The Wheel of Time Collectible Card Game

The Wheel of Time: Collectible Card Game is a collectible card game based on Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time fantasy series, published by Precedence Entertainment (which closed its doors April 2002). The Wheel of Time was somewhat unique among contemporary CCG's, because the game required a play mat with tokens and customised six-sided dice to play it. It uses some similar game mechanics to the Babylon 5 Collectible Card Game and the Tomb Raider Collectible Card Game, which were also published by Precedence.

Quick overview of the game

Opposing players represent the forces of good or evil and reenact the epic struggle for victory as told in Jordan's books. While building up forces in the form of supporting characters and troops, and enhancing them with powerups, the player tries to weaken the opponent by hampering them with effects and inflicting damage during battles. These battles are fought over "challenges", missions that each player can initiate. The winner of the challenge receives a specific reward as specified by the challenge. The dice are used to generate four different kind of abilities, needed for recruiting characters, doing damage, and generating support or opposition during the challenges and the Last Battle.

Players try to obtain dominance by controlling the "Pattern", which is accomplished by winning the Pattern challenge that is initiated each turn. Dominance gives a player the advantage of knowing what the opponent does before acting himself. When the Pattern is filled with 20 tokens, the game's final act commences: The Last Battle. All characters and troops able to fight must enter the battleground for this epic clash. Rounds of battle are fought until one player has generated more than five support over the opponent's total opposition; that player wins the game. The other way to win is by eliminating the opponent's starting character.

Card types and general information

(Taken from the old Precedence site)

Released card sets

1. The Wheel of Time: Premier Edition (300 cards)
2. 1st expansion set: Dark Prophecies (150 cards)
3. 2nd expansion set: Children of the Dragon (154 cards)
4. Limited Enhancement set: Cycles (containing just 4 cards)
5. Promo cards: various cards given away as prizes, gifts or found in booster boxes.

Although they were rumored to be in their late design stages, the 3rd expansion "The White Tower" and the revised base game "2nd Edition" never came to be due to Precedence's demise.

Card types

1. Characters (and troops)
2. Advantages (including starting ones)
3. Challenges
4. Events

Characters

Character cards represent the significant individual characters in the WTCCG Game. All characters have allegiances to different factions within the game, which determines how much it costs to recruit them and be able to play them from your hand. Most characters have some special ability that they can use as listed in their effect text. Characters have up to four abilities at various ratings: Politics (green), Intrigue (Blue), One Power (white) and Combat (Black). The numbers in these colored boxes are how many dice the character rolls of that color. Troops are like characters, but they represent large amounts of secondary characters in the game and they usually only have a Combat Ability.

You can normally only have one copy of a troop or character in the game unless they have the "Multiple" trait. Troops and characters usually participate in challenges, but do not interact with one another directly. Instead, characters interact with characters and troops interact with troops.

Advantages

(Including Starting Advantages) Advantages are long-term effects that a character, the player, or troops can gain. Advantage tell you what they can affect (Character, Troop, Player, World [world affects all players]). Until something has you discard it, the advantage keeps on churning out its effect. If the card an advantage is attached to leaves play, so does the advantage.

Prophecy cards are very powerful advantages, and have certain requirements that must be met before they can be played. They reflect the various concepts of the Prophecies from the Jordan novels.

Challenges

Challenges represent the goals you are trying to accomplish to win the game. Challenges have various effects depending on whether they are successful or not. Characters and troops must be allotted to participate in challenges in order to try to get them to succeed. Many challenges allow you to gain Pattern, some have other effects.

Events

Events represent actions taken by characters or a happening that is beyond their reach. The effects are determined as soon as the card is played. Its effects must be resolved immediately and no other events can be played until after the effects of the first event have been resolved. Unless it says otherwise, effects expire at the end of the current turn. Some events are limited events that can only be played during your action round, and they say "Limited" on the card. There are few events which specify when you can play them, and most events are simply played when appropriate.

Wheel of Time Playing Mat

General information

1. Ability Symbols
2. The Pattern
3. Last Battle
4. Dominance
5. Allegiances
6. Factions

Ability symbols

Ability symbols are marked on the dice. When attempting to recruit characters the more of them you roll the better. Each book rolled on the green die indicates a point of Politics you can spend, each Chalice on the blue Intrigue, each Yin-Yang on the white is One Power and each Rider and Horse on the Black is Combat. Most all cards have a number of these symbols listed at the bottom, and that is how many of each you need to recruit them.

The other three symbols are used in challenges. When the sword is rolled on any die it counts as a point of support. The shield counts as opposition and the skull counts as damage. In a challenge, if you initiated the challenge, you are looking for swords, if you are opposing it then you want shields.

You'll notice that some sides of your dice have multiple symbols. This means that it can count as either, depending on what you are rolling the dice for. Sometimes you'll roll the dice because a card tells you to and you'll just look for the symbols the card asks for.

There are also colored blank tokens that came with your set. You can use these to show which challenges you are participating in. The numbered tokens can be used to help keep track of how much of an ability you've generated.

The Pattern

The Pattern is what the game is all about. Each turn a token is to be placed on the Pattern. Depending on how various challenges and such go during the turn, the token could be in the neutral area, the light area, or the dark area. When there are 20 tokens on the Pattern, it's time for last battle. Tokens are placed on the Pattern every turn, so you only have 20 turns to get ready! The more tokens you have on your side, the better off you are in the Last Battle!

Last Battle

The Last Battle is a special challenge, at the very end of the game, that keeps on going until someone wins by enough points to secure victory. The Last Battle is in some ways unique to CCGs: it basically is a compulsory end-game battle between all of the current opposing characters and troops, fighting an all-out epic battle until one party wins by enough margin.... 'It's the big battle at the end of every good book, where all the cards are on the table and it's do or die time!', according to Precedence ads.

Dominance

Whichever faction has the most pattern tokens on their side has dominance. This affects who goes first and last at the various stages of a turn.

Allegiances

Allegiances determine how easy it is to play a character card from your hand. The trickiest thing in Wheel of Time is that you need to keep track of who rolled what ability when recruiting. If everyone that you use to recruit is of the same allegiance as the card you are playing, no problem. If not, then you have to be careful because it gets expensive. Just like real life, if the card you play already has friends on the table, they come along a lot easier!

The factions

Dragon Reborn: Led by Rand al' Thor, the faction of Light attempts to sway the Pattern to their side to stop the Forsaken.

The Forsaken: Never truly trusting one another, but working together to bring their own darkness to the Pattern and rule the world.

External links

• CCG Workshop Online play of many ccg's, including the Wheel of Time CCG. *Link Down*
• The Eye of the World Site containing official rules, errata and card lists
• The Wheel of Time Collectible Card Game at BoardGameGeek