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Lets Talk War of the Ring

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05 Feb 2013 13:54 - 05 Feb 2013 14:07 #143216 by Mr. White
I finally got my first play in a week or two back. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it.

There were many things I liked: the fellowship, character abilities, moving nations towards war, etc.

However, there were a few things that didn't excite me: seems like you'd really need to know the cards to play well, seemed that with mustering it's easy to replenish an area after a battle and that you could battle over one territory for a while, fairly long game with seemingly one path for the ring bearers (though there's likely more strategies...it was one play).

So all and all I thought it was 'ok'. Convince me why I need to give this game another shot, or even better, own the game. It's a big box with lots of pieces to manage. How is this better than the slim box, low count of say Julius Caesar? Would I be better served getting LotR: Confrontation for a LotR competitive fix?

(Side talk: Is LotR:Confrontation Deluxe really that much better than the smaller one?)
Last edit: 05 Feb 2013 14:07 by Mr. White.

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05 Feb 2013 14:18 #143217 by ThirstyMan
You do not need to know all the cards in order to have great games. Knowing a few key cards that can fuck your plans is useful but not necessary. There is no foolproof strategy that works for either side. There is definitely not one strategy for ringbearers, there are multiple options ranging from direct move to Mordor to activation and war to keep Sauron on his toes. It is a masterful game of bluff and counterbluff.

Ares have produced some excellent gameplay strategy guides when you think you need to know more. It is HUGELY atmospheric and is usually a cliffhanger finish. I have WoTR:CE and, apart from looking the business, is a really well balanced game.

It is also well supported across the net with its own liveplay java application and active league.
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05 Feb 2013 14:53 #143218 by repoman
I think it's a fantastic game.

It is one of the best "Dudes on a Map" games going. But it is more than that. With the fellowship/corruption aspect you have a whole new layer beyond most DoaM games. New avenues to victory and an extra burden on your resource management.

It feels epic in nature but the time factor isn't that bad. Three hours maybe? Too long for some but not so bad in relation to most war games or even something like Axis and Allies.

The look of the game is fantastic. The Collector's Edition that Thirsty and Josh have is absurdly awesome. However, for the rest of us great unwashed, the 2nd Edition is great. Taking many of the graphic design elements of the CE and some of the best ideas in 1st edition expansions. The bigger cards alone are reason enough to get the 2nd edition.

If, for whatever reason, you are able to get in enough games for it to start feeling old and I have no idea how that would happen, you can get the expansion for added flavor. Totally unnecessary but still cool.

The only real flaw is that the figures are ridiculously hard to differentiate straight out of the box. This was a problem in the 1st edition of the game as well but not so with the CE that had pre-painted figurines. DO NOT EVER start to paint them as you would mini's. JUST DON'T! Follow the path of Engineer Al who spray painted them appropriate colors and sealed them. But if you play enough, they have to be marked in some fashion because it really is a pain in the ass especially for the Free Peoples side.

Theme? Out the ass. Some people claim it doesn't capture the true nature of the Lord of the Rings. "Whatever," I say. I feel the struggle of good vs. evil every time I play it.

In short. I love it. Get it.

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05 Feb 2013 14:54 #143219 by JoelCFC25
There's simply no comparison between WOTR and LOTR: Confrontation. The latter--while an excellent game--can be taught in 3 minutes and played in 10 (or less).

I echo Thirsty's comments about the cards. It helps to know a few of them that are real ballbreakers at the right time, but by no means should you feel like you need to know them inside and out unless you plan on playing that "magic geek" guy over and over.

The second edition included a few rule/card tweaks that I think were intended (among other things) to slightly nerf a powerful Shadow strategy that had emerged from the true sharks. Not sure I would call replenishing by mustering automatically "easy"--obviously it depends on your action dice.

I usually tell people that the game is encumbered by a few awkward (clumsy?) rules and procedures that you're unlikely to have seen before in dudes-on-a-map games--but these are the cost of achieving what might be the strongest thematic bond with the source material of any game I've ever played. Worth it!

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05 Feb 2013 15:25 #143220 by Mr. White
How do you guys rate it as a three or four player game? Still fun?

