The Free Peoples desperately try to complete their quest to destroy the One Ring, while at the same time defending their homelands from the encroaching hordes of Sauron and from his evil allies. War of the Ring Card Game is not to be confused with the Fantasy Flight Lord of the Rings Living Card Game, or this game’s bigger older sibling ‘The War of The Ring’, Ian Brody brings us this two to four player card game. A card game inspired by both the novels and the game that came before it, distilling the War of The Ring board game experience into a more palatable game length. This is simpler and shorter than its predecessor but make no mistake that this is not a simple or short game.

Frodo– Free Peoples: Dwarf, Hobbit, Rohan, and Wizard cards (Sidenote: “Dwarf” is just Gimli and his axe!) War of the Ring: The Card Game released last year as a spin-off from the beloved board game based on Tolkien’s epic fantasy trilogy. The game pits two to four players - split into teams representing the Free Peoples and the Shadow led by Sauron and Saruman - against each other in a battle to control locations across Middle-earth and corrupt the Ring-bearer. Uhh, I lied, there’s one last action: voluntarily cycling, aka discarding a card as an action, but you rarely do that.Like its board game cousin, War of the Ring: The Card Game is highly faithful to Tolkien’s original novels.

War of the Ring: The Card Gameis a game about choices. The Free Peoples players have less leeway to make sub-optimal decisions, so it suits the game best if you give the Shadow cards to the less experienced players. Because it’s semi-cooperative I found it possible to play with my youngest son, for whom the game would probably be a little too hard for him to play solo. His big brother could help to explain his options. I’m not saying that these are inherently bad cards to have in a game, they have really big thematic upside, but are just a double-edged sword of undercutting decision making if you draw them at the wrong time. In a game with hand draws between 3-5 cards on average, these can feel like dead weight, ESPECIALLY becoming discard fodder if their complement is removed from the game or is in a small discard pile. Two battleground piles are prepared. There is one pile for the Free People players and one for the Shadow players. Its first expansion, Against the Shadow, enables players to experience the adventure alone or cooperatively.

Step 3 – The Combat Step

Speaking of the original WOTR, that game was INSANELY hard to learn, its like the the rulebook and its player aids were some archaically worded parchment that were ACTIVELY gatekeeping the play. Happy to report that learning this War of the Ring is mostly good, with good examples, good use of space, fantastic card breakdown, etc. etc. This is helped by the good player aid that explains all the symbols, and slightly differentiated for the opposing teams here. My Comments: There is an extra level of abstraction since it is a card game, but this game does a good job at both capturing the Lord of the Rings theme and feeling like an adaptation of the board game. All in all, I think War of the Ring: The Card Gameis an excellent gaming experience, especially for fans of the Lord of the Rings.The way it captures the essence of the saga whilst also delivering a tactical workout, all in under an hour, makes it more than worthy of being GeekDad Approved!

Players can enter the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and imagine their own version of the epic battle between the Dark Lord, Sauron, and the Free Peoples of Middle-earth in War of the Ring – The Card Game, which was inspired by the best-selling and award-winning War of the Ring board game. All images and assets belong to Ares Games, if you enjoy this mod please consider supporting the official publishers. This is really a case of trying to sell the IP so hard, because Frodo Baggins is a single character card that you’ll see maybe on 4 paths a game if FP play very efficiently. Oh and no point is the actual 1 ring a mechanic during gameplay where Frodo himself is getting corrupted- corruption is just a generic VP for the Shadow. So yeah sorry WOTR fans, this game is just about maximizing VP on different locations flips before the game ends, not about going invisible, charting a proper path or anything like that. Here’s more non-items, the Great Gate or the Dead Men of Dunharrow… which of course is pretty much only good on Minas Tirith and next to Aragorn respectively. Or Shelob, who can ONLY be played on paths 7-8, so she’s probably discard fodder for most of the game.Inspired by the best-selling and award-winning War of the Ring board game, War of the Ring - The Card Gameallows players to journey to the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Ringsand create their own version of the dramatic conflict between the Dark Lord, Sauron, and the Free Peoples of Middle-earth. Sauron also play this attrition control game, since they can KEEP forsaking FP cards, and even forcing opponent discards through Beguiler is an incredible Nazgul to spam to reduce FP action possibilities. Going from 4 cards to 3 cards is no joke because of the cost to play every card, and many Nazgul abilities don’t eliminate the Nazgul after using them from reserve. You can combo it with other Nazgul to keep spamming abilities! Then, items are a very feast or famine type of card, where they can be good to AMAZING if you get to play them on a very specific character, but useless otherwise. If you lost the host card, whether through fault of your own or through a random forsake, then they’re utterly useless and really cut decision making. Feasting looks like: Frodo GETS mythril armor on a path, the one item that is equipped to him, adding TWO defense to a path where FP already win ties is amazing.