework templates for LOTR LCG to create your own cards. Not just alternate art cards but also if you want to make a new card altogether. This is what some fan-made projects use as well, and it is the most user-friendly interface over alternative software that might produce higher-quality cards.
Not only does the software allow you to make alt art cards and brand-new player cards, but you can also make custom encounter cards if you want to. This has been used for many community-made scenarios in the past, as this software has been around for a long time. The software does come with a few setbacks, especially the fact that you are reliant on pre-made templates. It has been updated for a while to include newer templates for things like side-quests, but sadly, there is no way to create Contract cards with this software (yet).
I have played around with Strange Eons myself for a while, creating some fun projects that expanded on traits like Bree (before AleP did it better). The cards can all be downloaded and printed by a printing company afterwards. Since you can also set the back image in this software, you can get around licensing issues that a printer might have.
Finding alt arts by others
But maybe you do not want to make your own cards and would rather duplicate the fantastic work that others have done for the community. Then, the first step is to find a set of alt art cards made by a community member that you are allowed to copy. These can be a bit tricky to find, so I will list them down below.
Beorn
Beorn’s alt arts focus on a particular theme that can range from the same artist to merging into another popular media franchise. The benefit of these alt arts is that they are self-contained decks based on popular decklists from RingsDB. This allows you to print the cards and have the deck next to your completed card pool so that you do not need to use them as proxies. These alt arts are possibly the easiest to find, as they are on the Hall of Beorn blog (yes, he has a blog) and can also be found in the card search engine if you scroll down on the card’s individual page. These alt arts also include those made by other members of the community and can also be in a different format, giving more space for the artwork.
Autumn
Community member Autumn is known for her amazing work creating alt-art cards. A large collection of them can be found in this gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/roseofgondolin/. This includes artwork taken from other cards in the game, artwork taken from other LOTR sources, like the MtG artwork, as well as art taken from different fantasy universes altogether.
While she focuses more on creating alt art versions of individual cards, she also has albums where a complete deck is listed with a link to RingsDB. You can download all the individual cards, adjust quantities based on the decklist, and then have the complete alt art deck printed.
Riddermark Lord
If you are looking for even more alt artwork, then this gallery by Riddermark Lord (moderator over at the subreddit) comes highly recommended: https://www.flickr.com/photos/7876498@N07/. He goes beyond simply uploading the artwork in Strange Eons and really makes that art fill most of the card, leaving little space for textboxes and stat lines. This is ideal if you already know what your heroes do and would rather have nice art to have on the table. Some of the hero artwork even stretches across textboxes and stat lines, making it seem like they pop out of the card. The gallery is definitely worth a look.
Beyond making alt-art heroes, Riddermark Lord also has had the wonderful idea to make landscape-oriented versions of events. While events usually don’t take up much space on the table, this does invoke a feeling of something actually happening that other players can see. Plus it looks nice on top of your discard pile, I suppose. I understand that this orientation is only really possible with cards that don’t have to rotate to be exhausted, but a landscape-orientated deck would be really quirky to bring to the table. Add the nice artwork to that, and you are sure to steal the show at any convention.
If there are more creators of alt-art cards that I have not yet mentioned here, please let me know. I would love to feature them in this article to give people more options when printing alt-art cards.
Alt-art scenarios
At the moment of writing, there are two scenarios I know of that have received the alt art treatment. The first is Journey Along the Anduin. It was made by the hosts of CardTalk, who changed the artwork for this popular quest and printed it so that it could be enjoyed as if it were a standalone scenario. Now, you do not have to shuffle encounter sets together and separate them after the tenth beating by the Hill Troll.
The other scenario is one of my personal favorites, Across the Ettenmoors. It was made by Autumn and can be found on her gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/roseofgondolin/albums/72157720173947823. This also includes the Nightmare version of the quest if you are brave enough to attempt it.
I am unsure if there are plans for more of these alt-art scenarios in the future, but the tools are available, so perhaps someone will invest some time in changing up the artwork on the encounter cards. For inspiration, look at how fan-made scenarios are created. These are also making their own encounter cards, though they have to design the entire card, not just swap out the artwork.
Printing alt arts
Now that you know where to find the digital alt arts, you might want to bring them into the real world by printing them. I am not too experienced with this myself, so I would kindly refer you to this link with printing guides made by AleP: https://alongextendedparty.com/printing-guides-and-downloads/. While this describes the method of printing their own scenarios, the process isn’t much different from printing alt-art cards. One thing to note, though, is that these printing companies can sometimes be a bit difficult with printing the official cardbacks. You will be better off selecting a fair-use card back when printing alt-art cards.
You can also print them using your own printer (or one from work) and use some photo-quality paper to print the cards on. You can then stick it to regular cards with some glue to make proxies or get the cardboard feeling without going through a printing company. This is a far cheaper option, though the results might feel a bit worse. For card options, go with some bulk cards from other TCGs. I’ve used Pokemon energy cards in the past, and with the right paper, you won’t even see the artwork on the backing card.
Getting alt arts
Aside from printing them yourself or placing an order on your own, there are some other methods of obtaining these decks. First of all, you could win them at certain conventions or receive them as a prize during give-aways. If you befriend some of the creators, you also get a lot of alt artwork before you know it. Aside from that, there are sometimes also group orders for alt art content, allowing you to save a bit on shipping. Look around the main community channels (Facebook, Reddit, Discord) to see if any group order is happening, and maybe you can lump in some alt arts there as well!
I hope the article has helped you to understand that you are not bound by the artwork that FFG decided should go on the card. A lot of amazing artwork is still being made, especially now that generative AI is emerging. If you are ever looking to make some more proxies for your decks, I hope you keep this article in mind!
With that, I’m off to Con of the Rings. I hope to see many of you there and marvel at the different alt-art decks that hit the table there.
Vision Of The Palantir 