[MECCG] Middle Earth: The Wizards, What is it?

this thread is only to explain with some more details what this game was.

It was the collecting card games released by ICE in addition to the MERP roleplaying games.

ICE ceased to produce it (and any further addons) in 1999 when they lost their Tolkien Licence with Tolkien Enterprise… too bad

The Original Game is the set called “Middle Earth: The Wizards” with more than 350play cards, among which one of the rarest was , indeed, “The One Ringe” card.
In this game you were to play one of the five Istari and gather fellowships (a big one or several smaller ones) and travel through Middle-Earth to gather points (earned with famous items retrieved from hoards, or by having factions join your cause) or to try to use a strategy to destry the One Ring (which was by far the hardest way to win the game because it supposed you had quite a bunch of the rarest cards of the game to play the good combination of cards.
It was turned based. Your opponent was another Istar trying to do exactly the same thing as you. But during your opponent’s turn you were playing “hazards” or bad events… on him to try to stop him, kill him or ruin his missions or attempts at gathering treasures/factions… in some way, during your opponent’s turn you were playing Sauron’s forces or simply the “Bad Fate” sometimes with Natural, unaligned evil forces…

There were two addons for this first set :
Middle-Earth: The Dragons (based mainly on many named dragons and drakes, mostly invented by ICE but there was also Scatha for example … You could find dragon hoards items or you could have access to “dragon” hazards…
Middle-Earth: Dark Minions (this set introduced a new notion : the one of having characters under cover for the bad side, minions, Sauron infiltrated agents… it was a first attempt at playing both Good… and Evil characters during your opponent’s turn to add some very tricky strategies inside the game

Then came the new stand-alone set: “Middle-Earth: The Lidless Eye” which did not necessarily had to use any of the first ME:TW, ME:TD or ME:DM cards (but you could use them if you wanted). In this set you did not play one of the istari and you did not play the good guys… you were playing one of the Nine Nazgul… and your goal was to serve the Dark lord… to gather enough points to rule supreme over your fellow Nazgul….
With those two sets in existence you could now have access to new game rules sets if you want : You could play a ME:TW deck against a ME:LE set…. playing an Istari againt a Nazgul! that was grand!

Another addon was released after ME:LE, it was Middle-Earth : Against the Shadow and it was , if I remember well, fit for both ME:TW or ME:LE sets with items, ressources or hazards for both types of decks.

One last addon “Middle-Earth : The White Hand” introduced a new type of cards (and thus, of rules) allowing you to play a FALLEN istar… so you were playing a corrupted Istari, like Saruman with special instances of those istari (even Gandalf) but evil… and you had access to special types of cards as ressources for them, along with the ability to use both good ressource cards or evil ressources cards… Quite Original

The Final One : Middle-Earth: The Balrog…. it consisted of Two fixed decks instead of blisters…. the content of each of the two sets (one green-blue, one red) did not change from one package to the others. It included a bunch of former released cards from former sets or addon, with gray borders… and a lot of cards specific to the Balrog release… Including the Balrog Character card (actually the rule of this set was that you neither played an Istar, or a Nazgul… you were playing “Durin’s Bane” Balrog and you were looking for power over Middle-Earth without serving the good cause or Sauron’s cause.
Those two sets are very rare and it was the last release of ICE… so they are well sought after…. mainly one of the cards of these set which, though fixed in the set is very rare and reaches sometime the price of 45€. the card “Sauron” which allows you to over-rule the other cards and let you play Sauron Himself…

After this release, ICE released one last thing : 10 challenge decks (5 for istari, 5 for Nazgul) these were competition decks with fixed contents. They were the winning sets of former competitors during worldwide tournament which were proven to be quite “winning” so they were released the way their original creator had arranged them…

Along the year, ICE released in several magazines, events, tournaments, promotional campaigns… several promotional cards unfindable anywhere else than in the given support… Most of these are English, but quite a bunch of them are also German ONLY… they do not exist in english and are very rare… Some have also been released in japanese, french, finnish, Italian or spannish but the differences mainly consisted on alternate image on the card, but the effects were the same…

Among those promotional Cards, you can find “The Black Arrow” (of Bard Bowman), the “Iron Crown” (of Melkor) and the “Fury of the Iron Crown”, “the Arkenstone (evil version for ME:LE”) , the “Neeker Breekers”, Fatty Bolger…
or in german you can also find one of my favorites : Ringil (the word of Fingolfin that hurt Melkor’s foot) , Horn der Herausforderung (horn of defiance), Schwertmeister (swordmaster) and…Taschendieb (Pick-Pockets, Promotional version german only which was ONLY given as the reward for the FIRST place in the worldwide tournament back in 2000 or so…) I am the lucky possessor of one of these “prize reward” card…

Among the artists who illustrated the cards you have the most famous Tolkien artists ever : John Howe, Ted Nasmith, Alan Lee, Angus McBride…. This is by far the most beautifully illustrated card game I have ever seen (Magic or other lesser games do not match this quality)