Note about 'Hero' and 'Minion': In Middle Earth: The Wizards, you are a Wizard battling Sauron. This was the only type of thing (avatar) you could be. When the 4th set, Middle Earth: The Lidless Eye, came out, it added another dimension to the game. You could now be a Ringwraith, rather than a Wizard. People began to use the terms Hero to refer to playing as a Wizard, and Minion to refer to playing as a Ringwraith. Actually, you need not reveal a Wizard or Ringwraith character card, and indeed as a Minion you can be Sauron with one of a couple special cards. So, the terms Hero and Minion are better terms to describe the type of deck you're using, rather than Wizard or Ringwraith.
(That's enough to get started with, but if you want the full picture: The 6th set added a new kind of thing that you can play as, the Fallen Wizard. In tournaments, this is a completely different kind of avatar, with some different rules just as playing hero or minion has slighty different rules. The 7th and last set, Middle Earth: The Balrog, add the Balrog as something you can be. However, this is considered a subset of the Minion alignment, inheriting the special Minion rules from The Lidless Eye. In tournaments, if you are the Balrog, you are considered Minion.)
I tend to consider the Hero alignment as the 'basic' alignment. It is the alignment new players usually want to and probably should start out with. The Fallen Wizard alignment assumes experience with both Hero and Minion alignment, and could reasonably be thought of as an 'advanced alignment'. Meaning, don't worry about it now; it will mess you up. The Minion alignment is really a parallel to the hero alignment in every respect, and you could start out playing that way. However, on this page (and in the rest of my site) I will assume that you're starting out playing hero. That is, you've got cards from Middle Earth: the Wizards, and maybe Dragons or Dark Minions, and you'll start playing with that.
Note about the coloring of the set titles: For the title of each set, I used the peach hero-resource color if it's a hero set, dark-purple if it's a minion set, green it it's a Fallen Wizard set. The title of set will be spread amongst these colors in proportion to how much that set is for each alignment. This is just to give you a visual cue as to how applicable the set is to you if, for example, you want to concentrate on playing hero at first. Now, the vast majority of hazards from any set can be used against anyone. So to a certain extent, every set is beneficial to you no matter what alignment you prefer. For example, I have the Wizards set colored completely has a Hero set, but this is in terms of resources, characters, and sites. Many of the hazards in the set would be helpful to a minion player, whether they're playing against a hero or another minion.
The Wizards
Main set
-This is where you'll start. Only this sets contains key cards that are hard to play without, cards which cards in
other sets depend upon. This set contains almost all the hero characters and sites, as well as the Wizard
character cards and most factions, allies and items.
-The first thing for you to do when getting into this game is to get one of each of the fixed portions. Each Starter deck contains, randomly, 3 rares, 9 uncommons, 40 commons, and one of five different fixed portions. Each fixed portion contains 2 wizard character, 5 other characters, 2 factions and sites that you can't get anywhere else. See this page to see the fixed contents listed out. Bottom line: you really want to get these 5 fixed packs. Problem is, it's a pain to get them. You don't know which you'll get until you open the little starter deck box. You might think a Starter box, which contains 10 starter decks, would have 2 of each fixed pack in it, and you'd be wrong. It'll probably have 3 of 2 of them, 2 of another, and 1 of the other two. Something like that, or worse. Pretty annoying.
-You can get started pretty well with just this set. If you have at least one of each fixed portion and a booster box's worth of cards, you're ready to go. The fixed portions give you a good core of characters (Aragorn, Glorfindel, Gimle, much more), sites, and factions. The booster box will give you allies and items, plenty of support cards, and more characters (Legolas and Sam for example are uncommons, not hard to get), factions and sites. And of course hazards with which to smite your opponent. You may want to consider getting a set though if you think you'll really like this game and want to get going quickly, and have the money. Make sure you get a set with plenty of extra non-rares. (Remember, you can have up to three of card in your deck if it is not unique.)
Alignments: Just hero. That's all there was when it came out.
Numbers: 484 cards. 121 each rares and uncommons, 182 commons, plus 57 fixed cards. Starters and boosters. Boosters: 1 rare, 3 uncomons, 11 commons. The only set reprinted in blue-bordered 'Unlimited Edition'.
Cost: Not bad. There was a lot printed. Boxes are almost as cheap as Dragons. But, it will take some money and effort to complete because it's a full set with 121 rares. A couple rares (The One Ring, Assassin) are expensive ($7-10 for UL), but the rest aren't bad at all. "UL" by the way means Unlimited edition. First they printed the Limited Edition with black borders, and when they were running out they printed the Unlimited Edition with blue borders. No other sets have any cards with blue borders (they printed enough of the black.
