Game Box
Overall Rating: 5 stars (Loved It!!!)
It’s too tempting to go on a big rant about why I love these new Living Card Games by Fantasy Flight Games, so I’ll just boil it down to a few simple points.
- Your friends don’t have to be collectors in order to play.
- Once you buy the starter pack, you have everything you need.
- Expansions are set, not randomized like booster packs. This is extremely cost-effective.
In this game, rather than dividing the Heroes and Allies into factions (such as Elves, Dwarves, and Humans) they are divided into Spheres of Influence; Leadership, Lore, Spirit, and Tactics. These Spheres of Influence include the heroes that make that type of contribution in the worldwide fight against the shadow. For example, if you pick up the Tactics deck, you’ll find yourself playing Gimli and Legolas, whereas Aragorn can be found in Leadership, Eowyn in Spirit, and Glorfindel (a healing elf) in Lore.
Game Play
Card Design
After you pick a sphere of influence, you and your friends choose a quest (each with varying difficulty levels) and build the Encounter Deck, which will play the part of the antagonist. Each player gets three heroes and a deck to draw from, with each deck containing a Gandalf (a neutral ally which comes out for only one round and can have various powerful effects).
Game play works in phases, often with the players taking action simultaneously (Drawing Cards and Resources, for example). For other tasks, a first-player token is passed around the players to determine who does damage first, etc. In a turn, a player earns resources, uses resources to play cards from their hands, and dedicates some characters to the quest in order to make progress.
After this, cards are drawn from the Encounter deck to provide the unpredictable element of the enemy. At this point, players encounter enemies (Spiders, Orcs, Warg Riders), threatening locations (like a festering bog), or various conditions and effects brought on by other elements (such as trapped in a Spider’s Web, or being seen by the Eye of Sauron).
After totaling damage, players refresh their cards and start again at the Resource Phase.
What to Expect
This cooperative game is my favorite so far. Unlike some cooperative games, this one rewards players for working smoothly together. In fact, it’s practically a requirement because the game is HARD. The first pack comes with the cards required to play the game; four decks (one for each Sphere), three quests, and enough cards to build many combinations of encounter-decks.
Fantasy Flight Games is releasing one expansion pack a month. Each expansion comes with a Hero (Bilbo, Frodo, and Boromir are available this way), a new quest, and several new cards for each Sphere of Influence. However, you don’t need these expansions to play the game. You simply need the starter box, which comes with enough to allow four players to team up in quests on Middle-Earth.
Storage
My only complaint is that the box, as beautiful as it is outside and inside, is really not well-designed for storage. It comes with a flimsy (but artistically appealing) card insert, which was already bent during shipping. I considered storing the cards in MTG deck boxes to be kept inside the game box, but eventually just used some craft glue to reinforce the card-paper insert with some cardboard – because I loved the art on the insert that much. (picture to come)
For the tokens I picked up a tiny Plano-mold plastic box from the fishing-tackle section at Wal-mart. I figured hey, while I’m repairing Fantasy Flight’s horrible storage options, might as well go all the way. And if you think I went all the way, check out what this guy did. My $2.00 tackle-box and cardboard-reinforcement solution is nothing compared to this level of dedication.
Why all the dedication to storage? Because the game is that awesome, the box is that pretty, and we want to keep our awesome game in the pretty box, not some mood-less deck boxes from Ultra Pro. We’ve grown up since the Pokemon days. (…?)
Conclusion
Since purchasing the game last Thursday, I have played through the game 9 times. Even my wife, who is not at all a gamer, found this game to be enjoyable because of the teamwork element. The art and game design work well together in establishing the mood of Middle-Earth, and if you wanted to go even further you could play with the soundtrack from the movies. (Although I can’t imagine anyone being THAT nerdy… *cough*)
Ooh! My husband and I both love to play games. We’d probably never put it down.
We have to put it down just because it is pretty difficult, but not overly so. Still, very enjoyable, so it doesn’t take too long to pick it right back up again! =)