War of the Ring

 Last year a friend very generously gave me a copy of the War of the Ring boardgame... one I'd never played.  It dates back to 2004 and has one player taking on the forces of Sauron while the other tries to lead the Free People's and sneak the Fellowship to Mordor.

I have a copy of the old 70s SPI game which shares similar themes but this is a more up to date and a less clunky version with a hefty dollop of Risk thrown in for the combat system.

There are a host of figures for each faction and a shedload of tokens and counters to keep track of, but the rules themselves are relatively simple.  Each player rolls a number of Action Dice which determine what you can do each turn.  As you'd expect Sauron has more of everything and is able to pile the pressure on from the start.  The Free People's have limited forces and a lack of reinforcements and are unlikely to win in a straight fight.  But of course they have the Ring and the Fellowship and can win by sneaking past the Dark Lord's armies and getting to Mordor.  Most of the Free People nations start unprepared for war, and there's a political effort needed  to raise the alert level before they move to a war footing.  Members of the Fellowship can be detached to help with this political agitating, or sacrificed to stave off the growing Corruption that affects the Ringbearer and which can lead to a Sauron victory.

The Witch King marches into Minas Tirith

Gandalf defends Helm's Deep

We're part-way through our first game and so far Minas Tirith has fallen, Merry has been despatched back to the Shire to raise the Northern armies, Gandalf has died but reappeared as Gandalf the White and is leading a force from Dol Amroth to save Helm's Deep from Saruman's armies.  I've probably been over-cautious in moving the Fellowship and they still have a long way to go but are relatively uncorrupted.  I really need to be less risk-averse and pick up the pace or we'll never make it to Mordor before Middle Earth has been over run.

The game is fairly simple to play but a bit bewildering when it comes to knowing what to do next.  I suspect there are good strategies to follow but neither of us have worked them out yet (although I suspect my son is way ahead of me in this respect!).  Good fun and it certainly has a big storytelling feel to it.