The Dragons
First expansion. Few new rules, just cool new cards
-This is a great expansion. It only added one little rule (hoards), and added a lot of great cards. Basically a site contains
a hoard if there is a dragon auto-attack. Some things (added in this set), including some items, can only be played at hoard sites.
This set added a new major class of creature hazards (drakes) and added some nice cards for other hazard themes. Drakes like deep wilderness (usually 3 wilderness in the site path) so you've got to find a way to maximize that. (Withered Lands!) As you might guess, Dragon
creatures benefited from this set, not to mention adding 5 new Dragon creatures. The hazard Foolish Words became a staple.
-On the resource side,
the card Marvels Told changed the game. You're no longer at the mercy of non-environment hazard permanent events. This card along
with some others made the sage skill helpful, whearas before it hadn't really been. Also doing this are cards that utilize
Information sites. This set added a few new factions, an ally, and plenty of items. It also added a few characters and a good
number of sites.
Alignments: Just hero. Other alignments were just an idea at this time.
Numbers: 180 cards. 70 commons, 60 uncommons, 50 rares. Boosters: 1 rare, 4 uncommon, 10 common. Some rares are 'R2' and some 'R3', appearing on the print sheet twice and 3 times, respectively. The better rares are usually R2's, with some not-so-great unique R3's. Moreso than other sets (except Against the Shadow), most packs are either winners or losers, with many rares worth $.25 and some worth $4.00
Cost: The cheapest boxes. You can get them in the U.S. for $20. There's no reason to not get all the Dragons cards you need, especially since many are great cards, from rares down to the commons.
Dark Minions
Second expansion. Some new rules and new kinds of cards.
-There were three big new (groups of) rules, as well as cards that took these rules into account:
-Under-deeps sites. You can now travel into the bowels of the earth! You can get to each under-deeps site by traveling down
to it from its surface site. It's not for the faint of hear. Hazards are often more playable and there are especially evil things
waiting for you, but the payoff can be great. You can play more items and do special things there. Most of the new sites in this
set are under-deep sites.
-Agents. You can now play evil agents of all races as hazards. They remain in the game from turn to turn and can move from
site to site, attacking your opponent, influencing away his factions, and messing with him in a variety of other ways. Agent cards
(a whole new template, with a purple background) are introduced, and other cards to take advantage of them, as well as combat them.
-Prisoners. Your characters can now be taken prisoner by the forces of evil. While prisoner, they still take up general
infuence but are useless to you, and their MP count as negative! You must get them back, but that might not be easy.
-Besides these new complications, there are plenty of other good cards. Undead (The Moon is Dead, Chill-douser, others) and Man
(Rank upon Rank) hazards are beefed up. Also added are hazards
to punish your opponent for daring to enter the under-deeps. You can do much more evil even if you don't get into using agents and
taking prisoners. You might want to take a look at the hazard Troll-purse though. It makes the prisoner rules worth learning!
-Many great resources added. Items and other cards to take advantage of the under-deeps of course. "Quest" type cards (permanent
events that give points for doing certain things) can make for some interesting adventures. The ally Noble Hound begins two interesting trends. First, it is a non-unique ally, so you can get more than one. (There will be more such allies in the future, and even non-unique
factions.) Second, it is the first Ally/Item/Faction playable at an already tapped site. There will be a few more cards like this for hero players, but this type of card will be key for Minions and Fallen-wizards.
-Two cards that greatly affected the game were the resource Smoke-rings and the hazard An Unexpected Outpost. Before this time, the Sideboard (I'll write an article on this this Spring) was only accessed via a couple hard to remember rules. These two cards
added easy accesss to the sideboard, as well as card recycling, which is bringing a card to your play-deck from your discard pile. Previously you had to do this with a few specialty cards like Vilya or Palantir of Orthanc.
-This is a very cool expansion, but it was a bit of a problem too. The game was already more complicated than most other CCG's, but with the added rules in this expansion, a large chunk of people came to see it as too complicated. This perception (rooted in reality) hurt the game. If you're new to the game, sure, get this set. You can do a lot of neat things with it even if you don't want to use under-deeps, agents, and prisoners. I'd put off learning those things until you have the basic rules down though. They add neat dimensions to the game, but you could win Worlds withough using any of that stuff.
