War of the Ring is Fantasy Flight's newest battle game. After buying and enjoying A Game of Thrones from FFG at GenCon a year ago, I got excited when I heard that War of the Ring would be for sale at this year's GenCon. I managed to get a copy from a friend who went and have now played it twice. I usually like to try and review a game after playing it more than twice. The length of this one makes this difficult, however, so two playings will just have to do for now.

This game is very complicated, so this review is LONG. Skip down to "MY IMPRESSIONS" if you don't care how to play, but just want to know what I thought. Even with the length of this review, there's no way I can touch on everything that's here. I'll do my best for you die-hards who really want to know, however.

OVERVIEW: This epic battle game plays with 2-4 players, and plays very well with just two. One side controls The Free People, and the other controls The Shadow. While the bad guys try to find the One Ring and swarm over Middle Earth, the good guys try to hide said ring and hold out long enough for Frodo to destroy it in Mordor.

COMPONENTS: All in all, the components are a mix between wonderful and maddening. The sculpts of the various figures are really great. The Nazgul are impressively huge, towering up over other units on the board. Gondorans have a finely detailed White Tree marked on their shields and banners. Saruman's minions are clearly identifiable as wolf riders and Uruk-hai. Character figures are included as well -- the whole Fellowship of the Ring, as well as three Shadow minions. I think I can sum the quality of the figs up by saying that when I opened the box, my 4-year-old went nuts, immediately wanting to play Lord of the Rings with Daddy and his friend. The problem I have with the figures is that it's a hard to distinguish between figures of different nations on the same side, and players have to be constantly careful not to replace Gondorans with Rohirrim or Sauron's orcs with Saruman's Uruk-hai. I found myself squinting at the pieces a lot, especially when they were in a big mass somewhere in the middle of the board.

The board is similarly impressive. It's gigantic, as others have commented. It's made of two quad-fold boards and is among the biggest boards of any game in my collection. Plus, it's beautiful. Beauty in this case has its flaws. There is a lot of important information on the map, and much of it is just very hard to see. Territory borders are not intuitive, snaking around the board in irregular patterns, and players have to stay constantly vigilant not to move an army across a forbidden dark black line, or outside a nation's borders, or even to a space that doesn't actually touch the origin of the army. Especially once the gigantic armies are on the gigantic board, it's tough to see all that nice detail.

Rounding out the components is a sheet of heavy cardboard pieces and two decks of heavy-duty cards. They should stand up well to repeated play. The rulebook is thick and with small print, but that shouldn't be a surprise to the seasoned epic gamer.

All these pieces are held in what might be one of the worst plastic organizers I've ever seen. There are only four bins -- one for each set of minis, one for the cards, and one for the counters. This makes it take forever to set up the game. I'd highly recommend those hosting a game of War of the Ring to set it up beforehand. It took me just over an hour to set it up the first time, and about forty minutes to set it up the second time. I'll definitely be picking up some of those Plano tackle box things to hold all these pieces. Man, I hate that! Especially after Fantasy Flight's excellent job with a plastic tray for Game of Thrones, I expected more.

GAMEPLAY: Wow, where to start? This is a tough game to describe. Be ready to read the rulebook twice or three times, and still miss a few rules. Even late in the second game, I was finding little things that we were doing wrong, and I'm no gaming slouch. I can explain Axis and Allies in about ten minutes to almost anybody, but it takes at least half an hour to even give the basics of War of the Ring. I'll try to do justice to it here and give you an idea of how it works.

The heart of the game is an action dice system that determines what each player can do on a turn. The good guys start with four dice, the bad guys with seven, and each roll the dice to determine what they can do. Each face of each die gives the player one action (Character actions, Recruiting armies, Moving armies, Event Card use, Hunting for the Ring, or Wild) which they take in turn with one another. Thus, the Free Peoples might use a "Character" die to move their characters on the board, sending Aragorn toward Minas Tirith and Legolas toward the Woodland Realm. Then the Shadow might use a "Mustering" die to recuit more troops. Then the Free Peoples player uses an "Event Card" die to play a card from their hand allowing the elves to move toward war. And so on.

