Ares Games War of the Ring 2nd Edition Board Game

Product Information

An impressively sized war game, War of the Ring pits 2 players (or 4) against each other in a battle for Middle Earth comprised of all the favourite races and characters you love from the original trilogy. So, grab your Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves and Men. And an ungodly amount of Goblins. It’s time for War! WOTR150 – War of the Ring Card Game – Free Peoples Card Box and Sleeves (US release date: March, 31st) The game turn is broken down into 6 phases with most of the game occurring in the Action Resolution phase. The Fellowship of the Ring area with character guide cards. Final Score: 5 Stars – A deep strategy area of control game with multiple aspects that keep it fresh and deserving of the Lord of the Rings brand.

The players take part in the struggle of the armies of the Free Peoples and the heroic Companions of the Fellowship of the Ring against the dark host of the Shadow and the powerful Minions of the Dark Lord. The artwork is the same, it is just bigger so that you can see it better, the figures are the same for the most part, the Nazgul have changed so that they don’t fall over all the time like they tended to do in the FFG version, and a few others are different, but not many. The dwarves setup has been changed a wee bit (ha! wee bit). The combat sequence has been modified to be easier to follow, and so has the hunt sequence. Plus the fellowship can enter Mordor now even if it is not hidden. Here once more you can also see the new size and quality of the Character and Event cards for both sides. As before, the game can be played as a two player or four player working in teams of twoand I must confess to much preferring to play two-player. However, this is very much a personal choice, mainly because I only tend to like such teaming of players on one side when there can still only be one winner. So, Wars of The Roses by Z-man Games and Ragnar Brothers' Promised Land are both games I hugely enjoy, whereas WOTR is definitely a 2 player for my money! There are a lot more rules that I could go into, including the nuances of combat, siege craft, specific units, card play, etc, but for the sake of time, I won’t. Suffice to say, this game has a lot of interworking elements that will have you balancing multiple spinning plates while dancing a jig atop the tables of the Prancing Pony with a “yes, it comes in pints”-worth of both strategy and tactics. The Wise Speak Only of What They Know – Final Thoughts

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Definitely! I’m no stranger to big war games after having played regular games of Twilight Imperium, dabbling in old classics like Warrior Knights, and loving an epic miniatures game when you have a free day. And with all that said, this has got to be one of the best out there. The mechanics used for your actions are the classic dice roll, requiring different symbols to be revealed to allow them to be spent as those actions. Sauron’s side start with more dice as they are more prepared to take the world by force. The Fellowship have an extra symbol on their dice that allows it to be spent as any other symbol, giving them more flexibility to react to impending doom! If the Fellowship succeeds in destroying the Ring before this happens, or the armies of the Free Peoples succeed in turning the tide and conquering the enemy’s strongholds themselves, the fall of the Dark Lord is at hand… Special Actions: The FP’s “Will of the West” is a wildcard that can be set to any other face, while the SP’s “Eye” is added to the hunt box. (more on hunting later) More Key Concepts

The player of the Free Peoples has the Fellowship of the Ring and will be trying to sneak the ring into Mordor and ultimately to Mount Doom, whilst trying to mount a holding action with considerably fewer military forces. If you aren’t a fan of Lord of the Rings and think playing one game for roughly 6 hours with only one friend (the rules allow 4, but it’s just two teams so it might not work as well) is a bit too much, then I wouldn’t advise it. The game is long and can be a bit dry when learning it/teaching it to others. One of the most significant factors at play in War of the Ring: Second Edition is its sheer scope. The map covers most of Middle-Earth, including regions some fans won’t be familiar with. You also have various factions at play on both sides of the battle, and these factions are represented by over 200 hundred miniatures. As you can probably imagine, this means that both setting the game up and learning all of the rules and mechanics that govern it is quite an undertaking. It can take upwards of an hour to set the game up when you first attempt it, which isn’t aided by how similar some of the miniatures can look. Trying to find enough space to actually run the game is going to be your first challenge. Remember all those times that you had no space to fit a whole army in one region? Ares has added three boxes and some counters so that you can replace all your figures from one army with a single counter, and then place the army in the box on the board. You can swap them out at any time; they are there to help you when you just don’t have enough space. Oh, for sure! The artwork is brilliant on all of the cards and the board itself, and really draws a good distinction from the films. It’s a little quirky in some of the illustrations, namely the character cards, but I feel it fits the theme well and pulls more from ‘fantasy illustration from the 80s’ than any of the modern films. The individual models are well made if a little confusing, giving decent forms to the main fellowship as well as the different races you have control over. The bold colours of blue and red let players see from a glance who has the most control over this land. Even the dice look impressive, giving each player their own coloured set covered in gold/silver symbols, ready for them to roll and spend as their precious actions. If Tolkien is a bit alien to you then have no fear, this game looks great on its own merits and all the illustrations will add to the game guarantee.Beyond the military conflict side is the quest of the Fellowship of the Ring to get to Mount Doom and throw the ring into the fires, destroying the power of the dark lord forever. The Fellowship consists of all of the characters from the books and movies, at least in the beginning. You may lose companions along the way, or they could be forced to leave to try to save another part of Middle Earth from the unrelenting march of the Shadow’s armies. War of War of the Ring is an asymmetrical 2-player game where one person controls the evil forces of Sauron, called the Shadow, while the other plays the Free Peoples – the “good side” narratively speaking. While there are technically rules for multiplayer, like challenging a cave troll to an arm-wrestling contest, I highly recommend against it. How to Win: War vs Will War of the Ring is a board game where 2-4 players aged 13 years and over will compete in teams of Free Peoples and Shadow Armies. The strategy game will bring players into the world of The Lord of The Rings created by J.R.R. Tolkien where they can experience incredible action and conflict.