Friends & Foes is the first supplement for Reiner Knizia's
Lord of the Rings game.
Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 1-2 hours
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)*
The Components
Friends & Foes comes with:
- 1 scenario board
- 2 adhesive labels
- 53 cards
- 1 rule book
Scenario Board: A two-sided scenario board that fills in the gaps from the original game. We have Bree (locations 0-10) and Isengard (20-30). Overall the board is a very clean match for the scenario boards in the original game, with more John Howe artwork and the same organization of events and activity tracks. The artwork for Isengard, with the ents attackings the tower (as shown above), is particularly nice.
Adhesive Labels: The game comes with two clear adhesive labels, one for each new scenario board. They're intended to be affixed to the master board from the original set in the appropriate places. It's a little kludgy, and I would have preferred to pay $5 extra for a new master board, with the new scenarios laid in, and with clear reminders of which scenarios you can skip, but these labels does the job.
Cards: The game includes: 5 new character ability cards for the hobbits, 3 new Gandalf cards, and 13 new feature cards for Bree and Isengard.
There's also a deck of 30 new cards: the foes. These cards have a distinctive purple palette that differentiates them from the rest of the cards. Each one features a picture of a foe, a name, and one red shield to remind you that it's worth 1 VP if you win. In addition there's a rule at the bottom of each card which tells you how to defeat it. Some of these use standard icons and some have clear, simple text.
Rulebook: A 6-page rulebook that does a pretty good job of explaining the new rules.
Overall the new supplement is as beautiful as the original. My only real concern is that the game flow (for which scenarios to go to and which to skip) isn't made obvious anywhere on the physical component (you instead have to consult the rules), which is a minor utility problem. Despite that, and despite the slightly lower value that comes with Friends & Foes being priced as a supplement, it still ekes in a "5" out of "5" for Style: very good.
The Gameplay
Friends & Foes introduces a few new resources for the hobbits in Lord of the Rings to use, but also introduces two new boards to fight through and a slew of foes.
New Resources: Because things are more difficult, the hobbits get a few new resources in this expansion. Each hobbit now gets a one-time special power. In addition there are three new Gandalf cards that can be purchased for the normal 5 shields. These new cards do various useful things, and a few of them interact with the new game systems, allowing you to discard foes when you use them.
The Foes: There is now a deck of 30 foes, featuring people like the "Orcs of the White Hand", "Barrow Wights", and "Easterlings". If 8 of these foes are ever simultaneously out at the end of a hobbit's turn, the foes overrun the fellowship, and the hobbits fail.
Encountering Foes. There are a few ways that foes come into play.
The "card" icon from the previous game, which used to make you discard a card now instead makes you draw a foe. Whenever you roll two cards on the die, you must thus draw two foes. You can also encounter the card icons on some of the new boards.
In addition, whenever you draw an activity symbol as your first event tile on a hobbit's turn, you draw a new foe.
Defeating Foes. Likewise, foes can be defeated in a few ways.
First of all, each foe has a special way to defeat it. To defeat "Old Man Willow" you must discard 2 wild cards, to defeat the "Wolf Riders" you must take 2 corruption, to defeat the Variags of Khand you must discard 2 ring tokens, etc. Only the active player gets to do this (or the ring holder, between scenario boards).
Second, any player can pass on his turn to automatically defeat the first foe. (This is a new alternative action to drawing two cards or losing one corruption, the other things that you can do when passing your term.)
New Scenarios: The two new scenarios, Bree and Isengard, add variety to the game, but otherwise work much as the originals.
However, there's now the opportunity to skip some of the boards (which is a good thing since there are now 6). If you have no foes out before you go to Moria or before you go to Helm's Deep you may skip that board, but immediately gain 4 new foes.
You can do the same at Shelob's Lair, but here you also have to discard a specific feature card from Moria or Helm's Deep (essentially ensuring that you can't skip all three boards.) As with the other cases, you get 4 new foes.
It is possible, but difficult, to skip Helm's Deep and Shelob's Lair in succession. First you skip Helm's Deep, and get 4 new foes out. Then the ring bearer must defeat those 4 foes (as he's the only "active player" while on the master board). Then you can discard the Book feature card from Moria, and thus move straight on to Mordor. (Whew.)
Winning & Losing with Foes: As already noted if there are 8 foes out at the end of a turn the fellowship loses.
Contrariwise, if all 30 foes are defeated, the Fellowship accomplishes a "military victory" (but see below for concerns about this).
Otherwise, each defeated foe counts as a Victory Point, earned if you win the game or not. (So the new formula is final space + foes defeated, and if the ring is destroyed, also: + shields.)
Relationships to Other Games
Friends & Foes is the first supplement to Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings game. There's also a second supplement, Sauron, which may be used in conjunction with this supplement, or on its own.
The Game Design
Based on how it fills in the missing space numbers in the original Lord of the Rings game, Friends & Foes was probably intended in some form from the beginning. And, it shows, because it makes an already great game even better.
The Foes create interesting new dynamics in the game. They provide a much quicker sense of doom, since they build up so quickly, and also offer new, shorter-term victory for the hobbits, who can really feel like they did well when they manage to clear the foes away before one of the skippable boards. This keeps the game more exciting and also introduces a new, orthagonal type of strategy.
The new boards offer good variety, since you're no longer doing the exact same boards every game.
Finally, the new hobbit special abilities, no doubt primarily intended to balance the newer, tougher game, also introduce yet more new strategy, as you figure out how to use them to best advantage.
The main problem with Friends & Foes is that the military victory is much too easy to achieve. It's not balanced correctly. Thus you either need to ignore the military victory, or else play with the special, "Black Gate" rules, details of which can be found at BoardGameGeek.
Friends & Foes adds great variety and new strategy to Lord of the Rings, thus improving an already great collaborative game, and so it earns a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Friends & Foes does add some complexity to Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings boardgames, and thus I wouldn't introduce it to a bunch of first-time players. However, that's my only caveat. The new boards add new variety and the foes add new strategy. As long as you take care with military-victory-related issues, this is a win-win expansion for Lord of the Rings that anyone who enjoys the original game should purchase.
Review Summary