The game begins with three Shadow nations and five Free Peoples nations preparing for war. A political track down one side of the board marks how close each of the powers are to mobilizing for war. As you might expect, Sauron and Saruman are very close and require only a gentle nudge to get them to send out the troops. The dwarves and men take a lot more energy to even allow them to recruit new troops, and the Free Peoples player will be concentrating on this for a few turns at the beginning of the game. Nations can be mobilized by several means. Appropriate characters can spur the nation to war, Mustering dice can be used to mobilize the nation, or Event Cards can be used to skip several spaces and go directly to war. Even being attacked by an enemy doesn't necessarily put the attacked nation at war, which I think is in good keeping with the books.

Before nations are at war, they are very limited in what they can do. They can't move pieces outside their nation's borders, attack enemies, or even recruit new forces. It's fun at the beginning of the game when the bad guys are able to mobilize quickly and start moving hordes of Uruk-hai toward Helm's Deep, while the good guys frantically try to get members of the Fellowship to Edoras to warn them that war is upon them. By the end of the game, everyone is at war, of course, but if the Free Peoples tarry too much, they might not have time to stem the onslaught of bad guys coming toward them.

Once at war, armies can move from their homelands and attack. Battles are relatively simple. Up to ten units can comprise an army (this is known in old-time wargaming terms as a "stacking limit" for you young whippersnappers who never played hex games!) Each unit in the army (other than leaders or characters), regardless of unit type, contributes one to the strength of the army, to a maximum of five. The attacking player gets to decide whether or not to play a card, and then the defending player does the same. Both cards are then revealed and can affect the outcome (usually by modifying the upcoming die roll). Each player rolls a number of dice equal to the strength of the army. Usually, 5s or 6s hit, although defenders in settlements are hit only on 6s. Next, there is a leader reroll. For each leader in the army, one miss can be rerolled. After these two rolls, each hit causes one casualty. Casualties can be taken by either eliminating a regular unit, or reducing an elite unit to a regular unit. If combat is taking place at a Stronghold (like Helm's Deep or Rivendell, or even Barad-Dur) combat then ends. Otherwise, the rounds are repeated until one side dies or retreats.

This is a good place to note one important difference between the two sides. The bad guys have unlimited forces -- if a unit is killed, it goes back into the pool and can be recruited again later. The good guys, however, have a finite number of units. Once that elven leader dies, he's gone forever. The Shadow can certainly win a war of attrition, and such a war is to be avoided by the Free Peoples at all costs!

Combat at Strongholds almost always takes multiple attacks. Because the attacker can only attack once per "Army" die, a few defenders can hold out for several turns. The fact that attackers hit on 6s while defenders hit on 5s or 6s at a Stronghold means that the attacker must bring lots of units, plus have a few more in a nearby region to bring in to reinforce the siege. We saw Stronghold battles go both ways. Sometimes the defender (usually the good guys) could hold out long enough for a relieving army to fight off the besiegers, but most of the time the good guys would, eventually, succumb.

It's not so important that Free People strongholds fall as it is how long it takes them to fall. As the battles rage on in Middle Earth, the Fellowship tries to sneak the ring to Mordor. The Fellowship is represented by a figure of Sam and Frodo that starts at Rivendell. On each turn, Character dice can be used to move the Fellowship toward Mordor. However, the figure is not moved. Only a counter at the top of the board is moved forward representing how far the Fellowship has moved from the "Last Known Position." When the Fellowship moves, the Dark Side gets to roll some dice (the number is determined in an earlier step) to see if the Fellowship moves safely or at peril. If "The Hunt" succeeds, a random tile is drawn from a cup that tells how damaged the Fellowship becomes. Usually, Frodo will take some corruption (kept track of with yet another counter on a track -- I told you there's a lot going on in this game!). If he takes twelve corruption before destroying the Ring, the bad guys win immediately.

Some tiles in The Hunt will cause Frodo to become "Revealed." This means that the Fellowship player must immediately move the Fellowship a number of spaces equal to its position on the Fellowship track. In this case, they may not end in a friendly Stronghold, but must reveal themselves somewhere out in the wilderness. Although the Fellowship can be hidden again by using a die on a later turn (thus allowing them to move once more) while revealed they are subject to all sorts of nasty cards of the bad guys.

