PLAYED FOR YOU

Der Herr der Ringe

FROM THE SHIRE TO MORDOR

On a main board and four adventure board, featuring locations from the novel „The Lord of the Rings“, players try to get the One Ring to Mordor, embodying members of the Fellowship of the Ring. Characters move from one end of a track towards Sauron, Sauron advances towards them from the other end. On the boards only a marker is moved from task spot to task spot. The main board and all adventure boards exactly denote, for each task, what players have to do; each board sets them different tasks. Some tasks must be completed by the group together, some of them by the active player alone. All tasks are resolved by discarding of a given number of cards, all players can contribute cards to this. Most tasks are rather hard to resolve; even the rolling of the die for new cards has only a chance of 1:6 for getting cards without approaching Sauron or loss of other cards. Each time when a task is not resolved Sauron advances. When he meets a character, this character leaves the game; if he meets the Ring Bearer, the game is lost for all players – in highest peril a Gandalf card might help. It is a rather challenging task to get the Ring Bearer to Mordor alive and to destroy the One Ring; cooperation is indispensable and you need each card of every player rather urgently and it is a big help if you have a tactician among the players who can perfectly coordinate card effects. Published for the first time in 2000 previous to the films, the game is as fascinating today as it was then and proof that cooperative games can be wonderful, enticing and challenging - this is yet another new edition succeeding the 2011 edition.

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: John Howe

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Kosmos 2013

Web: www.kosmos.de

Genre: Cooperative adventure game

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en es fr it ru and many others

In-game text: yes

Comments:

First edition 2000

Fantastic implementation of the topic

Does not demand knowledge of book or films to play

Excellent use of cooperative mechanisms

Compares to:

Other challenging cooperative games, to some of which it was a prequel, e.g. Shadows over Camelot

Other editions:

999 Games, Bard Centrum Gier, Devir, Editrice Giochi, Fantasy Flight Games, Hasbro, Hobby World, Kaissa, Stratelibri, Tactic

Chance (pink): 3

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0