Decipher's Tutorial program

[Tobold]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here. I am a programmer by trade who used to love this game, but could never find other players. I played on-line for a while, but purchasing virtual cards began to annoy me, especially as I knew it was all going to end and leave me with nothing. So, I carried on collecting the cards and filing them away at home, dreaming about eventually playing the game with someone who enjoyed it as much as I did.

When it was clear this was not happening, I got involved in other games, became a bit of a board game collector (my current collection is around 250 games), and spent all my time on boardgamegeek.com, foregetting all about this incredible game.

For some reason, I rediscovered this game recently, and have decided that I simply must play it. To that end, I intend to create a computer version, with A.I., so that I will have my dedicated opponent to play against.

Yes, I know how arrogant this sounds. I realize what a mammoth task it is, the complexity involved, but I reckon I can do it. It will take me a while, especially as I not a youngster any more, and now need a bit of sleep, and time with my family (although my son might approve of my efforts), but I will get there, or thereabouts (I only have card images up to set 13 - Bloodlines). I grabbed all the card images I could get from Decipher's website years ago, as I always had the idea in the back of my mind that I might take up the challenge at some point.

The thing is, I am rusty on the game, and have lost my resources. I had the tutorial program, which I would love to have again (a nice starting place for ideas for the layout and flow), but cannot find it anywhere. I am also not sure where the rules ended up. I think the last version I used was when they changed the way sites are played (the same rules that are in the Shadows starter sets, if that helps).

I am not sure which ruleset I should adopt. Is there a newer set? There must be, but whether or not I should implement it, not intending to include cards past Bloodlines (for now, at any rate), I'm not sure.

Edit: I found the Comprehensive Rules 4.0 on boardgamegeek and have downloaded them, so no worries there.

If anyone knows where I could download the tutorial program, I would appreciate it.

Thank you for your time,

Mark

[hrcho]

If you are thinking on LOTRO application through which you connected to the LOTR Online and played the game against other members or guests, collected cards and built decks, I could upload it for you, but I don't think you can get to the tutorial part because it requires a log in and since the server went down, you can't log in.

However, there is a free online program called GCCG through which you can play LotR TCG, Magic and some other card games against other people. It's quite popular actually and you can almost always find someone to play with. There is more about the program in The Green Dragon section of the forum.

[MR. Lurtzy]

No, I think he's talking about the towers standard tutorial. I have the disc of it so I know it's real... but the download I had problems with (it would glitch up a lot, and such). I'll see if I can find a working link, though.

[jdizzy001]

I still think you should look into the gccg Tobold. there are a lot of players on the gccg, and it's free

[Tobold]

Thank you for the suggestion, guys.

Mr. Lurtzy, you have it right. I purchased that set, with two starter decks, the CD and a playmat, which I managed to dig up last night and had laminated this morning.

I must have the CD somewhere, I think, I just need to find it. I noticed that I already pulled the background image (the map) out though, so it's not all lost. I just want to run through it again so that I can get a feel for how they handled it. It's nice to have a starting idea.

[Beyo]

We had in Poland a free software for playing lotr tcg with 1-10 written in java and it looked almost identical to original decipher client but it is no longer active...

[Gremith]

We had in Poland a free software for playing lotr tcg with 1-10 written in java and it looked almost identical to original decipher client but it is no longer active...

Beyo, mlotro is still alive

[Creator]

You should check out Gemplotr. It's still in beta, but MarcinS is doing a fantastic job on that. You could talk to him about implementing an AI into his existing program. He doesn't have all the sets in yet-- he's only up to Towers Block-- but it's very good.

[Faelach]

Did anyone ever find a working download link for the Two Towers Tutorial?  If so, could you PM me.  I've got an itching for a nostalgic game.

[CouncilofElrond]

I'm still looking for the 2 player box that I had with the CD.