A REVIEW — Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth
Initial Thoughts
I am a huge fan of 7 Wonders Duel! It’s one of my favorite games and probably my actual favorite two-player game. I like 7 Wonders fine, and I really enjoy 7 Wonders Architects. When this game was announced, I wasn’t sure it was something we needed. I was worried they had put a Lord of the Rings wrapper on the candy 7 Wonders Duel.
Game Play
In The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth, you play as either the Fellowship of the Ring or as Sauron and his cronies. The game will be played in three chapters/rounds.
If you have played (or loved) 7 Wonders Duel, this game is a very quick teach for you. Fans of the previous game will be right at home in the mechanics and game style. It still features a pyramid-ish pile of cards, some up and some down, for you to choose from on your turn. You can only choose available cards with no other cards on top of them. And you’d best be able to afford them, whether with money or with the skills.
You still are collecting resource cards, green science cards, red military, and yellow money cards. Except this time, the resources are skills. Gone are the brick, glass, wood: Here, they are skills - ruse, strength, courage, knowledge, and leadership.
The green science cards are now races of Middle-earth with whom you may ally – elves, ents, hobbits, humans, dwarves, and wizards. Still with symbols you acquire. This time, you may match two of one specific race or have three different races (ala 7 Wonders Architects). Doing so provides you with either two of the three tokens for that race (if you collected two matching) or one token of each race you collected (for the three different ones). The tokens have taken the place of the Progress tokens from original Duel. They provide a one-time boon, a special power, or a coupon. Each of the 18 tokens is unique.
The red cards are still military cards, but this time, it is not a tug of war as it was in Duel. This is where the game drastically differs from its predecessor. The Lord of the Rings: Duel has an area-control style map of Middle-earth, where you place your troops. It contains seven unique regions. When you play a red card (or a unique card/Landmark), you will place the designated troops in one of the two regions it offers you. Some cards also let you march your troops along lines to fight enemy troops.
A new colored card to this version is the blue cards. These ring cards represent a race between Frodo and Sam vs. the Nazgul. It has a unique, clear sliding scale where players are either sprinting to Mount Doom (the Fellowship team) or trying to catch Frodo and Sam (Team Sauron). The Fellowship can never get further away from Sauron, they can only hope to reach Mount Doom while the Nazgul are breathing down their neck.
Instead of Wonders, this game has Landmarks that are up for grabs to any player with the skills (or coin) to claim them. While each has a reward it gives you, you also get the reward of adding one of your castles to that particular region. This gives you permanent presence in that particular region.
Winning comes in many ways! There are no victory points in this game, so you truly have to snag a strategy and try to see it through.
Support of the races: Collect all six races (green card symbols)
Quest of the Ring: Get to Mount Doom (Fellowship) or catch Sam and Frodo (Sauron) on the Ring tracker
Conquer Middle-earth: Control all 7 regions of the map.
Ties are broken by the player who is present in the most regions of Middle-earth’s map.
Pros
Boy, was I wrong about my initial worries. Repos Productions has taken arguably their best game and made it even better. It’s smarter, it’s crunchier, it’s thematic.
The reconfiguring of the military track is a game in itself. While you are trying to build your skills up, you can’t look away from the military before it gets out of hand.
The cards are cheaper to purchase and they made the math of buying skills/resources much more streamlined.
The Quest for the Ring track is so cool looking. Just taking this piece out of the box got us all excited. The little bonus rings along the way are an excellent touch and motivator. Everyone needs that carrot to make them run faster!
Cons
I honestly struggle with the cons on this one. It’s a fabulous game. The artwork style is not my favorite, but I honestly don’t know how I would change it, so that’s just me grasping at straws here.
My main complaint would be that it’s just for two players. I would love to see a version of this game that is four-player and maybe even a team mechanic to it.
