Before the game begins, you choose which side you’re representing in the War of the Ring as you and your opponent race to accumulate 25 “marshalling points” from across Middle-earth. We strongly recommend that new players start as a Wizard player.During the Third Age, the Valar sent five Maiar to Middle-earth to unite and counsel the Free Peoples in their struggles against Sauron, the Dark Lord. ... Your goal is to marshal the forces of the Free Peoples so that Sauron can be resisted until the One Ring is destroyed.Here are the types of cards that you will use as a Wizard player, with the various attributes of each card labeled:

	SITE CARD		CHARACTER CARD
	RESOURCE CARD		HAZARD CARD

To mitigate the complexities of deck-building, we recommend that new players start with a preconstructed Challenge Deck. To summarize, your deck is split between four sets of cards: • Your location deck consists of your site cards. You may examine and select cards from your location deck as required by play (i.e., do not randomly draw them).

• Your play deck consists of your resource cards, hazards cards, and character cards. You randomly draw cards from this deck during play.

• Your sideboard can contain resource, hazard, and character cards... [At certain times during play,] you may exchange cards between your sideboard and discard pile and/or your play deck.

• Your pool contains up to 10 potential starting characters [and up to two minor items].

After declaring alignments, you and your opponent draft characters to determine starting companies. For each round of the draft, both players put a character from their own pool face-down and then reveal the choices simultaneously. If you both reveal the same character, it’s set aside; if the characters are different, you add your drafted character to your starting company.You may draft up to five characters from your pool whose mind values (the symbol on the left side of a character card) must be no more than 20 mind total. Then you can place up to two minor items from your pool with the characters that you drafted, and you can choose to shuffle any duplicated or leftover characters from your pool into your play deck.

Whenever you’re told to “make a roll,” you roll two six-sided dice (2D6) and add the results. Once a roll is made, the result is final, so any effects that would modify the roll need to be played prior to the dice actually being rolled.

For visual reference, here is an example of what your board state might look like during a game:During your turn, you are the resource player, meaning you can play and use resource cards (with a copper frame) and character cards (with a blue frame). During your opponent’s turn, you are the hazard player, meaning you can play and use hazard cards (with a black frame) during your opponent’s movement/hazard phase.

If a card is “unique” or “cannot be duplicated,” only one such card can be in play or otherwise in effect at a time, across both your cards and your opponent’s cards.

On a typical turn, you will organize your characters into companies and then move those companies to new sites, where you can attempt to obtain powerful objects or recruit allies or armies to your cause.A player should examine the resources in his hand and then select a nearby site to travel to. Initially, do not worry too much about which site to use, just pick one that has the resource type you want to play. ... You will draw multiple cards each turn, and in some cases you will have to discard a number of cards each turn. ... Just keep cards that are immediately useful during the next turn or that are crucial to your overall strategy.Here’s a brief summary of the phases of a turn:• Untap Phase — Heal (if at a Haven site) or untap your characters and other tapped non-site cards.

• Organization Phase — You may play a character, reorganize your companies, transfer/store items, and decide where each of your companies is going to move.

• Long-event Phase — Remove and play certain “long-event” cards.

• Movement/Hazard Phase — You may move each of your companies to its new site, while your opponent plays hazards on each of your companies.

• Site Phase — You may have each of your companies enter its current site to attempt to play an item, ally, faction, etc.

• End-of-Turn Phase — Your turn ends.

During play, certain cards must be “tapped” when they are used—this is a record keeping mechanism to keep track of card usage. To tap a card, rotate it 90° so that it is turned sideways—to untap a card, rotate it back 90° to its normal position.To start each turn, untap all of your tapped non-site cards. Site cards don’t untap; once you’ve tapped a site, you can’t use it again until it returns to your location deck (normally when you exhaust your play deck).If a character becomes wounded, it is rotated 180° (upside-down), and doesn’t untap during your untap phase. Instead, “heal” any of your wounded characters if they are at a Haven by rotating those wounded characters back to the “tapped” position (so they can then untap during your next turn). A Haven is a hero site like Rivendell with a symbol in the upper-left corner.

If your avatar is in play, your opponent can access the hazard cards in their sideboard, but doing so reduces the number of hazards that they can play on your companies for that turn by half.

Your organization phase is when you assign your characters into companies, and plan your movement for the next turn.During your organization phase, you can play one character per turn, either a hero character with a blue frame or your avatar character with its own unique frame (unless you’ve already played an avatar). Alternatively, you can discard a non-avatar character, which normally means to ”discard” from play and not from your hand.

