Lord of the Rings LCG to take a ‘break’ in 2020, no second edition planned

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, Fantasy Flight’s co-operative living card game, will be taking a ‘break’ after its current cycle ends next year, the publisher’s head of studio has confirmed.

Speaking in an ‘Ask Me Anything’ stream, Andrew Navaro said that the LCG had expansion releases planned up to “mid to two-thirds of the way through 2020”, but added that the game would then have “a little bit of a break”.

“Right now that is the planned current end of the current iteration of the game,” he said.

Navaro also clarified that Fantasy Flight currently has no plans to release a second edition of the game. The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game was originally launched in 2011 and has since been expanded by dozens of decks and bigger-box expansions.

Another of Fantasy Flight’s living card games, based on the Game of Thrones universe, followed its 2008 first edition (itself based on a Game of Thrones collectible card game) with a major second edition update to the competitive LCG in 2015.

“To be clear right now, the plans right now are not to do a new edition,” Navaro confirmed with regards to The Lord of the Rings: TCG.

“I think from everything I've heard the fans have expressed pretty clearly that we’re not really interested in doing a new edition and I don’t think it necessary needs one.”

However, Navaro allayed fears that the break would become an indefinite hiatus for Lord of the Rings LCG, promising that future releases and update would follow in the future.

“We have more planned for it,” he said. “So there'll be a little bit of a break and then there'll be more.

“There are definitely things we can improve. So, yeah, through 2020 we'll have a bunch of stuff and then we'll chill out for a bit and then we'll be back. We'll have to wait to see what that looks like."

You can see Navaro’s comments on the future of the Lord of the Rings LCG from 15:40 onwards in the streamed AMA.

Navaro also took the opportunity to discuss the wider evolution of the living card game format, highlighting the changes made in Legend of the Five Rings and the upcoming Marvel Champions.

He revealed that A Game of Thrones: The Card Game would similarly ‘slow down’, with more releases planned but the team “cooling it” on adding extra content to the game as the result of exhausting the material provided by George R.R. Martin’s book series. (Navaro hinted that the release of the next A Song of Ice and Fire book, the long-awaited Winds of Winter, would likely allow the game to pick things up again.)

“We’ve nearly done everything we can do,” Navaro said of A Game of Thrones: TCG.

Watch the full livestream below.