Lure of Middle Earth 2024: Experiences and Memories

While it seems like Con of the Rings 2023 wasn’t too long ago, I was happily surprised one morning to see that Lure of Middle Earth was already around the corner. I think that the yearly convention schedule is spaced out pretty well in order to not have a bunch of them in the same month. While we could always use more excuses to get together for physical games, I also don’t mind attending digital conventions during the summer.

Last year was my first time attending Lure of Middle Earth, and while it was overshadowed by my recovery from illness the year before, I had a great time. I had already booked my ticket once they went live back in September. A good thing I did since the tickets sold out fast! That was despite this being the first year that the convention rented out the entire castle. It seems like my promo article last year got some extra eyes on this convention! Sadly, that didn’t mean I got a discount or a better room. I was still put into the tower like last year, but at least I knew what to expect this time!

Preparations

Having some past experience with the convention definitely helped while packing. Last year, I had too many player decks and not enough quests with me. Since I’m going by car, I have all the space I could need for my collection, though I decided not to bring everything with me. Carrying everything up and down the tower is a pain, even in good shoes. Instead, I went for “only” eight decks that I had crafted two weeks beforehand. This gave me some time to test the decks. The decks that I brought were (links are to the inspiration for many of the deck):

I opted not to bring a sideboard this time since I rarely swap cards at conventions and prefer to pick a different deck if there’s a clash with another hero. In terms of quests, I brought the four custom scenario decks that have been unchanged from Con of the Rings. I hoped that would give me the chance to DM games again. I also brought the complete Harad cycle with me since newer players wouldn’t have those quests yet. I also packed Hunt for the Dreadnaught in case people were up for an epic multiplayer quest. Aside from cards, I got a few more items from my standard kit when going to conventions, including playmats, a box of tokens, my playthrough notebook, and my personal copy of the Field Guide, which I wanted to show off to people who hadn’t seen it before in person. I also had a lot of gifts with me for people I’d be meeting at the convention, saving us all on shipping!

Friday 16th of February, Con day 1

I had a bit of a headstart this morning since I stayed over at a friend of mine who lives close to the border. Since I was able to stay over at her house, I could get ahead of the many people going south towards the Alps on their skiing holidays. It also shaved an hour off my journey, allowing me to drive the entire trip without stopping. That allowed me to arrive at the castle at 11:30 am, nicely on time before the announcements. To survive the drive, I listened to episode 223 of Cardboard of the Rings, which I had saved up for this trip. Nothing better to get eased into a weekend of LOTR LCG than a podcast discussing the game.

I was able to find a better spot to park my car than last year and ended up bringing all my stuff to the room in two trips. I had the exact same bed as last year. That meant climbing the “stairs of death” in the tower again, but I had better stamina than last year. Once settled in, I changed out my bag for all my gaming stuff and went to the main hall. There, I found a couple of players from the Netherlands that I have played with physically before, so I wasn’t as alone as I was on the first day of last year’s con. It helps to know people in advance, but the community is still welcoming to newer attendees who might need an introduction to the players.

The first game was a 3-player game with Mormegil (a local)and GalacticTrendsetter (an American) against Escape from Umbar. I played with my mono-Spirit Dunedain deck and kept a lid on the locations. By the end, I could even go toe to toe with the Southron Champion, though we got lucky and it hit the weakest enemy. It was a bit tricky halfway through, but we managed to kick off the convention with a win.

At 14:30, the convention officially began with the opening announcements. If you are only attending for LOTR LCG, you can skip half of it, but the other half is quite important. During the event, there are a myriad of challenges to beat, and those will reward you with custom alt-art cards made especially for the event. These challenges deal with special conditions for certain quests (for example: “Beat any Dwarrowdelf cycle quest by only whispering to communicate so as to not wake up the Balrog”) or to give people a chance to know each other (“play a 4-player game with players from 4 different countries”). Aside from the standard announcements about the schedule and achievements, we also got a look at the official Lure of Middle Earth 2024 swag. This was a cardboard deck box with special artwork made for the convention. It is a nice trinket to display next to my other custom deckboxes!