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05 Feb 2013 15:37 #143224 by jpat
Replied by jpat on topic Re: Lets Talk War of the Ring
I'll dissent ... a little. I had some similar reservations, Jeff, after my first play, too, Jeff. The gameplay ran way long, although that was partly due to the fact that I had to explain the game from scratch to another player, and my rules explanations tend to run to painful lengths, too. There's also a certain "what the hell do I do now?" aspect to our initial play that isn't the game's fault but dimmed our enjoyment a bit. The cards are fine and themey, generally, but often highly situational or conditional. While I wouldn't say it would be necessary to read them all ahead of time, the conditionality of the cards makes their proper use one more thing to consider in a game already pretty full of things to consider. The similarity of the figures, already noted, adds to the problems a little, and while I'm not sure how much more expensive a set of different-colored-plastic figures would've been, I'm pretty sure I would've paid it.

That said, there's a lot of love and theme fused into the game. Pretty much every mechanism is designed for theme conveyance. I'd really like to give it another go, but I don't think my fiancee will give it another chance, and the friend I played with a few weeks ago isn't available all that often.

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05 Feb 2013 15:43 #143225 by repoman

Jeff White wrote: How do you guys rate it as a three or four player game? Still fun?


The three/four player rules are useless. This is a 2 player game. 2 to 4 was put on the box to boost sales.

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05 Feb 2013 15:53 #143228 by JoelCFC25
I would never turn down a 2P game in favor of a 3P or 4P game. Having said that, I've played it as both 3P and 4P and it was still fun.

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05 Feb 2013 16:02 #143229 by Matt Thrower
I'm also going to agree to the consensus with a couple of misgivings. Basically, it's very good.

* Don't compare it to the Confrontation, which is a weak Stratego variant with all the theme of a piece of cheese pretending to be Michealangelo's David.

* You don't need to know the cards to enjoy or play it effectively, unless you're playing a seasoned opponent. Generally by the time your strategy hinges on knowing the cards, you'll have learned them anyway.

* The mustering issue is a red herring. It's not that hard to muster, but the key rule is that your force pools are limited and casualties are permanent. So you can carry on mustering ... right up until the point you run out of troops. Which for the Free Peoples player is usually alarmingly quickly.

* I actually prefer the 1st edition components, although I'm virtually alone in doing so. But the card & rule updates in 2nd improve the game by making strategy more flexible.

* It's basically a 2-player game. The 3-player variant is only marginally awful if you split the Shadow player, which is at least slightly thematic. The 4-player isn't worth even that.

* The best thing about WotR is the way in which it allows you to flexible re-tell the LotR story in any number of ways, nearly all of which retain thematic sense. Given the incredibly fine line that needed to be walked between railroading the players' decisions to make it like the book, and making something thematically implausible, that's an incredible achievement.

* It came #1 in my yearly round up of Ameritrash fans average ratings.

* My minor issues with War of the Ring are simply logistical. It's a fiddly game in every sense of the word: annoyingly involved set-up time, complex rules with frequent exceptions, sizeable (3-4 hour) play time, difficult strategies that can stand or fall on minor issues. I imagine its best played on a regular basis against the same opponent, a feat I have never managed.

* I got the recent expansion, Lords of Middle Earth, as a review copy. So I'm going to be doing a run-down of the whole game in the near future. Watch this space.

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05 Feb 2013 16:30 #143236 by DukeofChutney
i recently picked up lords of middle earth expansion. I haven't played it yet, but already im doubting whether it was worth it. I appears to effectively just add some more dice. I'd be interested to hear your views Matt.

War of the Ring took about 5 plays to convince me it wasn't simply an over done linear war game covered in chrome. There is a good game here but it can take a while to find imo. Regardless of the competitive game, a large part of the draw is as others have already said, its ability to retell the story, but slightly different each time. It does deliver the epic feel and scale of the conflict, but also the individual character stories in a way few other games manage.

The only card its really worth being aware off is the tree beard cards. Theres a couple which essentially give a free peoples character the opportunity to destroy Isengard in a dice roll. It doesn't always come up and doesn't always matter but it can alter the story in a big way.

I found the free peoples strategy really hard to get to grips with. They only won in my fifth game (i wasn't playing them) and they got lucky. I had one game where i got the ring the penultimate position on the doom track then failed to roll a single character result on the next turn and could do nothing whilst the shadow claimed the last two fortresses.

