Lord of the Rings by Parker Bro/Hasbro Review by Russ Lockwood

A very good game is Lord of the Rings from Parker Bro/Hasbro. I have a feeling this will get a big boost when the movie opens, but in the meantime, you can go out and buy it now for about $25. I played this at a friend's house a few times and at the Hurricon convention in Tampa, FL with a couple of pick-up gamers. The idea, as you might expect, is to dump the Ring in Mt. Doom, avoiding nasty "events" on the way through the game board. All the characters are there, either in your tokens that you move or in various cards drawn from various decks. Up to five players may play, each taking a hobbit character (Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry, and Fatty). Frodo's got the ring, although that can and does change during play, each other Hobbit has a special ability of one sort or another, and it's off to the races to Mordor. Note: Although this is a "competitive" game per se, in the sense that you want to drop the Ring off, it is more a cooperative game in the sense of Dungeons and Dragons et al. The first game or two, we played our usual cut-throat style of card games--and failed miserably. It gradually dawned on us that we must cooperate in order to survive the treks across the various board locations. In a major sense, you're playing against the game system, not each other. Also, a two player game with only two characters is extremely difficult--you're better off each taking two hobbits. The heart of the game rests in active card play--and all of it quite clever. LoTR has four suits (hiding, walking, fighting, and making friends--further divided into white and grey versions), wild cards, and special cards (characters, magic swords, etc). The cards allow you to go from one location to another in each "scenario" (Rivendell, Mines of Moria, Shelob's Lair, etc) along a major activity line and two or three minor lines. Each of these lines has a set number of spaces to move a token [representing the party] across towards the end. Some minor activity lines are short, perhaps six or eight spaces, while others (especially the major activity line) can be 20 or so spaces long. Of course, along the way are a variety of goodies you can pick up to fight back the nasties of darkness. For example, you can pick up extra cards with special abilities, "shields" which can be traded in to avoid bad events or get good "Gandalf" magic cards, and a variety of tokens that you need to keep your life good and pure. Opposing you is an event deck of cardboard squares you randomly shuffle and turn over. Some point out a major or minor event line (free move!) and then allow you to play one white and one grey card, but not two white or two grey cards, plus a variety of other event style cards. You can also sit still and pick up two cards, or, and this gets important, do something akin to cleansing your soul and pull your character away from the dark side. You see, your actual character sits on what we call the Sauron Track--everyone starts in the pure white light and an Obelisk representing Sauron starts about 15 spaces away in the black darkness. Various events on the boards move Sauron towards the light, and you towards the dark. When the two meet...ZAP!...you've been drawn to the dark side and are out of the game. If you're the one with the Ring, game over for all! Sometimes, especially towards the desparate struggle at the end, a non-ring player will purposely "take one for the team" and take one of these events and plow into Sauron. However, if you dump the Ring into Mount Doom before Sauron gobbles everyone up like an evil PacMan, you win. It is very difficult. Back to those cardboard squares, a goodly portion of them automatically move you down a far different track--the real bad events track. Very little good can come of moving down this track, and sometimes you have to give away carefully hoarded assets (cards, life tokens, and such) in order to avoid an even worse fate. Some require you to roll a special die with mostly nasty events that happen as well. It's an ugly track, it changes with each scenario, and sometimes, you cannot help but run through to the end. If that occurs, the scenario is over (you survived the worst that can happen), and you advance. Note that some "scenarios," and I use that term loosely, do not make you run through a board. For example, Rivendell and Lothlorian hand you a goodly number of good cards--a welsome respite from the constant battling. However, in the very last scenario, Mordor, the last event on the real bad events track is Sauron grabs the Ring, so you can't win that way. And on the very last space (Mt. Doom), before you toss the Ring, you have to roll that special die. In short, there's all sorts of ways to lose. And lose you will...often. There's a score sheet that allows you to record how far you went before losing, but who cares? You didn't toss the Ring into Mount Doom. Are there any shortcuts or secrets? Not too many. Your prime motivation is to prevent Sauron from moving towards the light--you can always spend a turn cleansing your soul, and cards will help you move back to the light, but Sauron never ever retreats. Card play is important--you have to hoard cards from scenario to scenario and make sure you have lots of "running" cards (technically they are called "walking" cards, but I imagine more running than walking!) in Mordor, because those are the type you need for the main activity line to get to Mount Doom. And as I mentioned before, cooperation is an absolute must--although go ahead and play a cut-throat game just to see how little progress you'll make. Is there a downside? Just one particular nit to pick, and one somewhat overall point. The particular nit is that despite all the characters, events, and goodies, the cards are a bit generic, so that one "1 of Walking" is just as good as any other "1 of Walking" card. Yes, there are "2 of" suits and some "3 of" suits for slightly better equipment or people, but by and large, the suspense of having to decide whether or even if to use a precious item isn't much of a decision. The overall point is that since you play against the system, not the other players, when you win, you, er, ah, well, win. And when you do it a couple of times to prove it isn't a fluke, you, well, er, ah, win. And that's about it--the game goes back into the closet. We have an initial rush of play with anywhere between two and five players, and that's about it. I suppose it doesn't stop me playing Hearts from time to time in Windows, but on the other hand, once I cracked 10,000 points in Solitaire on Windows, I stopped playing. But to get that point, you'll be amazed how addictive losing can be. Back to Other Game Review List Back to Master Game Review List Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Coalition Web, Inc. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com