Finally got War of the Ring to the table! Sorry for the blog post in advance.
I mainly play with two other friends for our near-weekly board game night. After I bought WotR like 3 or 4 weeks ago, I texted them about it to let them know. Friend A was the only one who seemed interested, so for the past few weeks we would plan to have the main game night with everyone be Saturday, and he comes over Sunday night to play WotR. Sadly, he kept cancelling for various reasons the past 3 weeks so it's been sitting fresh in its box.
Well, with the long holiday weekend, Friend B (the one who did not seem particularly interested at first) texted me out of the blue and was wondering if he could come over one of these nights and play WotR! I had no idea he was really into LotR/Tolkien and wasn't sure if this was his style of game, so it was a bit of a gamble in my opinion on what his opinion of it was going to be but I was super enthusiastic about him giving it a shot. Long story short, we had a great first game. Obviously took a bit longer due to rule books, various breaks, etc, so it lasted between 3pm-10pm. Well, we finish that game at 10pm and he
immediately wants to play again. Like, holy shit. After getting done with a 7 hour-ish game, he doesn't want to catch his breath but wants to jump back in? Well, I did not hesitate! Part of this was because our main game night, and dinner with friends was the next night, so he decided just to crash at our place, and could get more game time in.
He even saw I had the expansions, so we decided to add only one of them during that second game to not overwhelm with new complexity. It was a bit of a rough start with the new rules, new dice and new companion/minions and what to use when doing the "original" scenario and not Councils of Rivendell. Well, within the first hour we pretty much got over that hump, and eventually paused the game at 2am. Woke up around 10am and it took another 90 minutes in the morning to finish the game. So, around 4 hours-ish, even with new rules? Not too shabby.
Detailed Results / commentary:
Game One
Shadow Peoples (Friend B)
Free Peoples (Me!)
Shadow People Victory: Corruption, Ring-Bearers 2 steps until Crack of Doom.
Shadow player was a few actions away from a military victory it seemed like. I was at like 9 or 10 corruption. Had to risk moving and pulling the hunt pool this turn I felt because it was my last action for the current turn, and if I could hold out militarily until the start of the next turn, I could attempt the last step to win as my first action.
To show the hunt tile odds I was going with, the previous turn, the SP was kind enough to play two cards which let him randomly draw a tile out of the hunt pool and it would immediately apply the effects unless it was an eye or special token (those just got discarded). I prayed he pulled eyes to improve my chances. Wouldn't you know it, lady luck ensured that both times he played a card like that, they pulled out both my "0" and "-2" special tiles I put in there previously! Damn. That meant only the beige and SP special tokens were in there. None of which are good. Still had to go for it I thought and pray for 1's or maybe a 0, but on that last hunt pool pull, he naturally pulled an eye, and there were enough dice to finish me off.
My luck ran dry, but it was CLOSE! I thought I was pretty screwed early on, but I managed to hang in there thanks to a few good defenses in a siege. Eventually, I just got the fire lit under my ass once I was starting to see more and more of my units leave the field, so I began Operation Sprint To The Damn Mountain. Very enjoyable for both of us though! I could not have asked for a more perfect first game.
Game Two
Shadow Peoples (Me!)
Free Peoples (Friend B)
Shadow People Victory: Military victory. We're new at this, and my friend loves to play with different strategies, but sadly it didn't work out at all. His primary focus was on military, with a big emphasis on getting the Dwarves and North into the fight, so he was splitting the Fellowship a lot and even running the ring-bearers into the north-western part of the map to activate the Dwarves and North from those locations. Though, he spent the majority of his time not moving the ring bearers. They sat in Rivendell for like 2 turns before he decided to move them (and that's where he took them to the north west). When the game ended, they were at the Shire. Obviously, during this time as the SP, I was able to whittle his military down. I was also able to put a card in place to stop Rohan from activating, so they were honestly a complete no-show for the game until the end when I swooped in my military to grab their 3 points (which did activate them -- but no use by this point). Yes, if I recall correctly, that card could have been discarded with the use of a Will of the West result, but my friend never did that because he wanted all his actions to be focused on the north. Sorry Rohan.
I started my strategy with a Lorien rush which he tried hard to defend to no avail, and I then followed it up by sieging Gondor, then he left Rivendell undefended (and had no elves in reserve and no other units nearby) so I took two units to grab that, and finished it up by closing the jaws on Rohan from Gondor and Orthanc.
This second game was a bit too one-sided, but it was actually great for us learning new strategies. We spent a while talking about different strategies we should have taken, and spent a while strategizing some FP strategies. You know you have a good game when you can spend like an hour after the game talking about different strategies you could have used and how much it would change the game.
Overall, huge success this weekend!
