Order by the year each Middle-earth book, film, series or game was first published or released. You place all 34 cards on one timeline, one at a time. You start with three lives, and ten right in a row wins a lost one back.
Tolkien's world in all its forms fills this deck: the books, the posthumous collections, films, animated adaptations, radio and stage versions, and a long list of video games. Each card notes the format and the author, director or studio behind it, and you sort them by the year each was first published or released. The line starts with one card in place and its year visible. Choose a gap for every new card. A correct choice shows the year; a wrong one moves the card to where it truly belongs and costs one of your three lives.
The story begins with the original books, jumps to the first animated and radio adaptations, then goes quiet until the big-screen trilogies set off a long run of games, books edited from the author's papers, and streaming projects. Several cards share a title, so the format line is what tells a novel from a cartoon or a game. Story order is no help at all: prequels and tales of the elder days were often published long after the main saga. The games cluster tightly around the film releases, which makes their order the real test.
Want a longer game? On the deck tree you can tick this deck alongside any other one measured in release years and dates, and they shuffle into a single timeline together.
Here are 28 of the 34 cards you might be dealt, with 6 more in the deck. Their values stay hidden until you place them.
