LOTR TCG Stories, History and Behind the Scenes with Jim Colson!

I finally managed to track Jim down again. Per usual, the discussion was a delight.

[@CMacUF]

such a legend. can't get enough of Jim! Thanks Jim!

[@Categoryonegames]

Love hearing Jim share stories and cool items he has. He talked about Shadows not losing players for LOTR but I think they were leaving at Mount Doom. Our store went from 10 people for weekly events with Realms of the Elf Lords and Return of the King to an 80-person Siege of Gondor release event to not even holding a Mount Doom event. The players at our store realized that Reflections meant Decipher was struggling, the store did really well with Reflections, I personally sold through so many sets of Reflections and then Mount Doom hit like a thud. By the time Shadows even came out, our store saw the dwindling player base and didn't even carry it. I stopped carrying the newer and moved onto VS, WWE Raw Deal, Star Wars Minis and Heroclix at the time and stopped selling LOTR newer sets until a few years later when I started carrying the rest of the game. Decipher might have sold just as much Shadows to distributors as previous sets but players were definitely not picking it up.....especially seeing as how Shadows was around 10-20 a box for years, tells me distributors and stores were stuck with that set.

[@boardmatt]

Its amazing to me how many times decipher tried running with "reflections" as a concept. There's truly like 5 different times that I can count where they're like "this pack will have a shiny card...buy"

[@kickedoffthetour]

Absolutely love your LOTR TCG content!!!

[@boardmatt]

Thanks man! Lots of content on it. Feel free to check out the other videos as well.

[@joncirone]

....More of this....PLEASE!! This man is a living legend! Great interview matt!!

[@stropes.]

Thanks for this Matt! I mostly agree with you about the Shadows block sites and how it feels unthematic to teleport around Middle-Earth (ie. how you could start the game on Mount Doom eventually) even though I see where Jim is coming from also. I definitely fell into the camp of just dropping the game after Shadows because I didn't want to repurchase most of my cards. I had been collecting them throughout high school and buying them as I could, using a lot of what I could get from boosters here and there, and I just couldn't justify buying into what felt like a whole new game. Plus, it felt like a money grab from a failing studio to try and squeeze every last bit of profit out of the playerbase who had loyally supported the game. I didn't buy any post-Shadows cards until after I had graduated college and decided that I wanted to collect complete sets of the later expansions (luckily they were selling for about $20 a box, long before COVID hit and the prices shot up). I do think that some of the rules introduced after RotK block like Resistance, Lurker, Muster, etc were really great mechanical additions to the game and I would have loved for them to have been introduced sooner. Things like "Hunter"? Not so much. So many of the later cards (even some in RotK block) were just powercrept to oblivion...

[@boardmatt]

I think that from a gameplay perspective, things were heading in an interesting direction post shadows/ROTK. I also think this is true from a collecting standpoint. I think one of the major things decipher didn’t predict is how quickly lotr would face from the pop culture mind after the films were all out. It wasn’t like Star Wars where people still flocked to it for years afterwards. Lotr became the movies you watch around Christmas but not something you think about and actively collect year round.

[@kmc2090]

Thanks Mat for this fascinating interview with Jim. It’s been a great watch. So, I’ve recently rediscovered this great game, through a happy series of events. Back in March ‘22 I was looking for a games mat, for LOTR LCG at a AireCon here in the UK and stumbled across one for the TCG. I knew I had some decks for the game but I’d never played it and they had been in my loft for nearly 20 years. Anyway I dug them out and had a look for a rules video. I found Team Covenant had done some recent videos for the game. They did some unboxings and then deckbuilding and finally they played some games with their decks. I quickly became obsessed with them. I then found The Players Council, GEMP, the Facebook page etc. At the same time a few guys in my usual board game group, had co-incidentally rediscovered some other dead LCG/CCG’s they’d bought in Aeons past, like X-Files, Game of Thrones and Netrunner. So we have decided to add in an extra night just to play these games. Jim, I would agree with Mat that the word insane does indeed come to mind, when I heard you say, you were collecting all copies of LOTR TCG in not just the regular cards but foils as well and in all languages. The thought of that just makes my head spin. I struggle just collecting and organising regular cards. Also Matt, what a great idea about changing the scenario of just destroying the ring and having alternative end goals, like making Aragorn king or Conquering Gondor etc. I love that idea, that would have been an awesome variant had decipher thought of that at the time. Maybe some fans of the game could design something along that line in the future. Maybe I will, once I get to know the game better. I'm just in the early stages of acquiring the game at the moment and getting my fellow gamers to play it, so I'll put a pin in that though for now. Once again thanks for a great video Matt and thanks Jim for sharing your memories of it.

[@boardmatt]

I love hearing stories like this. I'd say to stay a while because this is a great and thematic game. I've been really impressed with the work the PC is putting in. I truly believe good things are to come with this game.

[@KrisMTL]

Fantastic video! Always love hearing from Jim!

[@Big_Dai]

Jim is great! The owner of this channel needs to learn how to make a question and let the invited person talk.. he asks and keeps going (redundantly) while it is obvious Jim is ready to talk, specially when he is the one with the information worth hearing.

[@VolitantBucky]

Great discussion and glad to see Jim on. Loved listening to him discuss the game and all the parts involved.

[@marekmorawiec9683]

i will be happy to see what are those cards Jim missing , wander if i can trade something with him .

[@boardmatt]

He’s on Facebook! That’s how most folks reach out to him. I’d suggest that route. There’s a pretty large Facebook group as well.

[@williamdegrey]

Loved Mega Man!

[@Clappincardboard]

Very cool interview. I wonder if they ever thought of doing a hobbit block? That prob would have been better than going into the shadows revamp.

[@williamdegrey]

Agreed. I really hated the Shadows revamp.

[@boardmatt]

I think by the time the hobbit was coming out Decipher as a company as facing some real problems. But that’s a story for another day! Also, I think the hobbit was somewhat polarizing among fans vs universally beloved like the films.

[@imperialbuckethead6303]

This was great Matt!

[@Theu131]

What was the print run on lotr booster boxes ? Anyone know ?

[@boardmatt]

I think the PC council has some ideas on this. Ask Ketura on discord.

[@deceivist]

Please tell me there's a part one interview that's going to be released where you two did a deep dive into Jim's time during the Star Wars CCG years?

[@boardmatt]

Of course there is :). kzbin.info/www/bejne/hoO1nIV4fdGiY9E

[@williamdegrey]

Does that include the Swedish cards? I still have some 😉

[@boardmatt]

I think it does! Swedish was… only set one, maybe?

[@fleshgordon96]

I never liked the design of lotr tcg. I loved the middle earth ccg.

[@milesgreb3537]

Man calling lotr just an ip is kinda messed up. It's Tolkeins art. Amazon can't and dosnt own that. I don't see how someone can love Tolkein and betray him by supporting jeff bezos