Tournament Rulings

Tournament rulings are modifications and additions to the rules presented in the Unlimited Edition of the Rulebook that are required for sanctioned Council of Lórien tournament play.

Table of Contents

• General
• The Character Draft
• Deck Construction
• Freeze the Flesh
• Great Secrets Buried There
• Movement
• Sites
• Starting Companies
• Victory Conditions
• The Weakest Link Method

General

• Dice must be used to obtain random numbers.
• There is a required 30 card minimum for both resources and hazards for sanctioned tournament play.
• All Ringwraith/Sauron players always have +5 unused general influence at all times. This bonus general influence can never be used to control characters.
• You may not shuffle your discard pile unless a game effect requires it.
• To randomly access a card or cards from your discard pile, shuffle it and draw the required number of cards from the pile. The remaining cards become your new discard pile.

The Character Draft

• The starting character pool consists of 10 characters.
• Each player reveals one character at a time from their pool, simultaneously with their opponent. Non-duplicated characters go into the starting companies, duplicated characters are put aside and not allowed in either starting company. Each player continues until they want to stop, they have 20 points of mind in their starting company, or they have five characters in their starting company.
• Ringwraith players may start with 6 characters in the character draft
• If one player stops revealing characters, the other one may continue to reveal characters.
• No player may reveal a character that would bring his starting company's total mind over 20.
• When players are finished, each may put up to 10 characters into their deck, including characters from his starting pool that did not end up in the starting company.
• Characters left over from the character pool may be placed either in the play deck, or out of play, but may not be placed in the sideboard.

Deck Construction

• Cards that can be played as either hazards or resources may count as either for purposes of deck construction.
• Each deck must contain at least 12 creatures.
• The following count as 1/2 a creature for deck construction: hazards that can be played as creatures or events, At Home Dragon manifestations, Ahunt Dragon manifestations, and agents. Note that agents count as characters in Ringwraith decks, not as 1/2 creatures.
• Up to 3 copies of one Wizard or Ringwraith is allowed in a play deck, or up to 2 copies of one and 1 copy of another. One copy each of three different Wizards or Ringwraiths is not allowed.
• You may place Ringwraiths or Wizards in your sideboard, as long as only one of them is duplicated in the deck and sideboard combined, and you have only Ringwraiths or only Wizards in the deck and sideboard combined.
• You may include hero items in a Ringwraith deck even in a Ringwraith vs. Ringwraith game.
• A Fallen-wizard may only count two Twilights as resources, the third must be counted as a hazard. The same goes for other hazards that may be played as resources.
• The two starting minor items must be chosen before the character draft, and must be the same for every game in the tournament.

Freeze the Flesh

• If used on your Ringwraith or Fallen-wizard, it will remove the -5 MP penalty for having them eliminated.

Great Secrets Buried There

• If you play this card as a hazard on your opponent, you must be able to provide your opponent with a copy of any uncommon Under-deeps sites if he does not have a copy in his location deck.
• If you give an Under-deeps site to your opponent, it will return to your location deck when he is done with it, unless you have also used the site, in which case it returns to your discard pile.

Movement

• Maps of the regions of MECCG may be used in place of region cards in Council of Lórien tournaments. If two or more companies move on the same turn, then each company does not have to determine the site path to its new site until the beginning of it's movement/hazard phase.
• Wizard companies cannot use starter movement to or from sites in Gorgoroth. If using region movement to or from sites in Gorgoroth, they must move from a site in Imlad Morgul, through either Nurn or Udûn, or use a movement enhancer like Ash Mountains or Eagle-mounts. Such sites may be reached normally with Under-deeps movement.

Sites

• If you play a hazard forcing a Fallen-wizard to change site alignments, and he does not have the other version of the site he is moving to, you must provide it for him. After that it is his responsibility to provide sites.

Starting Companies

• Ringwraith/Sauron players may have starting companies at Dol Guldur and/or Minas Morgul. A Ringwraith may also be brought into play at Dol Guldur, Minas Morgul, or his home site.

Victory Conditions

• Eliminating a Wizard or Ringwraith does not end the game. An eliminated Wizard or Ringwraith is placed in the out-of-play pile, and gives -5 MP to the final total. That player may not reveal another Wizard or Ringwraith. This includes Wizards who fail corruption checks. [effective 1/1/98]
• The -5 MPs apply immediately, and affect your MPs for calling the end fo the game.
• If your Fallen-wizard dies, you may not play cards specific to that Fallen-wizard, and you do not count as that Fallen-wizard for card effects such as Gatherer of Loyalties.

The Weakest Link Method

• If there is a tie at the Free Council, add one corruption point to each non-Wizard character in play. All characters then make corruption checks. After all corruption checks, recount marshalling points.
• Continue this until there is no longer a tie or until all non-Wizard characters are corrupted away.

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