War of the Ring board game

Today I went into Game Quest to get my hands on a copy of War of the Ring, a Lord of the Rings based board game I played a few weekends ago with my cousin. I ended up buying the new offering from the Axis & Allies people: Battle of the Bulge. Yeah baby! And as I was in there talking with the guys I was thinking, these are my people. These are the guys that part of me connects with where it's not taboo to talk about plastic figures or rolling a bunch of dice. I had a good chat about nothing.

War of the Ring was a great adaptation of the LotR plot. It played out similar to those games from Axis & Allies (previously Milton and Bradley, now Avalon Hill). You could break out different members from the fellowship, move them covertly across the map, the whole time trying to outrun roving Nazgul which might give away your position at any stage. There was a desperate battle for Minas Tirith (which I lost, and in which Aragorn lost his life, hehe oops) and I had Meriadoc leading a band of rangers across the plains of Eriador.

You can focus on a military victory or getting the ring to Mount Doom, or both. It plays out very much like the book although there's more scope than you think as you're deciding on who goes where, what to attack etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and have lined up another round soon.