Cardboard of the Rings and the White Book podcast are proud to present our latest project that we debuted at GenCon 2015

Introducing

Download Keeping Count!
A Semi-Competitive Variant

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game was designed as a cooperative game. However, the iconic competition between Legolas and Gimli at Helm’s Deep inspired a variant that encourages players to maximize their own performance, while still working to achieve the overall goal.

Objective
Keeping Count is designed to be played with 2 or more players, with any available quest, in both organized and casual play. By completing normal in-game tasks, players will gain prowess; points which marks a player’s accomplishments within the game. At the end of the game (whether or not the players complete the quest) players will be scored based on their individual prowess totals.

How to Play
To start out, select any quest that you and your group wishes to play. This variant does not change any rules of the normal game. You are still working together to complete the quest. However, you will now also be competing to earn the most prowess. Give each player an “Adventure” card, which is the blank card that will be used to keep track of your current prowess total. Anytime you gain prowess, put resource tokens (or whatever tokens you prefer) on your Adventure card.

Drawing inspiration from the Game of Thrones card game, players will be drafting Role cards at the beginning of each round. The First Player will gather up all 6 Role cards, randomly discard one from play, then choose one to keep. Then pass the remaining 4 cards to the next player, who will then choose one to keep and pass the rest. This continues until all players have 1 Role card, and the rest are discarded from play. The Role card you’ve selected gives you a condition in which to earn prowess, and an Action ability that you can trigger during the round.

At the end of the round, discard all Role cards in play, then the new First Player will gather up all 6 Role cards for the next round. This continues until either your group completes or fails the quest. The player who has accumulated the most prowess is declared the MVP and the winner of Keeping Count!