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Cooperation is the key to the new Lord of the Rings board game brought to you by Reiner Knizia (designer of German game classics like Modern Art and Euphrates and Tigris. In the straight version of the game, players work together, spending resources and progressing through events, to hurl the cursed Ring into the crack at Mount Doom.

Even if every player in the game works together, Sauron does not fold easy. Each player, one of the five hobbits from Tolkien’s epic (they included Fatty as the fifth), must worry about the Ringbearer’s progress towards corruption in addition to their own, or else give up the game to Old One-Eye. Play progresses from events that distribute resource cards (Including the Shire, Rivendell and Lothlorien) to event boards that gobble up those cards with alarming speed. Each event board (which included Helm’s Deep, Moria, Shelob’s Lair and Mordor) has subgoals that in turn furnish the band of hobbits with more resources and protect them from corruption. As play continues, Sauron’s forces advance closer to the hobbits in most cases killing or corrupting them. Players avoid an ignoble end by playing resource cards to help each other and further along the group’s subgoals.

The strengths of the Lord of the Rings board game include the gameplay, the components and the stunning artwork. I was amazed at how well the design seemed to capture the desperate flee of Frodo’s hobbit band. The closer the band was to Bag End, the more easily we dealt with events and encounters. The closer to Mordor we came, the sparser the resources and many times we fell to the Enemy. Game play was easy to pick up and we found that a differing number of players changed the entire strategy. Also, players can manipulate the difficulty of game play simply by moving the starting position of the Sauron token, making it much easier to corrupt a hobbit.

The components, while shy of actual hobbit miniatures, include some interesting pieces – the One Ring and the Sauron token being most notable. The rest of the contents include good quality game boards and standard cardboard tokens. The plastic hobbit tokens are a bit cheesy. But, at 35$, or so, the price reasonably reflected the quality of the contents.

The artwork, by John Howe, a concept designer for the upcoming movie, captures the feel of the principle characters. The event boards for Moria and Helm’s Deep were by far the most impressive. In the first, Gandalf squares against the Balrog in the classic bridge scene; in the second, Orc raiders bring death from Saruman’s tower.

On the downside, if you like Lord of the Rings but aren’t so found of hobbits themselves, you might be disappointed. Characters like Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas fit into the game only as resource cards. Also, I get the feeling that one could overplay the game in a moderate amount of time. After mastering the art of cooperative resource management via card playing, there seems little challenge or variation you could add.

Other than the two iteme above, I suggest Lord of the Rings as a good “pick-up” game for 2-5 players.

Lord of the Rings Chad Brouillard
Item type: Board game Product Name: Lord of the Rings Author: Reiner Knizia Company/Publisher: Sophistcated Games Ltd. and Kosmos Verlag Line: SKU: Cost: 35 Page count: n/a ISBN: 5023117594342 Ratings: Style 4 (Classy and well done) Substance 4 (Meaty) Review type: Playtest Review	Cooperation is the key to the new Lord of the Rings board game brought to you by Reiner Knizia (designer of German game classics like Modern Art and Euphrates and Tigris. In the straight version of the game, players work together, spending resources and progressing through events, to hurl the cursed Ring into the crack at Mount Doom. Even if every player in the game works together, Sauron does not fold easy. Each player, one of the five hobbits from Tolkien’s epic (they included Fatty as the fifth), must worry about the Ringbearer’s progress towards corruption in addition to their own, or else give up the game to Old One-Eye. Play progresses from events that distribute resource cards (Including the Shire, Rivendell and Lothlorien) to event boards that gobble up those cards with alarming speed. Each event board (which included Helm’s Deep, Moria, Shelob’s Lair and Mordor) has subgoals that in turn furnish the band of hobbits with more resources and protect them from corruption. As play continues, Sauron’s forces advance closer to the hobbits in most cases killing or corrupting them. Players avoid an ignoble end by playing resource cards to help each other and further along the group’s subgoals. The strengths of the Lord of the Rings board game include the gameplay, the components and the stunning artwork. I was amazed at how well the design seemed to capture the desperate flee of Frodo’s hobbit band. The closer the band was to Bag End, the more easily we dealt with events and encounters. The closer to Mordor we came, the sparser the resources and many times we fell to the Enemy. Game play was easy to pick up and we found that a differing number of players changed the entire strategy. Also, players can manipulate the difficulty of game play simply by moving the starting position of the Sauron token, making it much easier to corrupt a hobbit. The components, while shy of actual hobbit miniatures, include some interesting pieces – the One Ring and the Sauron token being most notable. The rest of the contents include good quality game boards and standard cardboard tokens. The plastic hobbit tokens are a bit cheesy. But, at 35$, or so, the price reasonably reflected the quality of the contents. The artwork, by John Howe, a concept designer for the upcoming movie, captures the feel of the principle characters. The event boards for Moria and Helm’s Deep were by far the most impressive. In the first, Gandalf squares against the Balrog in the classic bridge scene; in the second, Orc raiders bring death from Saruman’s tower. On the downside, if you like Lord of the Rings but aren’t so found of hobbits themselves, you might be disappointed. Characters like Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas fit into the game only as resource cards. Also, I get the feeling that one could overplay the game in a moderate amount of time. After mastering the art of cooperative resource management via card playing, there seems little challenge or variation you could add. Other than the two iteme above, I suggest Lord of the Rings as a good “pick-up” game for 2-5 players.