FSubject: Fw: Lord of the Rings review tomscutt@my-deja.com ... This is a difficult review to write. The Lord of the Rings boardgame is a very unusual game, and to simply state that it is the best co- operative boardgame I've played would not be saying much. It should also noted that this review is based on a single, two-player game. The object of the game is to destroy the Ring while surviving the corrupting influence of Sauron. Each player plays one of the Hobbits in the fellowship, each of which has a unique power. The game is played on a number of boards: the Master board indicates both the physical progress of the fellowship across Middle Earth and the corrupting influence of Sauron on the hobbits, and a number of scenario boards which detail the events and adventures of particular locations. Progression across these boards is determined by playing cards (many of which represent the characters and items of Middle Earth), and the effects of corruption are represented by a special die. The game is lost if the ring-bearer is overcome by Sauron, or won if the ring is destroyed by throwing it into the volcanic fires of Mount Doom. The path on the main board shows seven locations across Middle Earth. Three of these locations (Bag End, Rivendell and Lothlorien) involve the players gaining cards and having to make some minor decisions (for example, at Bag End you can decide whether or not to stay and make preparations - if you do, you gain some cards, but have to suffer the effects of a die roll). The other four locations (Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair and Mordor) each have their own scenario board. Each of these boards has a main Activity line, two or three secondary Activity lines and a set of Event boxes. Markers represent the simultaneous passage of the characters along these lines and through the Event boxes. On their turn, a player turns over the top event tile. The tile revealed may indicate that the next Event box has occurred (depending on the exact tile revealed this may be avoided by paying cards/tokens); that the ring-bearer is moved towards Sauron; or that the party has progressed another step down one of the activity lines. In all but the last case, another event tile most be drawn. The player then has the chance to play one or two cards from there hand. Most cards are marked with an icon showing one of four activities (Friendship, Travelling, Hiding or Fighting) or a star icon which means that the card is a "joker" and can be used to represent any of the other icons. Each of the Activity lines is also keyed to one of these activities (the main Activity line is usually keyed to Fighting), so to move the fellowship one space down a Fighting activity line, one would have to play a card with a fighting icon (or a star icon). The active player then (usually) gains an armour or life token, depending on the type of space they've landed on. Gameplay in general revolves around trying to balance a large number of factors. There is quite a lot of turn-angst (basically trying to decide between a number of options where it's not at all clear what the optimal play is.. if you've played Lost Cities you'll know about this!), which gets more and more tricky as the game progresses. Early on in the game, you are trying to progress to the end of the main Activity line while doing enough on the other Activity lines to pick up a full set of life tokens (Heart, Sun and Ring). If you don't have a full set at the end of the scenario, your Hobbit moves towards Sauron on the Corruption line. As the game progresses, more options (and thus more angst) become available. You can pay 5 of your armour tokens to call upon Gandalf to help you in one of five ways (for instance the Gandalf "Magic" card enables you to ignore an event box). Each of these is one use only however, so it is vital to use them at the correct time. Once during each scenario the ring-bearer may decide to use the ring, which allows quick progression down an activity track at the cost of having to throw the die. There are also several Feature cards representing items and characters. Items may be played for a one-off special effect (e.g. The "Mithril" card enables a player to ignore the results of one die roll), while characters allow rapid movement along Activity lines. The outcome of certain Event boxes may also be affected by the presence of particular characters, or the amount of progress that characters have made along Activity lines. It is easy to be lulled into letting "early" events happen in a scenario, because the effects are either fairly mild or actually benign. However, it is all too easy then for events to overtake players before they complete the scenario - and the effects of the later events can be very damaging. In our game, we got through to the final event in Moria ("Fly you fools!") before we were even halfway down the main Activity line. This resulted in us being well on the way to corruption by the end of the first scenario - I don't think we ever really recovered. I think the optimal strategy for events has to be to try to complete the scenario before you get to the fifth or sixth event. There is also a meta-level strategy which is when to start sacrificing people so that the ring-bearer might survive. Although this dilemma crops up in various guises throughout the game, nowhere is it so stark as the Event tile which gives you the choice of moving Sauron one step towards the hobbits or moving one hobbit two steps towards Sauron. Component quality is variable: the game boards are sturdy and beautifully illustrated; the artwork on the cards ranges from excellent to mediocre. The graphic artwork on the card and tiles is fairly run-of- the-mill as well. The event tiles are rather annoying because they have to be shuffled before every scenario, and this is not an easy thing to do. Strangest of all are the Hobbit figures, which appear to have been moulded in grey plastic and then spray painted with colour. Would it really have been that expensive to have moulded them in coloured plastic? And while I'm moaning, how difficult would it be to mould the plastic tray so that the holes are deep enough to hold the *entire* deck of cards rather than three-quarters of them? One corner of the inner box has split already, but I suppose it may have been damaged in the post. The rulebook