You begin the game with 20 points of general influence that you use to control your characters. Most characters also have their own direct influence (the symbol on the left side of a character card) that can be used to control other characters as “followers.” Characters can be moved between general influence and direct influence within the same company.

Beyond organizing your characters, you can store items at a Haven and/or transfer items between characters at the same site. Doing either requires the character bearing the item to pass a “corruption check,” which is covered in a later section.

During your organization phase, you can tap your avatar to access your sideboard, allowing you to craft your play deck in response to your opponent’s strategy over the course of the game.

If you don’t have enough influence to control your characters at the end of your organization phase, you must return characters to your hand until you do (including those played this turn).

Long-event cards stay in play for a single turn cycle, meaning one of your turns and one of your opponent’s turns. The long-event phase is when you discard your resource long-events from play, play new resource long-events, and discard your opponent’s hazard long-events.

In whatever order you choose, each of your companies must take its own movement/hazard phase, even if the company isn’t moving. During this phase, your opponent is able to interact with your company directly by playing hazard cards.

Next, you must declare the company’s site path if the company is moving, which is the series of regions through which the company is moving to get from its site of origin to its new site.

Example: The site path from Rivendell to Bag End is Wilderness → Wilderness → Free-domain. If using Starter Movement, this site path includes Rivendell’s region name (Rhudaur) and Bag End’s region name (The Shire); if using Region Movement, it would also include the name of any intervening regions (in this case, Arthedain).

Site paths do not direct the movement process. The site path is used to determine which hazard creatures your opponent may play against your moving company.When using Starter Movement, travel is typically safer because only the first and last regions will be identified by name; when using Region Movement, all of the regions must be named, making travel slightly more dangerous. A good strategy for beginners is to use Starter Movement when moving to/from Havens, and otherwise to use Region Movement.

Each of your companies has a base hazard limit, which stays “fixed” during that company’s movement/hazard phase (even if a character is eliminated from the company). Each hazard that your opponent plays counts as 1 against the current company’s hazard limit, and no more hazards can be played on a company once its hazard limit is reached.

Occasionally there are multiple ongoing effects such that it matters what order they’re implemented at the start of each movement/hazard phase, but this doesn’t come up much.

After setting the site path, hazard limit, and order of ongoing effects, you and your opponent get to draw cards if the company is moving.

Finally, any passive conditions are triggered based on the company moving and/or at the “beginning” of the movement/hazard phase. We’ll explain active conditions and passive conditions later; basically, active conditions are requirements to take an action, while passive conditions are effects on cards already in play that say, “when X happens, do Y.”And now the hazard player can start using that hazard limit to play some hazard cards!

Creatures represent the malevolent forces attacking your opponent’s characters as they venture across Middle-earth. We’ll cover how combat works after we get through the phases of the turn.

Example: A Cave-drake can be keyed to double Wilderness (meaning it would require two Wilderness regions in the company’s site path, since it has two Wilderness symbols), OR it can be keyed to a Ruins & Lairs site. You announce which region or site type you’re keying to when you play the creature.

To play a creature, it must be “keyed” by matching one of the symbols on the left side of the creature card to a region in the company’s site path OR to its new site. The symbols in circles represent region types, whereas the symbols without circles represent site types. Here are the symbols for regions and sites, from generally least dangerous to most dangerous:

	REGION TYPES			SITE TYPES
			Free-domains		Haven
			Border-lands		Free-hold
			Coastal Seas		Border-hold
			Wilderness		Ruins & Lairs
			Shadow-lands		Shadow-hold
			Dark-domains		Dark-hold

In addition to creatures, your opponent can play hazard events during your company’s movement/hazard phase. We’ll explain the differences between the various types of events (short-event, long-event, and permanent-event) after we get through combat.

MeCCG also provides a fun bluffing mechanic for hazard players called an “on-guard” card. Your opponent can place one card in their hand face-down on your company’s new site (no matter what the card is, even a character or resource!), and then this on-guard card can potentially be revealed during the company’s site phase when hazards can’t normally be played.

There are a few other advanced actions that the hazard player can take, but playing creatures, events, and on-guard cards are the most important for beginners!Once you and your opponent have finished taking actions, if the company moved, you discard the company’s site of origin if the site is tapped OR return the site of origin to your location deck if the site card is untapped or a Haven. Then both players reset their hands by either drawing up to 8 cards or discarding down to 8 cards.After that, it’s your next company’s turn. Once all of your companies have finished taking their separate movement/hazard phases, you must join any of your companies at the same non-Haven site and you can choose whether to join companies at the same Haven site.

