And Tolkien begat Dungeons and Dragons. And Dungeon and Dragons begat dungeon crawling. And all was good.
And New Line Cinemas begat the Lord of the Rings movies. And Decipher got the license. And the CCG begat dungeon crawling.
Yep, that's the game in a nutshell. Actually, the movie as well. Party moves to site, monsters attack party, party kicks monster butt, then someone yells, "Run Away!"
(Oh, look. I spoiled the movie. C'mon, admit it. You never read the books. You haven't heard the term, "Sword and Sorcery", either. And when some says, "AD&D", you can only think of your HR benefits.)
So the mechanics reflect one-on-one skirmishes, rather than armies fighting each other. The plot of the game is that each player plays their own fellowship (yep, every player has Frodo and a copy of The One Ring) moving from site to site on their turn, and waylays their opponent's fellowship with nasty critters. (Your deck contains half Fellowship cards and half Dark Side -- er, Minion -- cards.) The gimmick of the game is the mana -- sorry, Twilight -- Pool. As you add useful stuff to your Fellowship, and move from one site card to another, you add mana -- oops, tokens -- to the Twilight Pool. Starting with your opponent on your right, your opponents play bad guy cards on you, whose costs are paid by the Twilight Pool. (And don't be stupid like I was, by playing Fellowship cards like crazy, moving to a site that added a bunch of tokens, have your opponent play his entire hand of minion cards, then be turned into orc chow.)
Much of the game revolves around the skirmish. You will have your Fellowship characters, aka. companions (often with equipment), with their Strength and Health (hit points) scores. Your opponent will have his Minions with their attributes. Unlike the movie, the number of Minions won't be much more than the number of Companions. (To correct this oversight, I just tack onto the title of the minion card the words, "and friends".)
The first phase is the Maneuvers phase, but the starter decks don't do much with this phase. There's enough to worry about with in this game.
The second phase is the Archery phase. Some characters and minions have the Archery attribute. For each point of Archery, you wound one hit point of your opponent. Goblins typically have only one Health, which is a good thing. Most other races, however, have more than one Health. If you're gonna have Archery, have more than one lousy point (like, say, in the Starter decks!). To put it bluntly, in the CCG, Legolas sucks eggs.
The third phase is the Assignment phase. The Fellowship player matches one-on-one his Companions against the Minions. If any Minions are still unmatched, the Minion player matches them against the Companions of his choice -- which is often BAD. Dogpile on Frodo! (Yes, for your Hobbits, there **are** "Hide from 3872 orcs" cards.)
Now, for each one-on-one (or one-on-many) fight, compare total Strength. If the Strength of one side is twice that of the other, the poor victim is Overwhelmed. Dead, dead, dead. I wish AD&D worked this way. Otherwise, the loser loses one health. Frodo, with his ring, can avoid a wound by declaring he uses his ring. (He then receives a Burden counter. Ten burdens and he moves in with Gollum.) You did notice he can't do this when he's Overwhelmed? Hehehe.
If a Minion has the Fierce attribute, another round of attacks begin. Otherwise, the Minions sorta hang around and wait for the Fellowship player to decide what to do next. If the Fellowship player ends the turn, the Twilight Pool is emptied, the Fellowship player fills his hand, and the Minions walk off. (Maybe that reflects the part of the movie where the heroes kill off all the bad guys. I dunno.) If the Fellowship continues his turn, the Minion players fill up their hands, the Fellowship plays more cards and moves on to the next site. Yes, the Twilight Pool does get larger, the Minions stick around (chasing our heroes), and the Fellowship player does not to fill his hand. Good luck, Frodo!
Obviously, I've skipped many of the subtleties of the game. Event cards modify other cards, so you can pull out a surprise from your hand. Some cards complement each other better than others (eg. an Elf deck). When you move to the next site, you play the site from your opponent's site deck, and add an extra token to the Twilight Pool for each Companion (game balance). (Yes, it does suck when your best fighters have only one Health left.)
Still, the game does end up being a race to see who crawls fastest to the last site. This may limit the game -- although dungeon crawling has its mileage. The Decipher site has free downloads of the fixed Starter decks and rules. The game will be supported at least as long as the movies hold out. Try the d*ng game.
One Ring to Rule Them All. But plenty of ways to off Frodo!
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