The Game is Dead, Long live the Game!

Well, it looks like I have my answer in the article I published earlier this year on what FFG would do after the Return of the King Saga expansion was repackaged. While I mentioned various scenarios that would see more products being released by the company, their most recent post announcing the repackaged Return of the King expansion confirmed my suspicions: The Game is Dead. No more products are in the pipeline after this expansion, and we will be relying on the community to keep things exciting for players new and old. In this article, I want to briefly reflect on the game’s life and on what this will mean for Vision of the Palantir. I will also be going into more detail on the new book project that I am starting and what you can do to get your hands on a copy!

RIP LOTR LCG (2011-2024)

While the game isn’t fully dead yet, not until the Return of the King box is released, we can finally put the rumors to rest and acknowledge that the game is sailing into the West. If you have been around for long enough, you know that this has been a pretty common meme in the old days of the FFG forums, where people would complain about the time between releases (how spoiled we were back then…) and claiming that “this set is the last we’ll get, the game is dead!”. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that the game had many years to go still and that various scenarios would reshape some of the game’s core mechanics.

This all came to a climax in 2019 when FFG announced that the game would be going on hiatus. While they did prepare a Fellowship 2020 kit and released the Hunt for the Dreadnaught in late 2020, they seized all production on the game for a while. This was a moment of panic for some community members, but others thrived in the knowledge that we would be relying on ourselves for more content for the game. Challenges, custom modes, and even entire cycles were now being thought up by the community in order to provide more ways to play the game we already owned. This was the birth of projects like A Long-extended Party and Legacy of Feanor.

The hiatus was not final, however. We got the announcement of repackaged content in 2021, with the Revised Core Set released in January 2022. With the release of Starter decks, the Dark of Mirkwood, and rumors of several cycles being reprinted, the game was back to its former glory! Analysis of the starter decks led us to believe that the LOTR sagas and three cycles would likely be reprinted, and this gave us 3 more years of content to enjoy! However, signs were starting to show that FFG wanted to get rid of the game. The game would no longer get stand-alone scenarios during GenCon, and a lot of the cards were simply reprints, with the exception of the campaign cards. And the lack of reprints of older packs hurt the secondary market. Because of this, I was not really surprised that the game would finally come to an end towards the end of 2024.

I think we should count ourselves lucky that the game even got revived past the hiatus. If not for the vocal community that stepped in during that time, I could have easily seen FFG never reprinting the game to begin with. The large influx of new players with the Revised Content proved that the reprints were selling pretty well and that LOTR LCG was an evergreen title. It is also rare for a game to last for over 10 years without needing a version 2.0 or a complete overhaul. If you have collected the game from start to finish, you have an amazing selection of scenarios and player cards that can all be mixed together. We all knew that the game had to stop eventually since the LCG format doesn’t allow for continuous waves of content like with many TCGs. So be glad that we had some more years with the game, and let’s hope that the community will carry on its legacy into the future!

Future of the Blog

Back when the hiatus was announced, and the community didn’t know if the game would ever return (nor how long that would take), I made an article like this on what the blog will do to continue operations into the future. Back then, the blog wasn’t even 2 years old, and I still had a ton of content left to make, so I wasn’t scared of continuing to do what I did. It was a good thing, too, as that year broke the view record, which would again be broken in 2020 and 2021. So, there certainly was still demand for a blog detailing all the scenarios and archetypes that the game has to offer. Looking back at that article, I did follow up on some of the phases I outlined with stuff for me to cover. While some of the timelines didn’t match up with reality, I did complete 3 cycles of content, have made great advancements with the Sagas and Nightmare quests, and even did a complete overview of every expansion released for the game!

With so much done in the past 5 years, it is now time to look at what lies ahead. If there is truly no new content being released by FFG anymore, then I can at least rest a little easy in the knowledge that my articles are complete. No new player cards means no more revisions that need to be made in order to keep up with the trends. I have not made a ton of revisions since the revised content was released, but it’s still nice to know that the articles are complete now.

