War of the Ring

While this game is NOT short, I find myself constantly engaged in strategic thinking. The card play is mediocre, but I think where this game shines is it's ability to drag you into a very thematically rich war game. This game really deserves some more love. I firmly believe it is one of, if not the best Lord of the Rings game on the market.

I have several lord of the rings games in my collection and they are some of the most enjoyable games to play. I do enjoy the books and movies, but I have played several other card driven games and my first play through of War of Ring has shown that there are several ways to get the card into play from your hand to your advantage. I really like this mechanic as I don't feel like I am always forced to throw a card away and you even have the option of not playing a card. The game does a great job in miming the story and the conflicts within the Lord of the Rings. The ring search, corruption, and battles make for epic game play with tension.

The rules are numerous, but make sense and not too bad to recall when playing. The rule book is well organized and doesn't reiterate what you just read too often. This with an index makes reviews much quicker and easy to do during the heat of battle.

I four star the price point because it approaches one hundred dollar bill mark. However, I have seen other games with fewer miniatures for more money, but the miniatures, board, and cards are nicely done with detail. Only a few of the minis where distorted, but almost all the flags where distorted and reasonable so. They may not have been vulcanized due to the storage system verses the quantity of minis, but the flags won't be breaking off. The dice are the nicest dice I have seen yet.

When I was looking into getting a game for my brother for his birthday I wasn't sure which one to get him. It was when we were playing lord or the rings risk and talking about the games many flaws that I took it upon myself to find a LOTR game that could fit the bill.

So I began to research being new to BGG I didn't know about many games and when I stumbled on this game and the reviews of the games thematic nature and story and knowing my brothers love for the books I decided this was the game for him.

When he saw it and began pouring through the pages of the rule book, he was speechless! We then learned the game and played three times that night! It was epic and super fun, neither of us were disappointed and needles to say we won't play the risk version every again. Buy this game! You will not be disappointed!

This is one of the most theme-drenched games I have ever played.

How can one take a classic, epic fantasy saga like The Lord of the Rings and incorporate the deeper nuances of the story, characters, locations, and events into one game and do it justice? On top of that, how does one treat the theme in this way and still make a game that is fun, challenging? The most difficult task would be to incorporate the game mechanics as such that they integrate with the theme...

And War of the Ring does it.

This strategy game reflecting the war in Middle Earth during the Third Age features all the major characters (and even minor!) of the story, and allows players to take the side of either the Free Peoples or the Shadow. The Shadow wins if: (1) they can score 10 Victory Points through conquering Free Peoples strongholds or (2) Frodo and the Fellowship become fully corrupted by the ring.

War of the Ring features a great assortment of plastic miniatures for each faction of Middle Earth, and the gameplay is quite asymmetrical, making for a different game every time. The artwork is simply gorgeous, and allows players to more fully soak into the theme.

The only negative I have experienced with the game is that the quality of the plastic miniatures is not the best. The sculpts are wonderful, but the plastic quality is too soft and gets "the dropsies", resulting in making them struggle to paint.

If you have any love for The Lord of the Rings, BUY THIS. NOW. Don't buy any other game until you do. This game will reward any gamer who has this on the shelf.