Just like how each of your companies took its own movement/hazard phase, now each of your companies must take its own site phase in whatever order you choose. First and foremost, you must declare whether your company will “enter” its site; if the company doesn’t enter, its site phase immediately ends and the company can’t do anything else.In the order you decide (i.e., you decide which goes first, second, etc.), each of your companies at a ... site may: do nothing or ... decide to enter and explore the site.Many of the sites in Middle-earth have an automatic-attack, which must be faced each turn that a company decides to enter its site (even if the automatic-attack was previously defeated). If a company’s site does have an automatic-attack when the company enters, your opponent can reveal certain hazards that were placed on-guard that turn.

Your company must face any automatic-attacks and/or other attacks that were revealed by the hazard player when it enters. Again, we’ll cover combat in the next section!

After your company has faced any attacks due to entering its site, you can now play a resource to try to get some of those marshalling points that you need to win! The primary types of resources are ally cards, faction cards, and item cards, but you might also find “information” or miscellaneous resources at certain sites. Playing one of these resources normally taps the site.Allies represent personalities that can be recruited to help the Free Peoples (e.g., Tom Bombadil, Treebeard, etc.). Each ally has a mind value but doesn’t require any direct influence to control; a character just taps to play it and then the ally stays with that character until the character leaves play. Note that allies themselves aren’t characters, meaning that they don’t affect company size, can’t bear items, aren’t affected by corruption, and can’t take most other character actions except for a few exceptions listed below.Factions represent a larger group of people (e.g., Riders of Rohan, Elves of Lindon, etc.). A character that taps to play a faction must make an “influence check” by rolling 2D6 and adding the character’s available direct influence, plus any bonuses that the character may have for that particular faction. If the result is higher than the number listed on the faction, the faction is successfully played and you get its marshalling points; otherwise, the faction is discarded but the site doesn’t tap.Items represent objects that can be acquired and borne by your characters (e.g. weapons, the Palantíri, The One Ring, etc.). The company’s site needs to list the appropriate type of item that your character is tapping to play, whether minor, major, greater, or gold ring (or the item must be a special item that can specifically be played at the site).

When you attempt to play a resource that will tap a site, the hazard player can reveal an on-guard card on the site if the on-guard card is a hazard that will directly affect the company (or a card within the company). The on-guard hazard then resolves before the resource.

Once you finish all of your companies’ site phases, any on-guard cards still in play are returned to the hazard player’s hand.

During your end-of-turn phase, either player can discard a card from their hand (e.g. discarding from 9 cards to 8, or 7 cards to 6, etc.), then both players reset their hands (either drawing up to 8 or discarding down to 8).And that’s it for the turn sequence! Now the resource player becomes the hazard player, and the hazard player becomes the resource player for the next turn.

Combat is initiated by creatures, automatic-attacks, and some other hazards. Creatures and characters (and allies, since they count as characters during combat) have values in the card’s bottom-left shield icon for “prowess” (the number on the left of the “/”) and “body” (the number on the right of the “/”, although most creatures don’t have a body value). Automatic-attacks list the attack’s prowess in the card’s text.

Example: A character with the above attributes has a prowess value of 6 and a body value of 9.

An attack consists of one or more strikes:• Each strike can target one and only one character in the attacked company.
• Each character can be the target of only one strike from a given attack.When an attack is initiated, you and your opponent can take actions that would either cancel the attack or modify the attack as a whole before strikes are assigned.

Once both players finish affecting the attack as a whole, strikes are assigned. First the defending player can assign strikes to their untapped characters, and then the non-defending player assigns any remaining strikes to tapped/wounded characters. If there are more strikes than characters in the company, the non-defending player gets to apply excess strikes as -1 modifiers to a character’s prowess when that character faces its assigned strike.

In an order chosen by the defending player, each assigned strike is then resolved by proceeding through an individual “strike sequence.”The “strike sequence” is the time from when a player declares that one of his characters will resolve a strike until the strike die roll is made and any associated body checks are made.Each of the following steps happens in immediate order (i.e. you can’t take actions in between).

Once the above factors have been addressed, the character’s prowess is further modified by -1 if the character is already tapped, or -2 if the character is already wounded. Then you resolve the strike by rolling 2D6 and adding the character’s final prowess (and tapping the character).To defeat the strike, your character’s roll + prowess needs to be higher than the strike’s prowess. If you defeat all of the strikes from an attack (without any ties), the attack is defeated! A defeated creature card goes to your marshalling point pile and you get its marshalling points.If your character’s result ties the strike's prowess, neither side defeats the other. But if your character’s result is lower, the character becomes wounded (rotating 180°) and must risk elimination with a body check.

