From: Rusty Witek <jwitek@STETSON.EDU>
Subject:      Re: More newbie questions :-)

On Tue, 8 Jul 1997, Coen van Antwerpen wrote:

> 2) SPI's War of the Ring is based on Tolkien?

yes

>  If you love the book are you
> going to be disappointed by the game? (I'm not asking the game to reproduce the
> book exactly just does it have the same flavour and feel :-)

I would say yes to the latter question, surprisingly so.  The game has two
parts: a "character" game, which is a quasi-role-playing system using
Event cards; the Fellowship tries to hustle across Middle-Earth collecting
artifacts in order to recycle the Ring before the Nazgul pick the right
Search card.  The military game adds units for the combatants, who
mobilize at various speeds depending on the cards played.  There's a
three-player game, but make your little brother be the hapless Saruman.

Lots of flavor, a reasonable combat system, and a nice map, but play
becomes quite stereotyped, usually boiling down to a slugfest on the
slopes of Mt. Doom between the Nazgul and Frodo (armed with Sting and
mithril mail)--the Nazgul go to their doom in numerical order, hoping to
inflict a hit point or two before the Lord of the Nazgul steps up to the
plate.  If the right artifacts don't show up (eleven waybread
and magic rope, if I recall), Frodo sits outside Mordor and sulks forever.

One nicely weird touch is that since the player knows that the "Boromir
Attempts to Seize the Ring" card is out there, the big B. is first in line
whenever a monster pops up.  ("Aiee! A Balrog! Boromir, front and
center!")

Rusty

From: Rusty Witek <jwitek@STETSON.EDU>
Subject:      Re: More newbie questions :-)

On Tue, 8 Jul 1997, David A. Vandenbroucke wrote:

> The main
> problem, as was implied by a previous post, is that right from the
> beginning everyone knows that for the Good Guys to win they have to throw
> the Big Dingus into the Zazu Pits.  Thus, Old Darkeyes sends all of his
> henchmen to prevent it.  By contrast, in the novel Sauron could not
> imagine that anyone would ever want to destroy the One Ring, rather than
> just grab it for himself.  Thus, Frodo and Sam were able to sneak into
> Mordor.  So the game reproduces a lot of the atmosphere but fails the
> essential point that evil is blinded by its own desires.  (Not that I can
> think of a better way to design the game).

Quite true, although one mechanic I liked was the limitation on Sauron's
actions (shadow points?), nicely recreating the dynamic in the book that
Sauron could do most anything he wanted at any given time, but he couldn't
do everything at once.  So the Dark player has to keep juggling as he
searches around for the Fellowship, rides herd on Saruman, raises armies,
pulls wings off flies, etc.  The victory conditions were a real
showstopper, though, as you say.


 > > The battle games that come in the "War of the
Ring" set fare rather
> better, because the parameters of the battles are better established.

To some extent that's true, but I thought they lacked some flavor. It's
been many, many moons since I played them, but the games seemed to me to
be the usual Outnumbered but Skillful Good Guys against the Stupid Hordes.
But I don't want to stir up that Germanophilia thread again.  ;-)

Rusty