War of the Ring is a board game where 2-4 players aged 13 years and over will compete in teams of Free Peoples and Shadow Armies. The strategy game will bring players into the world of The Lord of The Rings created by J.R.R. Tolkien where they can experience incredible action and conflict. As the Free Peoples player you command the proud hosts of the most important kingdoms of the Third Age. From the horse-lords of Rohan to the soldiers of Gondor and the Elven lords of Rivendell, you lead the defense of the last free realms of Middle-earth. Face the evil minions of Sauron on the field of battle in a desperate attempt to delay their onslaught, while you lead the Fellowship of the Ring in the Quest for Mount Doom. The player of the Free Peoples has the Fellowship of the Ring and will be trying to sneak the ring into Mordor and ultimately to Mount Doom, whilst trying to mount a holding action with considerably fewer military forces. The second victory condition involves the more canonical element of the “one ring.” If at any time Frodo reaches the final space of Mt. Doom, casting the ring into the fire, or if he becomes too corrupted by said ring, the game is instantly over, with either the FP or SP respectively emerging triumphant. How to Play: If you’re a hardcore megafan of The Lord of the Rings, or just want a complex fantasy wargame to wrap your head around, this is easily the product for you. However, anyone not willing to put a considerable amount of time into learning rules and set up for a huge game should probably look elsewhere for their entertainment.

An interesting aspect of the game is how different named characters, or the ring bearer, can activate and move different armies to a war footing. We really enjoyed that the heroes (or the conflict itself) had to move different Middle Earth nations to war. The action dice for both good and evil. What you roll will dictate what actions you take.

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I have been discussing War of the Ring second edition, obviously there was a previous edition but you’ll not see it in many shops. There is also the Anniversary Edition which comes with painted figures, it’s beautiful, hard to find and if found will come at a very hefty price. Overall, War of the Ring is quite simply a masterpiece. The choices are deliciously agonizing, the battles memorable, and the card play clever. It is equally gratifying playing as the Shadow Player or the Free Peoples. This is a fantastically designed game that is as rich as Smaug in theme. Every card and character ability make sense thematically. Gandalf can lead the Fellowship through the mines of Moria, Strider can leave the Fellowship to go level up and become Aragorn, Boromir can be heroically sacrificed to save the hobbits from taking damage. Everything that you would want to do in a Lord of the Rings game, short of finding out what was in that pipeweed, you can do. The only minor quibble I would have with the game is regarding some production quality issues. The miniatures aren’t the highest quality and some of the tokens can be difficult to decipher at a glance, but even this is easily forgivable considering the incredible scope and size of the game as a whole. If the Shadow conquers enough of its enemies’ cities and strongholds, or if the Ring-bearers fail and are corrupted, Darkness will triumph. The very first thing I want to point out is that this is an area control game somewhat akin to Risk. There are strongholds and cities that help with defense but at its core, it is area control with “dudes on a map” sort of gameplay. You will spend most of your turn deciding on how to allocate the dice you rolled and what areas will need more units to take over enemy territory. This is critically important as it helps with both a conquest victory and provides safety (or danger) to the fellowship. This is highlighted superbly in War of the Ring by the game mechanics of moving the Fellowship. While we know canonically that the party starts at Rivendell, the journey that the Fellowship takes is primarily in secret. This is accomplished by a very clever set of mechanics.

Ultimately War of the Ring is a two player strategic war game driven by action dice and event cards, which despite the asymmetrical nature, is extremely well balanced. The 96 event cards ensure every play of War of the Ring is going to be different. The game is fairly complex because there is a lot going on, and there are a lot of rules although each rule is simple and the two sided player aid card helps a great deal. I’m not going to get too deep into Fangorn Forest’s weeds when it comes to each element, as there are a TON of moving parts. I will briefly touch on the Action Dice, since that is the bulk of the game.In 2004 we saw the release of a new War of the Ring from NG International (Nexus) and published in the USA by Fantasy Flight Games. It was a beautiful game, complex, and had victory conditions achievable by either side. The game turn is broken down into 6 phases with most of the game occurring in the Action Resolution phase. The Fellowship of the Ring area with character guide cards. Along with the bigger is better motif, the cards are much larger. They are at least twice the size of the FFG cards, more like the size of Tarot cards, if you know what those are like. They are also much more readable, and have room to make everything bigger, so that you can see all of the icons without a magnifying glass. Some cards have been modified to improve their usefulness, and the abilities of the characters themselves have been changed as well. Pippen and Merri might actually be useful for something more than just fodder to prevent corruption to the ring bearers. War of the Ring is an area control strategy war game based on the events of Lord of the Rings. The game plays best with two players, on one side is the Free Peoples, on the other are the forces of Shadow. Definitely! I’m no stranger to big war games after having played regular games of Twilight Imperium, dabbling in old classics like Warrior Knights, and loving an epic miniatures game when you have a free day. And with all that said, this has got to be one of the best out there. The mechanics used for your actions are the classic dice roll, requiring different symbols to be revealed to allow them to be spent as those actions. Sauron’s side start with more dice as they are more prepared to take the world by force. The Fellowship have an extra symbol on their dice that allows it to be spent as any other symbol, giving them more flexibility to react to impending doom!