In some respects i'd say this game is similar to Hannibal RvC. Hannibal is a much cleaner design, but both can swing wildly back and forth between the players and whilst there is a fair slice of luck, it is still very much a game of skill.

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05 Feb 2013 16:56 #143243 by mikecl
War of the Ring is not an easy game to learn because its strategies aren't immediately obvious although if you look around you'll find a ton of advice on that front like the DEW (Dale-Erebor-Woodlands) strategy for the Shadow player.

I'm not going to tell you what it is, because I think this game is best revealed by playing it. You wont' regret the time investment. BUT it is a time investment.

This is probably one of the most immersive games ever made. It's the essence of Ameritrash. It feels like you're playing scenes straight out of the book. I'll second not painting the individual miniatures. There's too many. I basically spray painted the different factions different colours and that worked fine.

If you have a regular partner who either likes or doesn't mind playing a wargame because it IS a wargame, then it's time well invested. But like Earth Reborn or High Frontier it demands a time commitment. And that's something to think about with all the new releases today. If you're in to playing the field and not ready to settle down and play one game (and it's a long game on top of that)for awhile, it may not be for you.

It would have been THE perfect game for the 80's when good titles were relatively few and far between.

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05 Feb 2013 17:08 #143249 by Michael Barnes
War of the Ring was my first-ever review copy. It was also my first-ever printed-in-a-magazine review. I gave it a 10, and I mostly stand by that even though it's a game that I will almost certainly never play again.

No need to retread what's already been said. What hasn't really been said is that it's as much a CDWG as it is a DoaM game. Don't let the plastic figures fool you. There's a lot of things in the game that feel like they could have come from a 1980 SPI game. Or a 2006 GMT one. Take what you will out of that.

The negatives are that It's more uncomfortably complicated than it looks, horrendously fiddly, saddled with a terrible rulebook (at least in the old edition), and the original copies had some pretty bad product design (badly drawn maps, lookalike figures, trippin' Nazgul, tiny fonts on the cards, etc.). Hard to believe that game was $59.95 retail when it came out.

I've not played the revised editions, but I think I would definitely suggest those.

3-4 player game is mostly crap. It's not meant to be a 3-4 player game and it shows. Is it fun? Yeah, kind of. But it's clear that you're not supposed to do it that way.

As for LOTR: The Confrontation- it's a masterpiece. One of my all-time favorite games and probably one of my favorite two player games. It is a Stratego descendant, but there's some incredibly economic design and theming concepts in it. The old edition is fine and if you can get it cheap it's worthwhile,but the deluxe one is bigger and has an entirely new set of alternate characters that you can swap in and out of the base set or just use all new ones, so it drives the replayability through the roof...and it increases the bluffing/deduction/surprise elements.

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05 Feb 2013 17:18 #143250 by engineer Al
The instructions are too hard to read. I like the movies better. . .
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05 Feb 2013 18:36 - 05 Feb 2013 18:39 #143272 by dragonstout

Jeff White wrote: (Side talk: Is LotR:Confrontation Deluxe really that much better than the smaller one?)

I think the smaller one is significantly better than the "deluxe" edition. Much better art, much easier to take on a trip (which is the most common time we play), the characters don't fall over (which can of course completely ruin a game), and who gives a shit about the extra characters?

As for War of the Ring, I didn't think it was worth keeping over any of my other wargames either. A bunch of pointless subsystems that don't add much. It felt surprisingly generic to me, barely different from Axis & Allies. It was still fun, but very clearly competing with other, better titles.
Last edit: 05 Feb 2013 18:39 by dragonstout.

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05 Feb 2013 18:50 #143276 by repoman

dragonstout wrote:
A bunch of pointless subsystems that don't add much. It felt surprisingly generic to me, barely different from Axis & Allies. It was still fun, but very clearly competing with other, better titles.


What subsystems would you classify as pointless?

Barely different from Axis and Allies? Other than figurines and a map what do they have in common?

With what other better title does this compete?

"I didn't think it was worth keeping over any of my other wargames either."

That is an empty statement.So given the choice between Advanced Squad Leader and War of the Ring you'd find no reason to choose War of the Ring even though there is nothing at all in common between them.

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