PLAYED FOR YOU

Der Herr der Ringe

From Bag End 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 Brotherhood of the Ring. Characters move from one end of a track towards Sauron, the Sauron marker 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 before the films came out, the game is as fascination as then and a proof that cooperative games can be wonderful, enticing and challenging, especially when to try to improve previous scores.

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 90+

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: John Howe

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Kosmos 2011

Web: www.kosmos.de

Genre: Cooperative adventure game

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en es fr and many others

In-game text: yes

Comments:

New edition 2011

First edition 2000

Fantastic implementation of the topic

Easily playable also if you do not know films or book

Compares to:

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

Other editions:

2011 Stratelibri - Italy, 999 Games – Netherlands, 2010 Fantasy Flight - USA

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