What we are talking about here is the entirety of the Lord of the Rings trilogy of books by JRR Tolkien, transferred into a boardgame. As a Free Peoples player your goal is to either have Sam and Frodo throw the ring into the fires of Mount Doom, or for the armies of the peoples to overcome the Shadow on the field of battle by amassing 4 victory points. As the Shadow player your goal is to either corrupt the Ring Bearers to the point where they turn to the Shadow, or to defeat the armies of the Free Peoples by amassing 10 victory points. It takes more victory points for the Shadow, but they have the benefit of unlimited reinforcements. Once a Free Peoples unit is destroyed, it is gone forever. Lord of the Rings” is one of the biggest franchises from here to the Misty Mountains, with five significantly sized books, six even more significantly sized movies, an upcoming television series that is sure to be some amount of significance, and multiple generations of influence in the world of “high fantasy”. When I heard there was a board game described as “Tolkien-in-a-box,” I knew it had some pretty big hobbit-sized shoes to fill. (If hobbits wore shoes, that is.) Does War of the Ring soar like the Great Eagles and capture the epic struggle between good and evil? Does it crash and burn in the fires of Mount Doom? Or does it land somewhere in the middle-earth? Read on for our review of War of the Ring, 2nd Edition. There are a lot more rules that I could go into, including the nuances of combat, siege craft, specific units, card play, etc, but for the sake of time, I won’t. Suffice to say, this game has a lot of interworking elements that will have you balancing multiple spinning plates while dancing a jig atop the tables of the Prancing Pony with a “yes, it comes in pints”-worth of both strategy and tactics. The Wise Speak Only of What They Know – Final Thoughts So if the FP decides to move the Fellowship a second time in a round, the SP then only needs to roll a “5” the second time around to be successful. Going a third time, like hiring Gollum as your sous chef, is even riskier. That’s not how you make a tuna tartare.

I will mention one siege tower-sized oliphaunt in the room: the element of randomness. In the world of board games, I’ve found that there are two kinds of randomness: input randomness and output randomness. Put simply, input randomness determines your options, while output randomness determines your outcomes. War of the Ring has a decent-sized level of both. For example, the action dice that you roll at the beginning of each round demonstrate input randomness. You’re limited to the options rolled, although the fact that die faces can be used in multiple ways, plus the fact that the Free People has a wild die, slightly mitigates this. However, aside from some potential card play, there is very little mitigation to the output randomness of key elements like hunt token draws, combat rolls, and card draws. For me, this element of the unknown makes it thematic and memorable. Sometimes against all odds, a small force of Rohans at Helm’s Deep can stave off waves of charging Uruk-Hai. But I can understand how other gamers who prefer the strategic over the tactical may find this frustrating. For a The Lord of the Rings fan, it really is a treat. You can really get deep into the game, going over every little detail as you play. This is especially true for the event cards both players get throughout a game. These cards feature special events that can occur throughout the battle for the ring, and many of them are taken directly from the books, or at least make heavy reference to them. If you’re already in love with these stories, it can be an insanely fun evening re-imagining what would have happened if Rohan had gone to war with Saruman sooner, or if the rangers of the North had swept across the landscape destroying Sauron's armies. That’s where the true strength of this game lies.

As the Free Peoples player you command the proud hosts of the most important kingdoms of the Third Age. From the horse-lords of Rohan to the soldiers of Gondor and the Elven lords of Rivendell, you lead the defense of the last free realms of Middle-earth.

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While armies clash, the nine Companions of the Fellowship of the Ring travel towards the very heart of the domains of the Dark Lord—Mount Doom—to destroy the One Ring in the Mountain of Fire. At his command gather Sauron’s legions of Orcs and Trolls, the forces of the wizard Saruman, and the hosts of the Southrons and Easterlings, set to bring darkness over the West. If the Fellowship succeeds in destroying the Ring before this happens, or the armies of the Free Peoples succeed in turning the tide and conquering the enemy’s strongholds themselves, the fall of the Dark Lord is at hand… One of the most significant factors at play in War of the Ring: Second Edition is its sheer scope. The map covers most of Middle-Earth, including regions some fans won’t be familiar with. You also have various factions at play on both sides of the battle, and these factions are represented by over 200 hundred miniatures. As you can probably imagine, this means that both setting the game up and learning all of the rules and mechanics that govern it is quite an undertaking. It can take upwards of an hour to set the game up when you first attempt it, which isn’t aided by how similar some of the miniatures can look. Trying to find enough space to actually run the game is going to be your first challenge. Beyond the military conflict side is the quest of the Fellowship of the Ring to get to Mount Doom and throw the ring into the fires, destroying the power of the dark lord forever. The Fellowship consists of all of the characters from the books and movies, at least in the beginning. You may lose companions along the way, or they could be forced to leave to try to save another part of Middle Earth from the unrelenting march of the Shadow’s armies.