If your character must make a body check for any reason, your opponent rolls 2D6 and adds +1 if the character was already wounded (prior to whatever caused the body check). If the roll is higher than the character’s body value, the character is eliminated, meaning that it’s moved to your removed-from-play pile.

Occasionally you’ll face a detainment attack, meaning an attack with the “detainment” keyword.When a strike from a detainment attack is successful, an untapped target is tapped instead of being wounded. This represents the target being stopped and questioned.

These final three sections under “Combat” involve more complex rules that rarely come up for beginning Wizard players: some attacks can take a wounded character prisoner; Orc and Troll characters can carry trophies from the creatures that they defeat; and there are special rules for companies directly attacking other alignments at the same site (e.g. Wizard player vs. Ringwraith player). But you don’t have to worry about any of these when you’re first starting out!

An agent is a special type of hazard that acts like its own company, moving around the map and interfering with your opponent’s plans. But again, this gets into more advanced rules like the previous three sections, so we’re skipping agents for beginners.

But you definitely need to know about events! There are three types, whether resource or hazard:Short-event — A short-event’s effects are immediately implemented. Then the event card is discarded. ...

Permanent-event — The effects of a permanent-event are immediately implemented. Its effects last until the card is discarded. ...

Long-event — The effects of a long-event are immediately implemented when it is played. Long-events last approximately two turns, one of yours and one of your opponent’s.

Characters can bear any number of items, but each character can only use one weapon, armor, shield, and helmet at a time. Items that aren’t in use don’t have any effect on their bearer.

During your companies’ travels, they may be lucky enough to find a gold ring item—but they’ll need even more luck to find something truly special.A gold ring is a ring with unknown properties—it might be a lesser ring, a magic ring, a Dwarven Ring, or even The One Ring. You will not know until you “test” it. ... Each has a different probability of being a specific type of special ring.Certain card effects allow a gold ring to be tested so that it can potentially be replaced by a special ring card from your hand.

As characters adventure in Middle-earth, they are subject to temptations. They run the risk of becoming corrupted and leaving the cause of the Free Peoples.Most items (and some other cards) have a number in the lower-right corner that denotes how many corruption points the card gives its controller. If an effect causes your character to make a corruption check, roll 2D6 and compare the result to the corruption point total of the cards that the character is bearing. The character abandons you if the roll is equal to or lower than its corruption point total. A Wizard player’s characters are “hero” characters when determining this result, and can be tapped in the same company for support.

Some hazards have the “corruption” keyword and bestow corruption points directly onto characters. Normally these hazards can be removed by tapping the character and making a roll, but you can avoid tapping the character by opting to apply -3 to that roll.

If your company is at the same site as an opponent’s character or resource, you can tap one of your characters to make an influence attempt and try to convince the opposing card to leave your opponent’s side. This tends to be a more advanced strategy, so we recommend focusing on collecting your own resources when you’re first starting out.

This section gets into the underlying mechanics of the game.The golden rule of MeCCG is that if an effect conflicts with a game rule or other effect, the more recent effect wins. In other words, if a rule says you can’t do something but a card says you can, the card takes precedence.Next, anything you do that affects the board state (e.g. playing a card, tapping a card for an effect, rolling dice, etc.) is an “action,” and initiating an allowance that would affect the board state (e.g. “You may tap this card for an effect...”) is referred to as “taking an action.”

The “active conditions” of an action are the prerequisites for that action to be taken. Active conditions to play a card are typically templated with italicized bold text, but also include e.g. choosing valid targets upon which the actions are to be implemented. If an action is canceled before it resolves, its active conditions stay completed.

A card might require that a specified action must be performed any time certain “passive conditions” are met after the card itself has fully resolved. Actions from passive conditions are declared in a new chain of effects and can be responded to just like normal actions.

A play deck is “exhausted” when the last card is drawn from it. When you exhaust your play deck, you can exchange up to five cards of any type between your discard pile and your sideboard, return your discarded site cards to your location deck, and then shuffle your discard pile which becomes your new play deck.At the Free Council, the leaders of the Free Peoples decide which Wizard’s advice is best to follow. This is based upon a comparison of the resources each of the Wizards has marshalled.In the normal Short Game, you can call the Free Council if you’ve exhausted your play deck once AND have at least 25 marshalling points (in the upper-left corner of your characters, resources, and defeated creatures; your opponent then gets one more turn). Otherwise the Free Council is called automatically once both players have exhausted their play deck twice.