Main Catalogue |  Board Games & Card Games |  Rio Grande Games |  Lord of the Rings: The Duel

Lord of the Rings: The Duel Price: £19.99 Board game, 2 players. Gandalf encounters the Balrog in the under mountain Caves of Moria. The result is a fantastic duel of their magical powers on a small bridge over a deep chasm. Take on the roles of Gandalf and the Balrog of Moria as they struggle in mortal combat upon the bridge of Khazad-dûm. Players must balance attack against their own defence in a game that can spread across several turns. Do you spend your strength early or hold onto a few tricks for a last desperate effort? An innovative card driven board game, featuring stunning artwork and a threedimensional board on which player\'s track their progress. ++++++++++++ Counter review ++++++++++++ 2 players, 30-40 minutes designed by Peter Neugebauer reviewed by Joe Casadonte As I\'ve admitted before in these pages, I\'m a Lord of the Rings fan/nut. I\'ve been meaning to review this game for some time now (it came out in 2002) but life has kept me too busy. I recently had a chance to play another Lord of the Rings game (The Confrontation by Reiner Knizia), and it reminded me that this game was waiting to be reviewed. I mention The Confrontation because it\'s a game I should like, yet I don\'t. Knizia is my favorite designer, the Lord if the Rings is my favorite theme, and by most accounts the game is well-designed. I\'ll give it that, too: it\'s very well designed, and is a deep game. And yet, somehow I just don\'t enjoy playing it. The Duel, on the other hand, is by the same designer that gave us Lord of the Rings: The Search, a disaster of a game, even by my forgiving standards. In that one, the theme feels like it was attached with 3M Post-it adhesive; whenever someone walks by it flutters in the breeze, and eventually flies off. And the game-play leaves a lot to be desired, too. So, were the laws of the Universe to be followed logically, I would love The Confrontation and hate The Duel. And yet the opposite is true. The Duel is all about the epic battle between Gandalf and the Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm in Moria. The components are of a quality to be expected from a Kosmos game, consisting mainly of a deck of cards and some wooden markers. The cards are decent and should hold up to repeated use, and the wooden markers are functional abstract representations of the Balrog and Gandalf. In addition there is a 3-dimensional cardboard bridge that you must construct, which is basically just the scoring track, sitting on a small board that keeps the in-round score and serves as a backdrop for the bridge. It\'s all trivially unnecessary, but it looks good and adds to the flavor of the game. I like it. The game itself is played over 4 rounds, each of which basically follows the same format. Players start with 15 ``energy\'\' points and up to 6 cards are played in turn by each player that deplete this energy. The round ends when one or both players go below 5 energy or each player has played 6 cards. Whoever has the most energy left at this point is declared the winner of the round and scores 1, 2 or 3 points, depending on the differential between the final energy levels (in the case of a tie, the loser is whoever started the duel, and the winner gets 1 point). Whoever collects 5 points first wins, and if no one does by the end of the 4th round, then whoever has the higher score wins, and in the case of a tie, whoever won the last duel wins. While it is possible that the game can be won prior to the fourth round I\'ve only seen this happen once. It\'s also possible for the game to be lost prior to the 4th round, if one person is ahead 4-0 going into it (even if the trailing player scores the maximum points (3) they cannot win). For this reason, I think the final round\'s scoring should be increased by 1 (i.e. 2, 3 or 4 points). Each player has their own 27-card deck which they draw from during the course of the game. In each of the first three rounds, players will receive 9 cards, of which they will use up to 6. Of the remaining cards, 3 are set aside for the fourth and final round, which will then use all 9 cards. Being the climax of the fight, it lasts a bit longer, and as such, players start with 20 energy points instead of 15. Each card has a place for 4 magic symbols along both the left and right sides of the card. Sometimes the symbol will be present, and sometimes it will not. The symbols themselves (a flame for the Balrog and a glowing staff tip for Gandalf) represent the defense (left side) and attack (right side) values of the card. The players, in turn, will play cards into a common row, with the previous card\'s attack being countered by the next card\'s defense. Where the symbols match up it\'s a draw. Where one card has a symbol and the other does not, the owner of the card without the symbol loses one point of energy (regardless of who is the attacker and who is on defense). Play continues until one or both players drop below 5 energy, or the maximum number of cards are played. Some of the cards are special cards, with text on them in addition to the magic symbols. These let you do extra things in addition to having the normal defense and attack values, like increasing your energy level or making your opponent play their hand face-up. While some of the special cards each player has are similar, none are identical. In addition, Gandalf has one more special card than the Balrog, though the Balrog has somewhat stronger cards in terms of pure attack and defense strength. The game plays fairly quickly, well within the 30-40 minutes stated on the box. There are decisions to be made at every turn, and not obvious or easy ones, either. First off, of the 9 cards dealt each round, which 3 do you want to keep for the last round? As things change during the round, do you alter those plans to take advantage of a weak attack from the opponent, or to recover from a particularly disastrous turn of events? When do you play the special cards? As a general rule, they are on weaker cards, with only 4 of the 8 possible symbols present. And each player has a single card with no symbols on it, representing them at their weakest - when should that be played? Another point in its favor is that the luck element usually found in a card game is fairly minimal. With only 3 dealings of the cards, there\'s not much to go on about here. My only real complaint about the game is the artwork. Done by renowned Tolkien artist John Howe, it should be better than it is. The board itself looks good, but the card art is OK at best, and does very little to evoke the feeling of a mortal combat in progress. Worse still, it\'s very difficult to tell which direction is up on the Balrog cards, and in a game where it\'s very important to line up the attack of one card with the defense of another, this is bad news. The rulebook even mentions to watch out for this specifically; why not just change the art instead? Very poor design, in my opinion. Even given that, though, I have absolutely no problem in recommending this game. Whether you\'re a fan of Tolkien\'s or not, you will find it interesting and, as a quick filler, time well spent. More ...

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