by Greg DeAngelo
Introduction
A long time ago, in a land far, far away, a ring was forged . . .
The concept for Star Wars: the Middle-earth Variant (SW:TMEV) is pretty simple. Combine the flavor and characters of the Star Wars collectible card game (SW:CCG) with the roleplaying, storytelling style of the Middle-earth: The Wizards (METW) CCG. The impetus was one too many late night discussions among our gaming group of pet peeves with the Star Wars CCG, most notably the inability to build unusual decks or to do mechanistic things with the game that we wanted to do. Specifically, I wanted to build a deck made up entirely of dark side Mos Eisley cantina musicians jetting around the galaxy in stolen X-Wings. The inherent inability to play with light and dark side cards in the same deck was a major flaw in our minds, as was the limited game mechanics in terms of how to win.
Since we were big fans of the roleplaying, storytelling style of METW, and since the SW:CCG cards have so many numbers on them, we came up with the following set of rules. They worked for us, but that was (as I think I mentioned) fairly late in the evening.
These don't seem to be complete rules for a game.
The rules for SW:TMEV assume that the reader is familiar (although not necessarily fluent) with both the Star Wars and Middle-earth games. I am by no means an expert on either of these games, but if you understand the basics of the games then you should be able to follow these rules.
Are there any general . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: August 27, 1999
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