Alignments: Just hero, but there a twist on this set though. They knew they were going to do the Minion alignment in the near future. This set introduces "agents". These are actually minion characters with the agent keyword. They can be used
by Minion players as characters! It's the agent keyword that means they can be used as agent hazards (by anyone). At the time people didn't know this, and just thought they'd only ever be used as agent hazards. When Lidless Eye came out, people said, "aha! ICE was
thinking ahead." So, if you're only going to play as a Minion, you'd of course want the hazards from this set as you would from any set, but you'd also want the agent cards from this set, that you could use as characters.
Numbers: 180 cards. 70 commons, 60 uncommons, 50 rares. Boosters: 1 rare, 4 uncommon, 10 common. Has R2's and R3's, but with a more even spread in value and utility because the R3's are all non-unique and the R2's mostly unique.
Cost: A little more expensive than Wizards UL, but that's still cheap. And it being a 180 card expansion, it's much cheaper than Wizards to complete (second only to Dragons). Many of the great cards are commons, so you could just get half a booster box and
it would greatly add to your abilities.
The Lidless Eye
Parellel to first set. Now you can be a bad guy instead of good guy.
-When playing as a Minion, instead of having 2 (or 3) Wizard character cards in your deck,
you can have up to 2 (or 3) Ringwraith character cards. When playing as a Minion, you can only use minion resources and minion characters.
Hero players cannot use the new Minion resources, characters, and sites introduced in this set. As I said before though, the new hazard
cards provided in this set can be used by hero players. Anybody can use any hazards. (Actually, there is a small list
of hazards that can't be used against Minions, but don't worry about that now.) Some hazards though are more effective against certain
types of opponents.
-This guide for beginners assumes you'll be starting off playing hero, so I won't get much into playing as a minion here. I'll just say
that it works basically the same, but there are some additional rules for Minion players. For this reason, it is slightly more complicated
than playing hero. It would be easier if you got into playing minion after getting some experience with playing hero. But, some
(usually experienced gamers who like being the bad guy) have started right off with this set playing as a bad guy, and had much fun doing it.
Alignments: Minion. The whole point of this set is to introduce playing the Minion alignment.
Numbers: 419 cards. 121 each rares, uncommons, commons, plus 54 fixed cards. Starters and boosters. Starters have one 'fixed portion' of about 20 cards, 1 rare, 12 uncommons, and I'm guessing about 40 starter-only commons. Boosters: 1 rare, 4 uncomons, 11 commons. Rares (and uc's and c's) all appear once on the rare sheet, though some are much better than others. This is the set where they really screwed up the rarities. Some cards were made rares that really shouldn't have been.
Cost: This is most expensive set to complete. Not only are boxes expensive, but it's a full-blown major set with 121 rares, with one rare per booster. This set has the most expensive rares, with The Lidless Eye and Elf-Lord Revealed in Wrath sometimes going for $20. For a couple years, 2000-2001, this set was even more expensive, but luckily some more stock was found to relieve the pressure.Be prepared to drop some money to complete a set. Some people though, like me, use hero for serious play but dabble in playing
minion for fun. If so, you could just get the fixed portions, commons and uncommons somehow, with maybe some of the cheaper (but still
very good rares). This would save you a lot of money, since the many very expensive rares make up the majority of the value of a full set.
And I'll take this opportunity to plug my LE Budget Starter box in my Cards for Sale section.
Against the Shadow
More cards for both hero and minion players
-This expansion is like Dragons in that it is very simple; no new rules, just cool new cards. New hazards to use against anyone, and cool resources for heros. For minions, there were some
holes left over from Lidless Eye that needed to be plugged; mainly sites. There were previously sites that heros had that minions didn't, so heros could go to these sites and the minions couldn't follow them there! After this set, minions have all the sites heros do, even the hero havens. Of course, minions tend to have a tough time when they go to, say Lorien. Also added were a lot of hazard creatures aimed at minions, dwarves, elves, and dunedain. It's hurts when your orcs run up against Arthedain Rangers.
-Nine hazard creature/PermEvents were added to parellel the Nazgul hazard cards. Minions now have to deal with hazards for the 5 Istari, Cirdan, Elrond, Galadriel, and Beorn. Very cool! The common hazard Alone and Unadvised gives those annoying one or two character companies something to worry about. Full of Froth and Rage beefed up Spider and Animal attacks. Power Built by Waiting addresses the problem of your opponent having low hazard limits, and adds a potential cost to him leaving characters squatting at havens. Some other nice hazards too.
