The Lord of the Rings – Join Frodo for a quest

Since we love The Lord of the Rings how can we not take up a board game that lets us try our hand at destroying The Ring in Mount Doom?

What is great about The Lord of the Rings board game is that it’s a cooperative game. You and your mates take an epic journey as little hobbits toward the dark land of Mordor to destroy the ring. Along the way you pass through famous lands while trying to stay clear of Sauron.

There are many things to keep track of while journeying in these lands, so it’s inevitable that the first time we played The Lord of the Rings board game with our family we didn’t get everything quite right and forgot a few things. But after playing it once, we referred back to the rules again and played through better the next time – and wouldn’t you know it, we lost badly. Sauron overtook our ring bearer and we had to cower in defeat.

Since it is an epic adventure, there are many things to keep track of. That’s why we don’t recommend it for younger crowds. Teenagers and older are a great group for this board game adventure. And I guess we should add that mom wasn’t interested in playing this one with us – although Brooke jumped in on later games even though she has neither read the books or seen the movies (it will be a long while before I’d let her watch anyway). There are multiple boards that you play on, multiple markers, multiple piles of cards, different tokens, and each hobbit has different abilities.

The one critique of the game is that after playing many times it may seem repetitive. But that can be combated in a few ways. First is that the dynamics will change depending on how many players you have. We’ve found it easier to win with fewer players. As you increase the number of hobbits, you’ll have less tokens available for each person and thus will find hobbits slipping closer to Sauron every round (scarcity breeds quicker death). Second is that you can increase the difficulty by starting Sauron closer to the hobbits to start the game. And third is to mix in some of the game variants – such as having one of the players take on the roll of Sauron.

But enough rambling – go ahead and check out our video review of The Lord of the Rings board game to see for yourself how it plays. It is the longest review we’ve done so far mainly because there is a lot of different elements to the game. And even though we still just scratch the surface, the video review should give you a good idea if you would like The Lord of the Rings board game.

The Board Game Family Game Ratings
	Caleb
	Brooke
	Jaden
	Trevor
Has not played	Mom
	Dad
	Average