| Lord Of The Rings - Game Review | |
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Lord Of The Rings - An Alternate View
I've written this review as I have read many reviews raving about this game; however all the reviewers have admitted to having played only one or two games. I purchased this game as a Christmas present for my son and have "played" (the reason for the quotes will become obvious later).
This game will disappoint purchasers wanting to blast Balrogs or duel Nazgul. Many Tolkein purists, however, might be pleasantly surprised by the concept behind the game.
The basic idea is that the hobbits (including the ring bearer) start at the nice, good, white end of a path (referred to as "the corruption line") while 15 steps away at the nasty, black, evil end of the path stands Sauron. Various events during the game cause either one of the hobbits to move along the path toward Sauron (becoming corrupted by the evil of the ring) or Sauron to advance up the path toward the hobbits. The game is lost if Sauron and the ring-bearer meet.
Each player represents a hobbit. Five can play. Players have the choice of being Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin or Fatty. Remember Fatty? In the book he remained in Bag End to misdirect the Nazgul about the whereabouts of Frodo (and hence the ring).
The idea behind the game is that you move from place to place on the master board in the same sequence as the hobbits in the book: Bag End, Rivendell, Moria, Lothlorien, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair and finally Mordor. At Bag End, Rivendell and Lothlorien, you perform a short sequence of actions that may move your hobbit along the "corruption line" but will more likely give you cards (called feature cards) representing objects or characters that will help you in your quest to destroy the ring. At Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair and Mordor you transfer play to a Scenario board and play through the encounter that occurred in that location.
Each player's hobbit has a special ability (these are well thought out) and the player has a hand of cards in 4 "suits" Travelling, Hiding, Friendship and Fighting. Some of the cards are "wild" and can represent any suit. Most of the feature cards also are of one of the four suits or are wild, but instead of only having a value of 1, they have a value of 1, 2 or 3. On the scenario boards there are three (or in the Mordor board four) paths matching one of the "suits". The object is to move markers along the paths to collect feature cards, shields (money), and tokens bearing various symbols. The main path is 10 spaces long and the Scenario ends when you reach the end of the main path. (And in the final Mordor scenario also destroy the ring!)
However it is necessary for each hobbit to also collect a heart token, a sun token and at least one ring token along the way or else be further infected by evil and drawn down the corruption line toward Sauron. As the sun and heart tokens are not on the main path it is necessary to move some way down the other paths to avoid being corrupted. In most of the scenarios some of these paths also contain feature cards that are essential to successfully complete the game.
A turn consists of turning over an event tile, playing cards from your hand and moving the markers.
The event tiles can either be one of the four card suits, move a hobbit towards Sauron or move Sauron towards the hobbit, or trigger an event. You must keep turning tiles, carrying out the actions associated with them, until you reveal a suit.
It is important to try to finish the scenario having triggered as few events as possible as these are bad for the players and increase in severity. Nearly all the events have two possible outcomes, one if the players are able to meet some condition (the first few outcomes are actually favourable if the players meet the condition) and a harsher one if the players are unable to fulfil the requirement.
The actual events mimic closely the events that happen in the book. (In some cases the last event, if it occurs, represents something that almost happened in the story (e.g. Helm's deep falling to the orcs or Sauron gaining the ring).
As an example the 6 events on the Moria scenario board are:
The first thing that annoyed me was that there was no scenario board for the trip from Bag End thus avoiding Tom Benzedrene (sorry, Bombadil) and the rather more important event of Frodo being stabbed by the Nazgul. So I designed one.
It is a cooperative game (no feeding other player's hobbits to Sauron) and because of the type of cooperation required it is effectively a solo game and, indeed, can easily be played solo. I don't know of any successful solo games that lack some sort of random event generator that alter the player's options or situation from turn to turn and game to game. So, as one of my friends (a veteran game-player) said, it is not so much a game as a puzzle.
Unfortunately the game fails. The game is OK to play once or twice, but after that a certain sameness creeps in. As an example the harsh consequences of the fourth event in Moria can be assuaged by having completed the Travelling and Hiding paths. This means every time you play this scenario you need to try to complete these paths first as it is unlikely that you will be able to complete the scenario before the fourth event occurs. So the "puzzle" doesn't change enough.
There is quite a bit of planning required when facing each scenario board, but the plans tend to be similar (if not identical) each time you play the scenario.
Reiner Knizia (the game's designer) states that he has attempted to give the players the "tactical option" of being able to collect two hobbit cards, or to move your hobbit one space back towards the light, instead of playing cards during your move. Unfortunately the imperative of getting to the ends of the paths on the scenario boards (by playing cards) make these other choices untenable (and not an option) except in the most extreme circumstances. Usually on the last board as everyone runs short of cards.
The other tactic is to use the ring. It allows you to skip a randomly determined number of spaces on a track. However, in keeping with the book, using the ring is corrupting so the die must be rolled. But what's the point of using the ring to avoid a square causing you to roll the die, if you have to roll the die anyway to avoid the square.
Lastly the game is not balanced. Even after you have "cracked" the puzzle you will lose more games than you will win if Sauron starts on 12 (that's way I placed him on 15 in the description of the game), if you adhere strictly to the rules. Indeed I think it is impossible playing with two hobbits and receiving only feature cards in Rivendell and Lothlorien as suggested.
To balance the game, either start Sauron on 15 or change the rule so that when the ring is used, the ring-bearer has a free choice of choosing whether to move the marker 1, 2, 3 or 4 spaces, rather that it being randomly determined.
If you do have the game there are some steps that you can take to add variation to the gameplay (puzzle):
I know Reiner Knizia has a good reputation and has produced some of the best games around (I own a number of them myself), but I do not believe in praising the game just because it was designed by someone with an excellent track record. This is not a good game.
It's a pity the gameplay isn't better, as the game is well presented (if a little too pricey) and could possibly be exposed to a wide audience once the movie is released.
Ratings (all out of 10)
Next page > Bag End to Rivendell > Page 1, 2, 3
by Brian Stephens
There are a few other little wrinkles such as being able to "buy" Gandalf's help and being able to employ the ring to "skip' spaces on the scenario paths.
These changes are mainly cosmetic and to really fix the game you would need to create a number of event charts for each scenario and randomly choose which was to be used when beginning the scenario.
Components: 9
Rules: 7
Gameplay: 4, dropping with repeated playing
Many thanks to Brian Stephens for contributing this review.