After the announcements, I went up to the Tower Room to join in on the draft taking place there. For those of you unfamiliar with the format, you try to beat a quest with decks made from a set amount of cards. You get to pick and choose the cards from different hero packs and have to hope your teammates give you helpful cards for your deck. I started with Tactics Legolas as my hero and built around that with Beregond for defence and Damrod for trap support. Plenty of Ranged and Sentinel support helped other players, and I had enough card draw to see the entire deck in action (you build a 40-card deck in Draft format). With the decks made, we ended up going against Hunt for the Dreadnaught (more like Hunt for the Draftnaught) with 4-players. I had my Ranged and Sentinel support (no traps, those don’t work on ships) and was joined by GalacticTrendsetter (mono-Tactics with Aragorn–Hama–Hirgon) and two Filipo from Italy’s (Noldor-Discard with Cirdan–Arwen–Galdor) (Gondor swarm LBoromir–Denethor–Ingold). We managed to beat the Dreadnaught in 9 turns, with the help of a Sea Monster dealing the final blow to the ship. A big shout-out to Rouxxor for hosting the draft and preparing the card packs. I have done drafts before, but it is always a surprise to see what you end up with.

With dinner taking place halfway through our Dreadnaught game, we paused the game and went for some food. It was fish with steamed vegetables and rice, with a dill-cream sauce. Not my favorite, but I can definitely use the food with all the walking up and down the stairs between my room and the main hall. After the draft game, I joined a newly arrived player from the Netherlands for a game of Race Across Harad. I wanted to win this relatively quickly, so I ended up bringing Outlands. While people may say that this is cheating, the rules don’t state anywhere that the cards may not be used, so it counts. The start was a bit rough, as the quest is quite fast-paced, but once the deck started rolling, there was no stopping it. We did end up winning with just one round to spare, but my questing for 70+ willpower was enough to clear the Harnen.

I then went to my room to unwind a bit since the day had been pretty long already. The showers are mostly free at this point in the evening, so I freshened up before going to bed. Tomorrow will be the one full day of convention, so going to bed early helps to prepare yourself for that day. I’m not super at staying up late and then having to get up for breakfast early in the morning. 23:30 was late enough for me.

Saturday 17th of February, Con day 2

While I didn’t have children playing video games in my room all night like last year, I did have a snoring neighbor, so sleep was interrupted somewhat. Yet the combo of early to bed and my regular sleep cycle did mean I had a good night’s rest and was well awake for breakfast. It’s honestly the best German meal of the day, just because I like the bread so much. It’s also a great time to meet more people that you didn’t see or had a chance to play with the previous day.

After most people finished breakfast, we had the morning announcements at 9:30. This included a rundown of people attending the convention for a given number of years, earning them some nice swag. For 5 years attending the LOTR LCG side of the convention, you earn a nice playmat with the same artwork as is used for the Lure of Middle Earth player card. There were even some MECCG players who had their 20th Lure convention this year there! This rewarded them with a different playmat with the convention’s logo on it. It’s cool to see such dedication being rewarded. Aside from the anniversary gifts, the announcements also included the schedule for the day. This was mostly a chance for people to experience fan-made scenarios from AleP and LoF in the tower room. The rest of the places were available for general play.

Take some time for yourself during conventions with hikes in the hills.

I skipped out on that for a while and instead took the chance to hike up the hill for an hour. It didn’t rain, and the temperature was quite nice for the time of year. I found a small footpath that I followed around the mountain. It’s good to get some exercise in on days when you otherwise remain seated behind your game all day. It was also very quiet, aside from birdsong in the valley. It gave me the chance to unwind a bit and refresh before going back to the castle for a day of gaming.

I walked around the castle a bit before finding Mormegil and Rouxxor, who were in the middle of drafting new decks. While I was too late to join them for the draft, I did join them for a few games. This included two attempts at NM Into the Pit, one of which was successful. I ran my Trap deck, in part out of frustration because my drafted deck failed to trap a ship yesterday. We also completed a challenge during that game to beat the quest without gaining resources from player card effects. We continued through NM Dwarrowdelf to NM Seventh Level, which has enemies obtain resources to boost their stats. That is, if they can stay alive for long enough. The combined assault of the two drafted decks and my Council of the Wise Isengard deck gave us the edge over the many enemies that spawned from this encounter deck.

Can’t remember the last time I even attempted to beat NM Escape from Dol Guldur!

Wanting to take a break from playing a game myself, I ended up hosting two games of my own custom encounter sets. I had two players go through both Moria decks, with me piloting the decks. The decks did fine, but when faced with an Outlands deck, I can understand why that trait hasn’t received more love lately. They won both games, but my Escape from Khazad-Dum deck did stall them nicely. Having found the urge to play again, I took my Hobbit deck, and we went for arguably the hardest quest of all: NM Escape from Dol Guldur. This version imprisons more heroes at the start of the game and can casually throw a +9 attack on a shadow effect. It took two attempts (and one quick restart) in order to beat the quest. It was not horrible, but we had a lot of luck with the starting encounter cards.