is well laid out and illustrated, but the rules themselves are not always entirely clear (our first game gave rise to three fairly big rule questions). So, how good is the game? I have to admit that I was worried for the first twenty minutes or so... there were lots of decisions to be made but there seemed to be no way of knowing which was better. Also, the game seemed rather abstract. However, after a while you begin to get at least *some* idea of what you are trying to achieve and how you might go about it. You also start to understand how the rules and icons of the game map onto the real world (or, in this case, the fictional world) and you realise that this is actually quite a strongly themed game. For instance, when you see that the Golum card (which you can acquire during the first Event box in Shellob's Lair) has no rule text on it - just one die and three star icons - it can seem a little dry. But then you realise that this sums up Gollum perfectly - a powerful character that can help in a variety of different ways but who also carries the risk of corruption. The game got very tense towards the end, and from Shelob's Lair onwards we were on the brink of destruction, having to rely on Gandalf to get us out of several sticky situations. I (as Frodo) made it to the foothills of Mount Doom before succumbing to Sauron, Louise (as Sam) made it through several more turns before a cascade of unstoppable Events led to Sauron claiming "The Ring is Mine!". Our final score was 55 (the score if you lose is simply the distance you have progressed through the scenario boards). This is a game that has many possible strategies. Do you rush through the scenarios to avoid the Events and suffer the effects of missing Life tokens, or do you take it steady? Do you swap the ring around, hoping to even out the corrupting effects, or do you give it to Sam as quickly as possible (his power means he is less susceptible to the corrupting influence of the die). How often should you use the ring? When is the best time to call on Gandalf? I can understand why reviews have been so polarised on this game. It *is* strange, and a co-operative game will not be everybody's cup of tea. But I think it is a brave and ultimately successful attempt. Marks out of ten: on first playing I give it a 7.5 or 8. My partner Louise gives it 8.5. Both of us think that it will score higher on a second playing because of us having a better idea of strategy. It may also play rather differently with more than two players (I suspect it might be easier to win, for one thing). Tom Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. Subject: Fw: Lord of the Rings review David Fristrom wrote in message ... I have been eagerly looking forward to this game ever since word of it first started trickling onto the net. LotR is one of my favorite books, and Knizia is my favorite game designer. So I knew I had to have this game, the sooner the better, and while waiting I devoured every scrap of information about the game that appeared on r.g.b and elsewhere. I did have some misgivings. While Knizia is a brilliant designer, I tend to agree with the common opinion that his games are thinly themed at best. Even with a game such as T&E, where he has stated that the theme preceded and inspired the game mechanics, I've never felt when playing it that I was developing an ancient civilization -- it always felt like a fairly abstract board game. Generally I don't mind such thin themes, but I felt that for LotR something more was called for, and I wasn't sure Knizia could deliver it. I was also worried when I learned it was going to be a cooperative game, with all the players on the same side. Competition is the heart of most games, and I'm not sure I can think of a successful cooperative game. And when someone mentioned that the game puts no limit on table talk, I was even more worried -- if all the players could share their information, wouldn't the best (or bossiest) player simply tell everyone what to do? How would it differ from a solitaire game played by committee? Despite these misgivings, when someone posted the publisher's web site ( http://lordoftherings-boardgame.com/) I immediately ordered it with airmail shipping (it will be much cheaper once it comes out here in the States, but who can wait?), and anxiously awaited its arrival. Thanks to quick shipping by Sophisticated Games, I had it in my hands five days later. My only complaint on shipping is that they used flimsy packaging so the game box arrived with some minor dents. I've now played the game about a dozen times -- mainly two-player, but with some four and five-player games as well -- so I thought I would share some reactions to it. The components of the game are quite nice (you can see pictures at the publisher's web site), with several large, colorful boards and a lot of well illustrated cards. The graphics on the life tokens and event tiles are less impressive, but perfectly functional, though the tiles are a pain to shuffle (and you have to shuffle them a lot). I would have preferred either a set of easily shuffled cards, or smaller tokens you could draw from a bag. And you get the One Ring, though it's rather large for a ring and made of plastic. The play of the game has already been well described in Tom Scutt's excellent review (you can read his review using Deja News to search r.g.b, or look up Lord of the Rings at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/), so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on how it is played. Essentially, you are playing a hobbit who tries to make it through various major events in the books (Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob, Morder) without dying or being corrupted. If the ring-bearer makes it to the end and dunks the ring, everybody wins (even those who fell along the way). The mechanics are largely a matter of acquiring and expending resources -- cards, shields, and life tokens. Each turn you are faced with often difficult choices -- do you expend resources to move faster, or go slower (at the risk of bad events happening) to acquire more resources, or heal yourself. And which resources should you be acquiring at any given moment? And there is the further complication that your decisions often affect everyone, and the best decision for your hobbit may not be the best for the