War of the Ring: The Card Game has launched an interest in Tolkien in my kids that I’ve been quietly hoping would come along for about 15 years. (Admittedly, my oldest was 2 then, so I was perhaps being a little premature.) I played the game with my 3 boys, 17, 13, and 10. They were all very taken with it. My youngest in particular has now wanted to learn more about Middle Earth ,its stories, and characters. I am in clover! My Comments: I like how the mechanisms of this game create a lot of hard choices. There are never enough cards to do everything, and every choice to do something is also a default choice not to do something else. Trying to figure out the best course of action is an engaging challenge. I also like asymmetry that is built into the game. The Path mechanics are particularly clever. Being able to play certain characters and cards only at certain times greatly adds to their power to invoke the central story. After Rivendell, the Ringwraiths can’t be played on paths until later on in the game. There are few things better when Gandalf gets to head the Balrog off at Khazad-Dùm. An occurrence made all the sweeter by the fact it won’t happen in every game. There is also another clever mechanic concerning Gandalf and Aragorn. They start the game as Gandalf the Grey and Strider. You do have access to cards for Gandalf the White and Aragorn, but once they are played, the original incarnations are completely removed from the game. Frodo– Free Peoples: Dwarf, Hobbit, Rohan, and Wizard cards (Sidenote: “Dwarf” is just Gimli and his axe!)

During the game, players will take turns playing cards representing the characters, armies, items, and events of the War of the Ring. Each card they play will help or hinder the journey of the Fellowship as it progresses on its Path; or be used to defend or conquer the strongholds of Middle-earth, as they fight to control the new Battleground cards activated in each round. My Comments: There is an extra level of abstraction since it is a card game, but this game does a good job at both capturing the Lord of the Rings theme and feeling like an adaptation of the board game. Players can enter the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and imagine their own version of the epic battle between the Dark Lord, Sauron, and the Free Peoples of Middle-earth in War of the Ring – The Card Game, which was inspired by the best-selling and award-winning War of the Ring board game. Also also, instead of doing an action, you can choose to pass if you have 2 or less cards, OR you can pass if both of your opponents have more cards than you in hand. Path cards follow the story of Frodo and the Fellowship, while battlegrounds represent the wider conflict across Middle-earth.Choosing where to play cards is sometimes limited by where the location is, so certain cards can only be played to locations that fit with the narrative of the books and so this adds to the tension of a bad card draw but being able to play cards to your reserve area is a positive way of mitigating this or you have the option of cycling two to draw one. You can effectively choose to lose a round, knowing you can use those cards to better effect further down the line. I Have No Memory Of This Place Move a card from the reserve to a path or battleground. Note: Cards that have been played to the reserve in the current round may not be moved during the same round (though there are some card effects that can override this). Card Action Games are broken into 9 rounds (as given by the 9 sets of Path cards). Each round is broken down into 5 steps. Step 1 – Location Step Character Cards (Like Aragorn or Saruman) can be played to Battlegrounds or Paths. Again they must have a matching icon. In the case of paths, there are no icons, but each character has a set of path numbers printed on them. This tells you which path you can play cards to. Not every character can be played to every path card. The Balrog can’t, for example, be played to Bag End and you can’t deploy Fatty Bolger to Khazad Dùm. So, all 4 players are trying their hardest to temporarily pass to see what their opponents do, then reacting to that on their next turn. But to get your hand size low enough, you may have to play cards in reserve that you can’t move at all this round, so make sure they’re worth playing there!