There is still stuff to do though, and many years to do that stuff in. I still have not covered every scenario on the blog, even though we are a lot closer now than we were in 2019. The following still needs to be completed on the blog:

• LOTR Saga: 3 quests from the Mountain of Fire Saga box
• Hobbit Saga: 2 quests from the On the Doorstep Saga box
• Nightmare quests:
  • 6 quests from the Hobbit Saga
  • 12 quests from the LOTR Saga
  • 9 quests from the Ringmaker cycle
  • 4 quests from the Dreamchaser cycle

That’s 36 scenario analyses still to go. That’s at least 1-2 years of content if I had to do it all myself. Luckily, I am being supported by other writers to expedite this gap in knowledge on the blog. I will also be aided by these people to write additional articles on game aspects I cannot cover myself. These articles will hopefully fill some gaps between the Quest of the Week articles releasing every Saturday.

And then we have community content! We have barely scraped the surface of what projects like AleP have to offer. Perhaps with the death of the game, more people will start creating stuff to keep the community engaged, and I will be there to cover it on the blog. We have at least one more cycle from AleP to go, and Legacy of Feanor also needs to conclude its first cycle in the coming years as well. Add to that any articles on player cards or on custom modes for existing quests, like the Epic Multiplayer adaptations for various quests, and we can keep going for a while longer.

Once that has all died down, I don’t think the blog will be updated as frequently anymore. Perhaps a convention recap or a celebration post for reaching 10 years of VotP. The blog will still be around for a while, as I find it important that my work stays on the internet for as long as I can. I have poured years of hard work into writing and maintaining this site, and thousands still enjoy the content every week. So, no, the blog is not going anywhere, and we hope that you stick around as well!

New book project

To commemorate the death of the game this year, I have also decided to finally move ahead with my plans for a third book on the game. The first two books are a big hit with players and have been selling at a pretty consistent rate via my publisher. The Field Guide won’t need an update now that no more quests are being released, though I might do a Nightmare version plus a community-made quests update at some point.

However, for this book, I wanted to follow up on a promise I made in my Poll-antir 4 article earlier this year. There were a great many people interested in a book on deckbuilding and the several traits that the game has to offer. So, I have decided to start writing that book. It will be based on the various articles on the blog covering archetypes but with a bit more consistency and some updates on the traits. These articles were among the earliest I wrote on the blog, so bringing them up to date with 6 years of content released between then and now would be great! The book will also separately discuss the ways in which AleP has updated the traits that needed some love and what cool synergies there now exist if you count those cards with your collection. I did decide on doing the split with the official content since otherwise, people would get a bit confused.

The article will also have an introduction chapter on my thoughts and tips for deckbuilding. I might turn that into an article on the blog as well since I never really covered deckbuilding on VotP. I am not that impressed with my own deckbuilding skills, even though I have made some excellent decks over the years according to the community.

While the project is still in its early draft stage, I decided to involve the community in the process again to see what you would like to see featured in a book like this. I will be relying on communication via Reddit and Discord for this, as I have recently stepped down from my position in the Facebook groups. I expect the project to take at least half a year between writing, editing, layout work, and art commissions for the cover. I also intend to make the back of the book functional during your games as a place to keep your deck/discard pile/out-of-play area separate from your playmat.

Details on how to get the book will be shared closer to release, but Patreon supporters will be getting the PDF version of the book at least for free. I am unsure if I want to go through the hassle again of sending physical copies of the book myself, so I might just cover shipping costs for supporters who have been around for a while. As for people who aren’t supporters of the blog (first of all, why not?), you will be able to get a PDF version of the book for your own use in exchange for a donation to the blog. This stuff gets expensive and will require a lot of time and effort from several people to get right. Physical copies can later also be purchased via the same store as the Field Guide and Playthrough Logbook in either paperback (to cut on costs) or hardback (to make better use of the back of the book and to ensure it stays closed).

More details on the books and how to get them will come in a separate article since this will take additional time from my end. As such, I will be further cutting back on my time writing for the blog. The Nightmare articles aren’t that popular anyways, and I am dreading the NM Raid on the Grey Havens a lot. So, I will pour my energy into this project and hopefully have something to show for it in early 2025. I will still do the occasional article, of course, but I will be relying on my co-authors to do most of the writing for me. I hope you all understand and are as excited for the new book as I am!