Ares Games War of The Ring: The Card Game – 60+ Minutes of Gameplay for 2-4 Players – Card Games for Teens and Adults Ages 13+ - English Version

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Character Cards (Like Aragorn or Saruman) can be played to Battlegrounds or Paths. Again they must have a matching icon. In the case of paths, there are no icons, but each character has a set of path numbers printed on them. This tells you which path you can play cards to. Not every character can be played to every path card. The Balrog can’t, for example, be played to Bag End and you can’t deploy Fatty Bolger to Khazad Dùm. Her Comments: I am not a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and I do not think I have even seen one of these movies since the last one was in theaters. While I did not connect with theme, the game does have an epic fantasy feel. And you know how to play any card, you must cycle another card? Well that’s card inflation, meaning you’re basically paying 2 cards to play 1, making certain ‘drawing cards ability’ not as healthy as you think. These 2 cards can be REALLY good, especially since you can +1 off of getting 2 cards, but what if you draw 0 of what you’re looking for? Then you just played 2 cards to get literally nothing, which feels absolutely terrible. This play alone won’t lose you the game, but its like you threw some part of your hand into mount doom. The two FP equivalents to these Shadow drawing events are Eomer and Theoden… but if you fail these, you still have a dude on the board with some upside, so not sure why these Shadow cards don’t just let you draw more so they don’t poop out. Like its board game cousin, War of the Ring: The Card Game is highly faithful to Tolkien’s original novels. Not just in the luscious artwork and deep lore on the cards, which stretch into corners of Middle-earth sometimes passed over by other games, but in the way that the story of The Lord of the Rings shapes the flow of the gameplay itself. Like its board game cousin, War of the Ring: The Card Game is highly faithful to Tolkien’s original novels.

My Comments: I like how the mechanisms of this game create a lot of hard choices. There are never enough cards to do everything, and every choice to do something is also a default choice not to do something else. Trying to figure out the best course of action is an engaging challenge. I also like asymmetry that is built into the game.Cards are played to one of the two locations, or into your reserve for use in future rounds, and this is done through cycling another card from your hand. I really like the simplicity here in not having to worry about the cost of cards in my hand but also knowing the agonising decision that I have to get rid of something I might want to play another card. Two battleground piles are prepared. There is one pile for the Free People players and one for the Shadow players. Her Comments: There is enough variety in the cards and locations that the game will often play out differently. I also appreciate that the two player game and the team game are different experiences. Also also, instead of doing an action, you can choose to pass if you have 2 or less cards, OR you can pass if both of your opponents have more cards than you in hand.

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. With more than 100 original illustrations from the greatest Tolkienian artists in the world, including an amazing gallery of landscapes from The Shire to Mordor by John and Fataneh Howe, War of the Ring - The Card Game is more than a game – it's also a memorable collection for all lovers of the world imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien. As the Shadow player you lead the hordes of the Dark Lord and his most powerful minions as they try to bring darkness to Middle-earth. Legions of Orcs, Trolls, Wolfriders and the dreadful Ringwraiths await your command. Hunt the Ring-bearer and bring the precious Ring to his Master, or crush your enemies with your unstoppable armies. Path cards follow the story of Frodo and the Fellowship, while battlegrounds represent the wider conflict across Middle-earth.This can also make the replayability of the game not as high as initially thought with all the cool cards with this strategy- each side just becomes aware of the what the other is trying to do. Compare that to the board game, where while Frodo still needs to get to mount doom, there’s a bunch of paths to get there, and there’s a bunch of different areas of middle earth for the Shadow to CHOOSE to mobilize against, rather than spurned on by card flips. Move a card from the reserve to a path or battleground. Note: Cards that have been played to the reserve in the current round may not be moved during the same round (though there are some card effects that can override this). Card Action Path combat works a little differently, though for the Free Peoples it is ostensibly the same. Free Peoples are always the defenders on path cards. Cards that can be played to path have slightly different shaped shields on them to the cards that are played to Battlegrounds. Many cards have only one type of shield, but some have both. Choose how you deploy them wisely! All images and assets belong to Ares Games, if you enjoy this mod please consider supporting the official publishers.

Eliminate is a key concept in the game. Cards that are eliminated do not take any further part in the game (similar to forsaken cards). 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. Like many of the best card games, it’s a simple set of rules made strategically complex by the possible combinations and effects of the cards themselves. Many cards grant bonus abilities when played to a player’s reserve area, making it not quite as obvious as throwing your most powerful cards into the fray. 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.This po-tay-toe based stew is definitely gonna taste different for your playthroughs with the draws, but WOTR CG CAN jump through all of its hurdles, and there can be really cool moments when the cards line up and its so close to what happens in the storyline… a truly shorter version of the board game. 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. Or the rulebook says: “The Shadow must try to slowly cuorrupt Frodo, burdening him with wounds toils, sorrow… blah blah blah.”