It's a great game. The 2nd edition balanced it out some without adding additional complexity.
It's easiest if learned from someone who has played before or finding a summary sheet on BGG... doh!... In a nutshell the game revolves around using action dice which are rolled each turn. So only certain things are possible each turn based on your action dice roll. So tough choices are needed at times to maximum your actions vs your opponents or cause your opponent to waste more actions than yourself. Pretty cool mechanic. The hunting for the fellowship is also a great mechanic which manages to duplicate hidden movement without too much complexity. It has great replay ability too, provided you aren't playing the same person all the time and they get into a rut in strategy. Sometimes people learn the game and just play it 'by the book' per se, always attacking Minas Tirth first or always doing X, Y, or Z. Many times the cards you draw and action dice you roll do not conform to a pre- determined strategy or toward playing the game the same way each time because it would be very inefficient. The key to the game is to maximize the action dice you rolled and cards you drew and have ideas for many of the different combinations which has you looking more at the whole map and involving many facets of the game. You know the winning conditions, but the path to achieving them can be reached in many ways because the game has a definite punch/counter punch effect where your opponent also dictates your strategy based on his actions and card plays along with yours. So the top players flow their strategy with the game play which make for very exciting games and even explore the seldom used areas like the free people military victory. (most notably by a turn 1 seven companions to Moria and the Fear! Fire! Foes! card in the initial draw which can get the Dwarves to war post haste and can really put the pressure on the SP via a strong FP military out of the box.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BGG Down" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/bgg_down?hl=en.