War of the Ring: The Card Game centres around two locations played in the middle of the table each round. One is a battleground representing one of the key battles between the Free Peoples of Middle-earth - elves, dwarves and the nations of Rohan and Gondor, as well as the Fellowship of the Ring - and the orc and Uruk-hai forces of Shadow, while the other is a path card that divides the journey of Frodo into nine key chapters, from the Shire to Mount Doom. Like its board game cousin, War of the Ring: The Card Game is highly faithful to Tolkien’s original novels. Not just in the luscious artwork and deep lore on the cards, which stretch into corners of Middle-earth sometimes passed over by other games, but in the way that the story of The Lord of the Rings shapes the flow of the gameplay itself. Or how about when you see hobbits on a path- shouldn’t you be putting Nazgul on there to search for the ring- no actually you don’t want to do that in this game because Nazgul ALL DIE AFTER GOING ON PATHS, and Hobbits ALWAYS survive, don’t have the Nazgul tap themselves out too early from going on the hunt for the ring they’re thematically supposed to do… Speaking of the original WOTR, that game was INSANELY hard to learn, its like the the rulebook and its player aids were some archaically worded parchment that were ACTIVELY gatekeeping the play. Happy to report that learning this War of the Ring is mostly good, with good examples, good use of space, fantastic card breakdown, etc. etc. This is helped by the good player aid that explains all the symbols, and slightly differentiated for the opposing teams here.

Subscribe

Players will take turns playing cards that represent the people, armies, items, and events of the War of the Ring during the course of the game. Each card they play will either aid or obstruct the Fellowship's progress down its Path or be used to defend or seize Middle-earth's strongholds as they contend for possession of the fresh Battleground cards that are activated each round. Item Cards are played onto characters that have already been played. They usually convey buffs or alter some of the game rules so that they don’t affect the character they are played to. While there are two and three-player variations, this game plays best as a 4 player game: 2v2 – with players teaming up to represent the Free Peoples and Shadow forces.

When we put it all together, path 6 becomes a huge contention for both teams, because the Shadow wants to use Gollum to spam the Shadow favored effects, whereas Free People are trying to move the paths to 7 as fast as possible, which are all Free people favored, AND they can use this Gondor homie to start scoring them for free. I loved this game, but before I explain why, let me just point out the only reason I can see for not liking the game. We gotta bring up “Ride to ruin, DEATH!” It is actually it is the epitome of War of the Ring CG. A cool sounding thematic card, promises good teamwork moments between Rohan and Gondor, but ends up needing very specific board states of Rohan HELPING mostly Minas Tirith, which might not even be in a game, or your Rohan troops may all be dead before it CAN trigger… so its usually discard fodder to fuel OTHER Lord of the Rings interactions. War of the Ring: The Card Game released last year as a spin-off from the beloved board game based on Tolkien’s epic fantasy trilogy. The game pits two to four players - split into teams representing the Free Peoples and the Shadow led by Sauron and Saruman - against each other in a battle to control locations across Middle-earth and corrupt the Ring-bearer. Then, items are a very feast or famine type of card, where they can be good to AMAZING if you get to play them on a very specific character, but useless otherwise. If you lost the host card, whether through fault of your own or through a random forsake, then they’re utterly useless and really cut decision making. Feasting looks like: Frodo GETS mythril armor on a path, the one item that is equipped to him, adding TWO defense to a path where FP already win ties is amazing.It is, to a degree, an asymmetric game. It feels hard to win if you’re Free Peoples. Much as in the book, the forces of Sauron are so strong as to be overwhelming. As the Free Peoples player, sadly, there is no Deus Ex Machinato see you through to the end. (Although there is an eagles card to get you out of a tight spot!) Nevertheless, every game has been very close, and more importantly an absolutely barnstorming Lord of the Ringsexperience. Players will take turns playing cards that represent the people, armies, items, and events of the War of the Ring during the course of the game. Each card they play will either aid or obstruct the Fellowship’s progress down its Path or be used to defend or seize Middle-earth’s strongholds as they contend for possession of the fresh Battleground cards that are activated each round. Inspired by the best-selling and award-winning War of the Ring board game, War of the Ring - The Card Game allows players to journey to the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and create their own version of the dramatic conflict between the Dark Lord, Sauron, and the Free Peoples of Middle-earth.