Forum Overview :: Reviews :: War of the Ring

[quote name="fabio"]Lord of the Rings the baord game. This sounds like the best game on paper. The forces of evil muster armies and conquer the world while the good player tries to fend them off until the fellowship can destroy the ring. Roll a bunch of dice which will represent actions you can do during a turn: reinforcements, move armies, advance fellowship, hunt for the ring, etc. Evil gets to start building armies right away while Good is hampered by most nations being neutral and must spend dice to bring them to closer to war which can only be finally triggered by evil attacking them or fellowship members visiting them. The faster the fellowship moves, the more chance they will be discovered, delayed, and/or corrupted. The army battles is basically just Risk. Kind of boring. Much more complex are the rules of bringing nations to war and the fellowship. The problem with this game is that it's pretty skewed towards the Evil player. It's theoretically possible for Good to win a military victory, but Evil will always win a war of attrition. All the Evil player has to do is wait until he's built a crushing force, then crush one Good nation at a time so the rest stay neutral. Thematically it's supposed to be holding them off until the ring is destroyed, but neutral nations translate to just sitting there, which is boring. The Evil player just has to devote just enough resources to delaying/corrupting the fellowship (which is pretty easy to gauge) and he'll have plenty of time to conquer everything. We've had several instances of first time players with Evil to crush veteran Good players. I don't think we're missing anything. Big. Long. Tons of plastic crap. Expensive. Thumbs down[/quote]