Lord of the Rings the Board Game Review

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Lord of the Rings the Board Game ReviewThere are plenty of good games out there, and some cooperative ones, but good cooperative games that don't take forever to play are hard to come by. This is one.
I've seen complaints that the rules are hard to understand. I'd like to clarify that a little. If you just open up the rules and read them by themselves, they ARE hard to understand. That's okay. Just follow the setup instructions at the front of the rulebook first. THEN read the rules, looking often at the board & other components, and it all starts to make sense; in fact, virtually everything about the game is very cleverly designed. The only question that I haven't yet found an answer to is when, exactly, the event tiles are supposed to be reshuffled (I think after each location is complete is probably the best time, but it could be that you're supposed to wait until they run out; I'm just not sure).
The basic ideas aren't that difficult. On your turn, you turn up tiles until you get a good one (suffering the consequences of the bad along the way) and then you either play one or two cards to advance the group, or you recover by drawing two cards or healing yourself one space on the Corruption track (as the game progresses, the Hobbits and Sauron advance toward each other on this track, and if a Hobbit and Sauron meet, the Hobbit dies). There are four location boards: Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair, and Mordor, each with several tracks; on each board, one of the tracks is the "main" track, and you advance to the next when it is complete - or when time runs out, with nasty consequences ranging from the moderately bad "Fly, you fools" in Moria to "The Ring is MINE!" in Mordor, ending the game as Sauron recovers the Ring. That said, there are great benefits to advancing the secondary tracks as well; if you concentrate solely on the main one, you'll never make it TO Mordor, let alone through it.
At every turn, there are meaningful decisions to be made. Adding to the tension, you never know how much time you have to achieve important results (such as obtaining Eowyn's help before the Lord of the Nazgul arrives - which, by the way, is very hard to do - or getting the Riders of Rohan to reinforce Helm's Deep before it is too late). You can go from being in good condition to in deep trouble in a heartbeat with a few bad tile draws, and that goes double in Mordor. You also need to actively cooperate with the other Hobbits, or you may find yourself half way to Mordor and all your friends have expired, leaving you too weak to get to Mount Doom and dunk the ring. Particularly, make sure you DON'T take all of one type of life token, because anyone who is missing a certain type at the end of a location board moves toward Sauron on the Corruption track. There are also many opportunities for a player to make a sacrifice to prevent something bad from happening to the entire group.
The game has three built-in difficulty levels (you just start Sauron in a different space on the Corruption track, to give you more or less leeway), and the difficulty also varies depending on the number of players. I suspect three, four, and five are probably not dramatically different in difficulty, but I got the distinct impression that the game is much more difficult with only two. There is also a competitive variant, but a lot of cooperation is still required.
Although the box says the game is intended for players 12 and up, I think that with a well-behaved player to lead (in other words, one who won't just order the others around but will actively involve them in the decision making; you might want to play with all cards face up instead of hidden as the rules say), younger children could easily play and have fun, IF they are prepared to cooperate. I played tonight with my (very smart) four year old daughter, and although she certainly didn't understand everything that was going on, she had the basic ideas down and volunteered to take just about every hit imaginable to help. She also LOVED rolling the die (which is a punishment of sorts - you roll to see just what bad thing befalls you in many situations; you may take one to three points of damage, advance Sauron one space, discard two cards, or nothing), so it was fortunate she drew Sam, as each Hobbit has a special ability and Sam's is that he never suffers more than one point of damage from a die roll. We ended up one space from Mount Doom when Sauron seized the ring, and we had a great time. As an added bonus, she asked a ton of questions about the background, from why we were trying to destroy the ring to why Sauron was so powerful (I've rated it up for educational because it has sparked my daughter's interest in the books; I'm pretty sure that as soon as she's able, she'll want to read them).
I highly recommend the game. It's not only a very good game, but the theme ties in very well. It's not just a random game with a theme pasted on - there was a lot of thought given to the events, like the final event in Moria called "Fly, you fools!" where one player can take a big hit (three points of damage) or everyone can roll the die and suffer the consequences. It's pretty much a no-brainer to decide that SOMEBODY should take the three hits (except with only two players, where it is arguable), but who will volunteer? That's just one of the ways the game makes the players put the overall quest above themselves - even if your Hobbit dies, you still win with everybody else if the ring is destroyed.Lord of the Rings the Board Game Overview

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