If the Fellowship is hidden, the good guys can voluntarily reveal the Fellowship if they've moved far enough to get to a friendly stronghold (I think in most games this will happen in Lothlorien). While thus revealed, the Fellowship can heal one Corruption for each turn they spend there. Additionally, the presence of the Fellowship can trigger certain Event Cards and also automatically helps move the host nation to war.

It should be noted that the Fellowship figure doesn't count for much except how close the Fellowship is to destroying the Ring. Even if a horde of orcs led by eight Nazgul and the Witch King lands in the space occupied by a revealed Fellowship, the Fellowhip is not captured. However, being in such a situation can cause the Fellowship to take extra corruption. The Fellowship can only be "killed" by corrupting them all the way to twelve.

Ready for another mechanic? Travelling along with the Fellowship are the Companions, characters that are familiar to any Lord of the Rings fan. The Companions may choose to separate from the Fellowship, going forth to incite battle or lead armies against The Shadow. Each of them has a card with special rules that pertain to that character. Thus, Legolas can use any die to move the elves to war if he's in an elven stronghold. Aragorn can add one to the strength of an army he leads. Aragorn and Gandalf can, with the completion of certain prerequisites, be promoted to The Heir of Isildur and Gandalf the White respectively. These more powerful versions are cool, but take precious time to recruit, during which time The Shadow comes closer to winning the game.

Dissuading a player from simply sending all the Companions out to fight war, leaving poor Frodo and Sam all alone, each Companion can also be sacrificed when the Fellowship is damaged to eliminate corruption they would otherwise take. Most Companions also have a special ability that, as long as they are "The Guide" of the Fellowship, allow the Fellowship some special protection. So it's important to keep at least a couple of Companions with Frodo even as the game wears on.

Don't think the fun is limited to the good guys. The bad guys have characters of their own that must be brought into play through certain conditions. Saruman, The Witch King, and The Mouth of Sauron all have a special figure that can march about the board, also each with cool powers.

Finally (finally!) let me mention the Event Cards. Without Event Cards, the game would really just be Risk with a few recognizable characters thrown in and a time limit. The Event Cards are what gives the game its feel, and creates many of the choices that the players will have to make. Cards are drawn on each turn, and are grouped into two basic types. Strategy cards help with recruiting new guys or going to battle, while Character cards pertain to the Nazgul, the Fellowship, or Sauron's minions. An Event Card die roll can be used to activate any Event Card, and each has a secondary die that can be used to activate it as well.

Each card has two effects -- one that is its main effect, and one that can be used if the card is played during combat. Many of the cards have some prerequisite, such as "Aragorn must be in Rohan for this card to be played." This is balanced by the combat effect -- the more restrictive the main effect, the better the combat effect, and vice versa. So rarely is a player stuck with a card that's completely useless, which is very nice.

Effect Cards can be used to circumvent other conditions of the game. The Free Peoples have many cards that allow them to recruit units in a nation that's not yet at war, which is good. Some cards add bonus tiles to The Hunt that do more or less damage to Frodo. Some allow a large battle to be fought with bonuses. Some allow a siege to take place for longer than a single die roll. Some move Companions more quickly than normal, and give special bonuses if those Companions finish their move in certain areas.

Let me give you a couple of examples to show you why the cards are so neat. There's a card called Book of Mazarbul, a Free People card, that allows all Companions to move on the map. If, at the end of the move, one Companion is in a dwarven stronghold, the dwarves instantly go to war. For those who are familiar with the books, this represents a member of the Fellowship taking the book they found in Moria to the dwarves, showing them how dire the situation is, thus mobilizing the dwarves to war. This didn't really happen in the books (that I know of, but it's been a while and the movies have corrupted me more than a little), but it's entirely plausible.

Another card, this one a Shadow card, is called "The Breaking of the Fellowship." The card may only be played when the Fellowship is revealed. When it's played, a Hunt Tile is drawn from the pool, and a number of companions equal to the corruption the Fellowship would normally take must be separated from the Fellowship. This did happen in the books, of course, and can be recreated in the game with this card.