We finished just as dinner was starting. This was the same meal as last year, if I recall correctly. It was mashed potatoes, fleischkäse, and mixed vegetables. Remember that for each meal, there is also a full salad and cold cuts bar available, so if the served meal doesn’t appeal to you, there are other options. All are included in your ticket price for the convention, which also includes your overnight stay(s). So, while at the convention, you don’t need any spare cash, though it does allow you to buy sodas and other food aside from what is served. This includes pizzas and curry sausages, which is a German staple.

After dinner, I was pretty burned out by the commotion of the day. I took some time to talk to people I hadn’t had a chance to talk to all weekend. They either retired to their rooms or went to play some other games shortly after. It allowed me to walk around a little, capture some nice shots of the castle in the moonlight, and see what everyone was up to. Saturday evening is usually the time when the main games are set aside, and other, smaller, party games are brought out. This can range from Codenames to Dune Imperium and Root. For the diehard fans of the LCG, there was also an event held in the tower where players could attempt the Siege of Erebor quest. While this isn’t an epic multiplayer quest, it is one that’s better to play with more players, and events like this are perfect for it. Saturday evening is also known to be the time when more beer and liquor are consumed, leading to a cheerful mood around the castle.

I retired halfway through the evening, as I knew that I had a long drive ahead of me the next day. It’s nice to soak in the joyful atmosphere of the con from time to time, but I know my limits, and I’m not crossing them. I did end up taking an amazing photo of the tower under the moonlight, thanks to some good timing (and luck). It almost makes you want to play some more spooky games.

Sunday 18th of February, Con day 3

Waking up on Sunday should always be done early since you have to leave the room by 9.30 and hand in your key. That means you need to have an early breakfast or have breakfast after having brought all your stuff to the car. I did the latter, as you can then have breakfast in peace and don’t have to worry about being kicked out of the room. I also put all my cards in the car that morning since I didn’t think I would be able to get enough games in today to warrant hauling it around all day. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t stay the whole day and instead head home a bit earlier.

Not every day that you see a Gondor deck without Steward

At 9:30, we had the announcements again, which included an event in the Tower Room where players attempt to beat Shadow and Flame with their own prepared decks that only include a single trait on characters. I did not join in with this event, as I had no decks prepared for it. I should remember to look at the schedule ahead of time when I go to the next convention. Instead of attending the event, I went to the cafeteria for a final quick game against Massing at Osgiliath. It was just a two-player game, but I was able to borrow a Gondor deck with Erestor so that I didn’t have to get my cards from the car. We did pretty well, beating the quest in just 5-6 turns, and my deck was able to kill The Witch-King in one turn! It was a good point to end the convention at.

For those that stayed, the award ceremony took place at 14:15 and was mostly the organizers handing out stuff like alt arts and German APs. Since I had a total of 9 achievements obtained during the weekend, I received the standard alt arts that everyone got, as well as 3 copies of Galadriel’s Handmaiden with alternate art. Having passed the 5 achievements, I also won another copy of The Battle of Carn Dum AP in German. For those of you keeping track, that means that I now have TWO copies of this AP in German… If you know anyone who would like a copy of this quest in German, let me know. Since I wasn’t around for the award ceremony, I couldn’t receive the prizes myself, but some Dutch players took my prizes with me, and we will exchange them next time we meet in person.

Can’t go to Germany and miss out on this!

In the meantime, I was on the road again. I had no other stops planned between Bacherach and Boxtel, so I managed to climb out of the valley with my car and onto the highway. I stopped about a third of the way for lunch, as there was a good restaurant not far from the highway that had fantastic schnitzels. And if you’re ever in Germany, you can’t leave before you’ve some of those. With a full stomach, I got through the rainy roads back to my flat country, arriving home at about 14:45. There was not too much traffic on the road, and there were no trucks, so it was pretty smooth driving. Episode 224 of COTR was just long enough to last me until Eindhoven, which has me caught up with the podcast again. Once home, I unpacked, got into some more comfortable clothes, and wrote this article!

I hope everyone is as excited as I am for next year’s convention, and if you haven’t attended a Lure event yet, I hope that this tips you over that edge to sign up for their newsletter and be ready to book tickets for 2025. I’m always very thankful to the organizers for setting this up and to all the people attending to welcome me at their tables. I hope to be able to organize a digital convention again this summer, and I hope to see my North American friends again for Con of the Rings.