Lord of the Rings: The Card Game(2011)

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game by FFG is a game set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth universe.Unlike many card games, this is a co-operative and players will working together to fights monsters, explore new areas and dangers, and reach the end of their journey.

Players will choose one of the four spheres or combine two to make themselves a deck and choose heroes from each of the spheres. Then after setting up the scenario, you’re ready for an adventure! The goal is for the players to accomplish the goal of the scenario before the forces of evil kill or overwhelm them. To represent the threat of their foe, players have a threat dial which increases as the game goes on.

A game round plays out in a few phases:

1. The Resource Phase: Each hero gains one resource and players draw a card.

2. The Planning Phase: From the first player going clockwise, each players pays for equipment or allies that’ll join the party.

3. Quest Phase: Players will commit heroes to the quest, reveal encounter cards, and resolve and effects.

4. Travel Phase: If there is a location available to explore, the first player can choose to travel to this location.

5. Encounter Phase: Players engage enemies that are in the staging area.

6. Combat phase: Players assign a defender, the enemy attacks then the player attacks.

7. Refresh Phase: Players ready any exhausted characters and increase their trackers by one. The first player passes the token to the player to their right.

The Threat dial can also increase during the quest phase as each enemy and location has what’s called a threat score. To combat these, each hero and ally has a willpower score. During the quest phase, players will commit their heroes to raise their total willpower score. After encounter cards are revealed, count the threat score versus the players willpower and if there’s more threat, players raise their dials by the excess threat. The trickiest part of this phase is any heroes that commit to the quest become exhausted and can’t fight or defend for the rest of the round. It’s important to keep track of your threat because once you hit 50 threat, you’re removed from the game. Your heroes have become too scared and leave the party.

The encounter phase is the second trickiest aspect to learn at first. Players looks at their threat dial’s score and if the enemies threat rank is lower than the players, they must engage that enemy. If the enemy has a higher threat rank, then the player can choose not to engage that enemy.

The game simulates being part of a party well. You’ll be making some interesting choices pretty early. Which of the party should focus more on handling the quest phase, which player is more fighting focused. It’s exciting as you reveal encounter cards. Letting out a sigh of relief at the sight of no enemies or let out a defeated “crap.” as enemies pile up and you realize that you’re boned. Seeing your friend on the edge of defeat and managing a last second savior play. You feel like you have a part to play in the group and that’s great. It manages to avoid the alpha gamer issue that some co-ops have by not making any one sphere too powerful. Each sphere feels different and it adds variety to the game. The deck building is interesting allowing for players to create interesting and fun combinations. The game isn’t easy as well, it has a nice challenge.

The game’s core set doesn’t allow a ton of deck building capabilities out of the box and you’ll need to expand a bit to get more out of deck building. The game isn’t easy to pick up and learn and it takes a game or two to truly understand everything. The Core set includes 3 scenarios so there’s only a certain amount of replay-ability in the box unless you pick up an expansion. The game’s difficulty while being a nice challenge will become easier as you pick up on the combinations and strategies meaning that you’ll want to expand the game after playing the first few scenarios. Despite these quibbles, It’s a fun cooperative game that manages to capture the feel of co-operating on a an adventure.

Lord of the rings: The Card Game is a 2 player game but can be expanded to a 4 player with the addition of a second core set.

http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Of-The-Rings-Card/dp/1589949811/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421865993&sr=8-1&keywords=lord+of+the+rings+card+game