Before this game came out, I know some people were wondering here on the Geek if the players would be forced to follow the same path as the books. While such a path is definitely a valid strategy, the cards will dictate what can or cannot be accomplished. Maybe the Ents will destroy Orthanc through the timely play of a card, but maybe that same card will be used in combat instead, and then you can imagine the Ents attacking an army besieging Minas Tirith. Maybe the Balrog will hurt the Fellowship as they move through Moria; or maybe the Fellowship will avoid Moria and the Balrog card will be discarded. It's a nice mechanic, and a neat way to include the key events in the books without forcing players to use them, as well as throwing out a few "what-ifs" that can occur.

VICTORY: Good grief, after all that, are you still reading? Victory is attained either through a military or a ring-based victory. The bad guys have to take ten victory points worth of territories -- much easier said than done, as most of the points are tied up in very defensible strongholds. The good guys can win by taking only four victory points of evil cities -- also much easier said than done, as their forces are quite limited in numbers. If the Ring reaches Mordor, the good guys win, of course. And if the bad guys corrupt the Fellowship, the bad guys win. In both games that I've played, the Fellowship was corrupted just as they reached Mordor.

MY IMPRESSION: War of the Ring is a game is a very complex, very neat game depicting the battle for Middle Earth. Virtually every cool aspect from the trilogy is recreated here, from the political machinations of the good guys to the swarms of orcs pouring out from Mordor. Numerous strategies certainly exist to win. By no means are either of the sides limited to only the events that occurred in the books, but if the Fellowship wants to behave just as is written, that can be done in most games.

I think the two sides have very different play experiences. The Shadow gets to move hordes of armies, and bad guy turns tend to take a lot longer. Playing the good guys is more subtle and much more tense. There's constant pressure to run the Fellowship hard, but each move corrupts poor Frodo more, and takes away an action die that might be used to defend Lothlorien or Helm's Deep. I think it's much tougher to play the good guys, and you should, in your first games, put the more experienced and more patient player in the role of The Free People. I've played both sides, and I thought both were fun, but my friend Tom hated playing the good guys. "I want to move hordes of guys!" he kept whining.

The game is long and complicated. It's definitely not for everyone. It takes an hour to set up, probably another hour to completely explain, and at least four hours to play. In the rulebook, they say it can be played in three hours, but I don't believe it. Maybe if you had two expert players that were already familiar with all the cards, this would be true. But I'd give myself six hours to play this one from beginning to end the first time you play. The length and complexity limits it to only a few diehard gamers, I fear, which is too bad for me. I have lots of casual gamer friends that just won't have the patience for a game that takes longer to explain than many take to play!

The map is really a problem for me. It would look simply fantastic hanging on my wall, but it really needs some work as a boardgaming map. Some of the aesthetics should have been sacrificed to make nations more evidently marked, impassable borders more clear, and towns and cities easier to tell apart. Most likely, some carefully crafted strategy will be destroyed because a player finds out suddenly that the two spaces they were going to attack aren't connected, which I can tell you is very demoralizing.

All in all, I'm glad I bought this game, but I can't recommend it wholeheartedly. If you're looking for another Fantasy Flight masterpiece like A Game of Thrones, this probably isn't it. But I'm sure it will have a loyal following, and I imagine I'll see tournaments for it for years to come. It'll probably someday be one of those classic old war games that a few diehards love, and others simply can't master due to the complexity.

If you're a Lord of the Rings fan and a hardcore gamer, and have a friend who'll play a six-hour game with you, definitely check this out. Otherwise, I'd say let someone else introduce it to you.

MUKid (#51471),

Thanks for your very well written review. This game is presently no 1 on my "should i buy this" list. Other reviews have hinted at but not really come straight out and said that this is definately not a 2-3 hour "euro" war game say like game of thrones.

I like 4-5 hour + games but as an adult who works as opposed to a student with oodles of spare time theres a real difference between a "games night" game and a "lets set aside a saturday to play this game" game.

