War of the Ring is a board game that concerns
the struggle between Sauron and the Free peoples of the West. There are three ways to play the game. There is the character game, the campaign game and the three player game. In the character game the Dark Power Player is Sauron and the Fellowship Player is the Free peoples of the West. In this verison each player only gets about nine characters.These characters move about the board which is shaped like J.R.R. Tolkiens middle earth. In this verison there are only three ways to win. For the Fellowship Player they have to take the Ring to Mt.Doom in the heart of the Dark Power Players domain. For the Dark Power Player he must capture the ring and take it to his fortess, the dark tower. Or another way for him to win is to capture all the Fellowship Player citidels.
Gameplay
The game is divied into turns called gameturns.In each gameturn every player gets to move his forces and play different event cards that can help different players in the game. The first phase of a gameturn is called a Ring phase. In this phase the Fellowship player may attempt to take off the ring from any character that has put it on. To do this he must roll a number under the ring rating of the character which is on his card. For example if Frodo had a ring rating of 4 then to take off the ring he would have to roll a 1,2,3, or 4. Then the Dark Power Player rolls to see what side Gollum is on. After that is determined there is the events phase in this phase every one draws one event card from the story line of the Lord of the Rings. In the first gameturn every player draws three event cards and you can't have more than that so every game turn someone will have to gat rid of at least one event card per gameturn. The ways to do this are discard or play a card. These cards can be played at any time in the gameturn. Next comes the Search Phase. IN the search phase the Dark Power Player attemps to spot the Fellowship Players characters. The Dark Power player can only battle Fellowship characters if they are spotted. To search for Fellowship characters the Dark Power player draws a search card. On the card are a list of reigons and the type of character the Dark Power player will use to search. For searching the Dark Power Player must expend shadow points. Shadow points limit the Dark Power Player from being able to do to much in a gameturn. The number o points he gets can be any where from 8 to 13. After the search phase is the Fellowship Player Turn. In this turn the Fellowship Player may move his forces as far as movement points alllow. Movement points are printed on the playing pieces. Each hex that you move through costs a different number of points to cross. Example: a marsh hex costs 5 movement points to cross. After the Fellowship Player moves his characters he conducts any battle that he has started.
War of the Ring (SPI game)