The minion resource Dark Tryst was basically added to help minions, perceived as being at a disadvantage against heroes. It's considered required in minion (and Fallen Wizard) decks. There are a few non-unique allies for minions that are quite good.
Alignments: Resources for both Hero and Minion, 5 sites for heros and a bunch for minions, a few new minion characters.
Cost: This is an expensive set to complete, second only to The Lidless Eye. It's an expansion and smaller than the two main sets, but boxes are somewhat expensive and the R1's are tough to get. Completing this set is all about getting the R1's, which can cost $10 (or more) easy, while the R2's go for < $1.00 on average.
Numbers: 170 cards. 50 commons, 55 uncommons, 65 rares. Boosters: 2 rares, 4 uncommon, 6 commons. 9 rares are R1 and the rest R2. The R1's are thankfully not necessary to any good deck.
Cost: Boxes are about $60 per box, but that goes up and down. Even though there are 2 rares per pack, completing a set
is difficult/expensive because the 9 R1 rares are so hard to get. However, if you don't need to get every card, this set is not bad at
all. You could buy a box and sell/trade the R1's to get some of your investment back. Or, buy a set from someone without the R1's. Or ask
an older player for his extra AtS commons/uncommons and then (easily) trade for the R2 rares. And once again I'll
take this opportunity to plug my Budget AtS Set, which has everything you need from this set minus the 9 ultra-rares.
The White Hand
Adds the third type of thing you can be: Fallen Wizard.
-This set introduces a new alignment, the Fallen Wizard. Most of the cards in the set are special cards for Fallen Wizards, and not usable for anyone else. However, there are some cool hazard and resources for both heroes and minions also, and these are mostly common or uncommon.
Alignments: The whole point of this set is to introduce the Fallen Wizard
alignment. A Fallen Wizard is a wizard on his own, who has despaired to defeating Sauron. The minion alignment could be considered slightly advanced in that it added special minion
rules on top of the initial wizard rules. Well, this alignment is much more 'advanced'. There are quite a few new rules that can take a while to keep straight, and many of the new
Fallen Wizard resources (with a green template) are a handful. Add to this that you can use
both hero and minon resources. Definatley an alignment for advanced players.
Cost: Although the boxes are slightly more expensive than average, it's not that expensive to complete because one box should be all you need to make a set. There's 2 rares per booser, only 47 rares, and none of them are annoying R1's like in Against the Shadow.
Numbers: 122 cards. 35 commons, 40 uncommons, 47 rares. Boosters: 2 rares, 4 uncommon, 6 commons. R2's and R3's. Like Dark Minions, they arranged them reasonably well.
Unlike the Lidless Eye, which introduced the minion alignment, this set does not have starters. The Fallen Wizard character cards have to be pulled from boosters, which isn't a problem, because they're plentiful.
The Balrog
Now you can be the Balrog. Look Mom, I'm a Balrog!
-This set introduces being a Balrog. This is not technically a new alignment, like Fallen Wizard. Being the Balrog is considered being a special kind of Minion. So, you use Minion rules with a few special added rules of your own, if you're going to be the Balrog. For the rest of us, this sets adds some good hazards, some most useful against the Balrog, but others very good against anyone. There are also some resources for minons and, to a lesser extent, heroes. They're all very good though. YOu can certainly do without them in casual play, but if you're going to be a serious hero or (other kind of) minion player, consider getting a set of Balrog. Even just one of some of these cards adds some neat twists.
-Ever tried ring decks and they were just to darn unwieldy? Rumours of Rings (and its
minion counterpart Whispers of Rings) single-handedly makes ring decks better. Having a single Beorning Skin-changers in your deck or sideboard is nice in case your opponents uses nasty hobbitesss. Unabated in Malice is nasty, and Elven Rope is cool.
Alignments: This set doesn't actually create a new alignment, but creates a new type of Minion player you can be, the Balrog. The Balrog is much geared towards under-deeps sites.
Cost: Though boxes (3 of each deck-box) are expensive, you only need 1/3 of a box for a complete set! If you are a serious player though, you may want two sets or three (an entire box). These are getting hard to find and you might have to pay more than retail price, which is $114 a box. If you see a set of both boxes for < $40, grab it.
Numbers: All Fixed. It was released in two set decks. Buy both, you have the set. That's right, nothing randomized in this set.