While War of the Ring: The Card Game is as richly thematic as its predecessor, it’s a much faster-moving game than the multi-hour epic. Two battleground piles are prepared. There is one pile for the Free People players and one for the Shadow players. Once everybody has passed, the action step is over and we move on to the combat step. Edoras is a Free Peoples Battle Ground. Note it can only have Rohan, Wizard cards played to it by Free Peoples players and Isengard by the Shadow players Step 3 – The Combat Step With more than 100 original illustrations from the greatest Tolkienian artists in the world, including an amazing gallery of landscapes from The Shire to Mordor by John and Fataneh Howe, War of the Ring - The Card Game is more than a game – it's also a memorable collection for all lovers of the world imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Shadow isn’t weaker, but need careful playing and do not follow the rulebook’s marketing. If you’re a really careful gamer, this won’t be an issue. I won’t spoil the details of the strategy: but essentially you cannot get concerned that the FP are utterly destroying you in points- you just need to keep that a little below 10 until late game, where paths 8/9 are very shadow favored. My Comments: I have played War of the Rings a couple of times, but I have never acquired it because I know it is not a game my wife would enjoy. However, this hits a lot of the same high notes but transitions the game from dudes on a map to tense card play and that connects a lot better with both of us. 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.Inspired by the best-selling and award-winning War of the Ring boardgame, War of the Ring: The Card Gameallows players to journey to the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Ringsand create their own version of the dramatic conflict between the Dark Lord, Sauron, and the Free Peoples of Middle-earth. So now onto gameplay cons, and we have to start with how randomness is handled. Now granted, this is a card game so there’s always going to be an element of randomness with card draws or card flips, but War of the Ring CG does this to a severe way in many areas. First are the battlegrounds, you know where you’re forced to fight, where since they’re flipped over randomly every round, it makes early-mid game combat pretty volatile and unfair feeling. 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. 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. With more than 100 original illustrations from the greatest Tolkienian artists in the world, including an amazing gallery of landscapes from The Shire to Mordor by John and Fataneh Howe, War of the Ring: The Card Gameis more than a game – it also a memorable collection for all lovers of the world imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien.

All in all, I think War of the Ring: The Card Gameis an excellent gaming experience, especially for fans of the Lord of the Rings.The way it captures the essence of the saga whilst also delivering a tactical workout, all in under an hour, makes it more than worthy of being GeekDad Approved! 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. Well, many of the gamers on this list have War of the Ring as one of their favorite games. I have enjoyed my few plays of it, but the base game tends to take a bit longer than I like… So, when presented with a card game, I was interested to try it out and see if it gave me the same sort of experience, but hopefully with a shorter game time. Set up of the game is straightforward. Assuming you are playing the full trilogy scenario for 4 players the game is set up as follows. There are a number of actions you can take. Mostly you’ll be playing cards. Three Dùnedain Cards. An item, a character, and an army. Play ActionAnd you know how to play any card, you must cycle another card? Well that’s card inflation, meaning you’re basically paying 2 cards to play 1, making certain ‘drawing cards ability’ not as healthy as you think. These 2 cards can be REALLY good, especially since you can +1 off of getting 2 cards, but what if you draw 0 of what you’re looking for? Then you just played 2 cards to get literally nothing, which feels absolutely terrible. This play alone won’t lose you the game, but its like you threw some part of your hand into mount doom. The two FP equivalents to these Shadow drawing events are Eomer and Theoden… but if you fail these, you still have a dude on the board with some upside, so not sure why these Shadow cards don’t just let you draw more so they don’t poop out. This game has received post game support including new scenarios to try which can be found online and I’m excited to hear they’ve just announced a solo and co-operative mode to be released via an expansion later in the year, meaning you’re going to have a wide array of options to play this game depending on what fits your mood. Is This The One Ring? Or the rulebook says: “The Shadow must try to slowly cuorrupt Frodo, burdening him with wounds toils, sorrow… blah blah blah.”