Over the Christmas holiday I was fortunate to play a new-to-me deckbuilder, the Lord of the Rings Deck-Building Game (2013). It’s based on the Cerberus Deckbuilding system, which is the same game engine used by DC Comics Deck-Building Game (2012). In fact, it seems likely that the two games were developed in parallel, as DC Comics appeared in December 2012, and Lord of the Rings appeared just a few months later, in April 2013. As such, the games are pretty similar.

I already covered the core of the simple and light DC Comics game in a previous article, but Lord of the Rings still deserves a bit of discussion for how it updates and adjusts the Cerberus system.

Theming. Most obviously, the Lord of the Rings feels a lot more thematic. The DC Comics deckbuilder was always kind of weird because you could be playing Aquaman, but using Superman’s heat vision and Batman’s equipment. Lord of the Rings just makes more sense. The equipment is sometimes tied to characters, but still you can understand anyone using it. The hero-connected powers are also replaced by more general maneuvers.

In fact, all of the major types are cards are reimagined, which is another big plus. Some of DC’s cards like Vulnerability and Weakness (and even Punch and Kick) were a bit wonky, but now they’ve been transformed into something more meaningful:

The thing that really won me over in Lord of the Rings is the use of the Corruption cards. DC’s Weakness wasn’t evocative, but LotR’s Corruption sounds like something that you can choose to take on: a staining of your soul that you accept for taking a benefit — and that goes very nicely with the idea of corruption that’s rife in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Ambushes. DC Comics had “First Appearances”. When a Super-Villain appeared, he caused some problem for all the players. The Arch-Enemies in Lord of the Rings do the same thing with their “Group Ambush”.

However, there’s also an “Ambush” key word that’s activated when individual Enemies appear as cards in the purchase area (now “The Path” instead of “The Line-Up”). They cause a problem for the next player. This is another nice bit of theming, since it mimics the feeling of desperate defense in the Lord of the Rings.

Fortune. There’s a flip-side: Fortune. These are good cards that give the next player an immediate benefit. (I find the theming of these less important.)

The Ambushes and Fortune also (obviously) increase the randomness of Lord of the Rings over DC Comics. Personally, I think that might be the weakest element of the updated game system, but your mileage may vary.

(I wouldn’t be surprised if similar ideas to Ambushes and Fortune appeared in later DC Comics sets, but I only ever played the first one; it quickly left the table of our gaming groups.)

Other Updates. The consensus seems to be that the balance in Lord of the Rings may be slightly better than in DC Comics, which wouldn’t be a big surprise given the slightly longer development time.

Even More Theming. There’s one final benefit in the updated Cerberus system: there’s even more theming in some of the expansions.

The Two Towers (2013) has a wall deck related to the Battle of Helm’s Deep. It causes more problems, and it can make things really bad if the wall is breached. Meanwhile, The Return of the King (2014) has a board that lets you move the Ring toward Mount Doom … and eventually destroy it.

These supplements both are great for more theming (and I also love the even-greater feeling of desperation that comes about when the wall deck is in play).

But Mixing it Up?? My one real complaint about the Lord of the Rings design is that it doesn’t have a particularly good mechanic for mixing the sets together. Instead it runs into the same conundrum as Ascension (2010): because the later sets introduce new mechanics, you can’t fully mix sets together without diluting their effectiveness. The Lord of the Rings rules include a few ideas for intermingling the sets, but they seem half-baked to me, so I’ll probably be keeping mine separate.

I’m a fan of both the DC and Lord of the Rings IPs; in fact, I’m a bigger fan of DC than Lord of the Rings; however I wasn’t convinced to buy the DC Deck-builder because of the lukewarm theming. In contrast, Lord of the Rings won me over at once. 

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