team -- sacrificing yourself for the others is often a desirable strategy. I found the rules to be harder to follow and less complete than is usual with "German" games. Fortunately, even before my copy had arrived Tom Scutt asked some pertinent questions which were quickly answered by Chris Lawson, and Chris also answered some questions I posted, so I now feel I have a pretty good grasp on them (though I am still looking forward to the FAQ). I think much of the problem comes from the way in which LotR resembles a collectible card game. Not that it is collectible or has deck building, but it does have "interrupt" cards and actions which can be played at any time, and as any player of Magic knows, interrupts can lead to all sorts of rules questions. It would have been clearer if there had been more examples of play, especially involving calling on Gandalf and using the ring. Although there is nothing out there particularly similar to it, and its certainly differs in many ways from his previous games, it still feels like a Knizia game, in the way you are balancing various resources, and constantly being faced with simple (you only have a few choices) but hard (it's not at all clear which choice is the best) decisions. Sometimes, it is easy after the fact to tell if you made the right decision (you decided to wait another turn before leaving a scenario, and the nasty event didn't turn up), but sometimes it is less clear (you run out of Travel cards in Morder, but at what previous point should you have saved them?). My playing group has found that the cooperative aspect of the game works quite well (though I suspect this is going to vary a lot from group to group). You are allowed to tell the others what cards you hold (though you aren't allowed to show your hand). In theory this could allow everyone to have perfect information about everyone else's hand, so that one dominant player (or the group through consensus) could dictate everyone's move, turning it into solitaire by committee. In practice, however, that's too much information to exchange verbally, so rather than giving detailed breakdown's of their hands, players say things like "I have some extra Hands" or "I really don't have any cards I can spare." Combined with the fact that on your turn, what you do is ultimately your decision, it produces games where there is a lot of cooperation and consensus, but each player is making a individual contribution. So far we've found the game to be significantly harder with only two people. The game has three levels of difficulty, and with two players it took us four plays at the Easy level before we had a win, and we still find it a challenge (some wins, some losses) at the Average level. With four or five players, however, we've played it twice at Average and once at Hard, and won every time (though the Hard game was a real nail-biter, with hobbits dropping left and right on the trudge up Mount Doom, and Sam finally dunking the ring while only one step away from Sauron). It could be that we got lucky with our multi-player games (we haven't yet played enough to have a fair sample), but I think it may actually be easier, though it is hard to tell for certain (other than by playing a bunch of games) because there are lots of factors to consider. With more players, it is generally easier to fulfill the "group" (and to some extent the "one player") requirements, because there are more resources out there (because of the initial draw and the "every player draws" events). And you are sure to have all the Rivendell and Lothlorien cards in play (with two-player you don't get them all, which can be especially bad for some of the powerful yellow cards). Perhaps most important, with more players (and a bit of planning), you can spread around the ring-bearing and die-rolling duties, corrupting everyone a little bit rather than one person a lot. On the other hand, with more players the "every player" events get more difficult (and the "every player rolls" results more catastrophic). And it is impossible to get everyone the needed life tokens, and the shields are likely to be more spread out, decreasing the chances of being able to call on Gandalf. Still, overall I think the advantages of more players do outweigh the disadvantages. This really isn't a problem, because if it turns too be too easy, you can always increase the difficulty. I have been pleasantly surprised to find that for me, the game feels (and it is necessarily an extremely subjective opinion) quite strongly themed. But it expresses its theme not by directly reproducing the action of the books, but by recreating the feel of the books. Unlike most previous Middle Earth games, there is little attempt at simulation -- you aren't moving on a detailed map, you're not recreating fights and other detailed encounters. And while the various tracks and events in the scenario have evocative names ("Speak friend and enter") which will allow those familiar with the books to know roughly where they are in the story, the actual game play is quite abstract -- when you play the Aragorn card to advance you on the Fighting track, it doesn't feel like Aragorn is fighting anything. But as the group struggles against the system trying to reach the end, it does feel like you are part of a small group going on a long journey, fighting against a powerful, implacable enemy to reach a common goal. And it is that feeling which captures the spirit of the books better than a detailed combat system. Overall, in case you haven't figured out already, I like the game a lot. It has the solid mechanics of a good Knizia game, while breaking new ground with its cooperative play, and doing a great job of capturing the spirit (if not the details) of the books. I have a little concern that it might be a bit too easy with multiple players, but that could just be a matter of some lucky early games, and even if it is true can be fixed by increasing the difficulty level. I also have some fears about its ultimate replayability, since you are playing against a system rather than another player who can try something different against you. Still, I've already played it more times than I do most games (I tend towards breadth rather than depth), and it hasn't begun to bore me yet, so even if it will eventually lose its interest, there is plenty of play in it. David Fristrom