One issue, how much of your overall strategy is determined by your card draw during the first couple of turns. For a game with this time commitment I would rather not have a "Oh I drew cards A & B that means I go with standard attack gondor strategy A" mentality enforced because its simply the most efficient way of proceeding.

Oh who am I kidding. I'll buy this game as soon as its reasonably available anyway....

Jay;

Thanks for the insightful and honest review as usual. This game was "on the bubble" of my want list. Now that I've heard commentary based on actual gameplay, and STILL hear the "Risk with events" comment, I can safely eliminate it from my list of games to buy.

Cheers.

MUKid (#51471),
Very nice review. Thanks for pointing out the highs and lows. I can probably paint the figures I need to distinguish them if required. I will get this if only to play it solo.

myopia (#51687),

Yes, this is definitely not "A Game of Thrones", which is of course an excellent game, but is optimal with 5 players, where War of the Ring is optimal with 2. AGoT plays fast, WotR plays slow. I have a harder time getting 5 players for a boardgame so 2-player games are a real bonus for me, especially one in my favorite fantasy setting.

Regarding Event cards determining your strategy: I think of the Event cards as bonuses to your overall strategy, not the determiner thereof.

You start the game with 2 Event cards, each turn you draw two more and can use Action dice to get additional cards, although this is rarely the best choice for your valuable Actions each turn. You can never have more than 6 cards in your hand, and you generally won't have a full hand until turn 4.

In other words, the cards won't dictate your starting strategy because you won't have very many cards in the early game.

MUKid (#51471),
Thanks for the excellent and honest review. After sending my initial "review" in, I tried to get it changed to a "Session Report" but it was too late.

I love this game for two reasons: 1) I love JRR Tolkien's books (including The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales) and have been a fan of them for over 20 years. Getting to play in his sandbox with this game is a blast. 2) I've wanted this exact game for a couple of years now and every time I've looked at LotR:Risk or Reiner Knizia's LotR games I've put the box back down and walked away frustrated that there wasn't a better LotR wargame. Now there is and I'm damned happy. The wait was worth it.

As always,
Your Mileage May Vary.

MUKid (#51471),

Excellent review!! Now we have to get together to play it!

I had reservations about the game after reading the rules and setting the board up. I have about 400 games in my collection, including some detailed, in depth wargames with enormous rulebooks. Despite the relatively "light" wargaming experience expected, I still found the book very dense with detail and had to read, re-read and take notes just to keep things straight. For most gamers, this will require several reads and references as Jay pointed out.

Despite the complexity and disappointment with several of the components (limited figure color mix, poor map demarcations -- stuff Jay already pointed out), I am very excited about this game. There is definitely a strong element of luck, but that appears to be mitigated by having numerous options at your disposal for how you apply die results, event cards and the like.

Jay's review helps reinforce what I like about the game, but if you're on the fence about whether or not to get this game, do your best to check it out at a hobby shop first, or read some more reviews. I definitely think some people will be disappointed with the game -- thinking it might be a very accessible license-based game like Confrontation, LotR co-op (with Friends & Foes and Sauron Expansion) or even LotR Risk. It is a far more complex game than the general audience may be used to.

aforandy (#51763),

Thanks for your lengthy reply to my lengthy review! Your comment when I asked "Are you still reading?" and you answered "Yep, are you?" cracked me up.

I'm sorry we disagree about the complexity of the game. I think it is a complicated game. This isn't off-putting for me; I like complicated games. Let me clarify here -- when I say "complicated," I just mean a game that takes me a while to teach. Not a game that's impossible to learn, or impossible to play. A game like Puerto Rico is also complicated, but a game like Risk really isn't. I don't even think Axis and Allies is all that complicated. This game has lots going on, which makes it tough to explain properly. I think that's one of its strengths, but a casual gamer isn't likely to think so. My wife, for example, is a big-time gamer, but I know she won't like this game.

I'm very impressed about two things you mention. First, you said "the record" was 65 minutes. That's the longest game of War of the Ring that you played? Surely I must be misreading this. I can't imagine playing this game in 65 minutes. Also, you said that you can set up the game in 100 seconds. I suspect this is a bit of hyperbole, but I am curious to see how you set the game up so quickly. It takes me quite a whi