There’s no games night this week due to holidays and Adam being domesticated but, in the time I spent cat-sitting for Sam, I decided to try a bit of solo gaming. Sam doesn’t have any one-player games, but he does have Lord Of The Rings by Reiner Knizia which is a co-op game, so I thought I’d try the two-player version by myself.
I’d played it before a long time ago and my abiding memory is how unfair it was. Indeed, my first two attempts ended in abject failure. I couldn’t believe that Knizia would release a game so unbalanced, so I tried again, this time planning ahead to try and lessen the impact of future events.
This did the trick and after a couple more games I was able to win quite comfortably. In fact, getting to Mordor with a healthy collection of shields more or less guarantees success since I can call on Gandalf to help out and the events on the board are mostly easy to avoid.
Since so much of the game is based on the luck of the draw, the best tactic is to be lucky in the first two rounds so you can build up plenty of resources, allowing you to take the brunt of the meaner events in the later stages of the game. As such, a run of poor tiles in Moria can leave you sunk since at the start you have no shields and you shouldn’t really be wasting the yellow cards so early. So if the game begins with a flurry of events, you can suddenly find yourself only a few squares from Sauron and with no cards to help you get out of there.
After this, getting through the next level, Helm’s Deep, is an exercise in futility. In other words, it can be possible to tell if you’ve lost the game after only a few minutes play, which can be pretty depressing after you’ve taken the time to set the board up, chosen the right mood music and poured a glass of wine.
Winning the game is satisfying, but not in a “I’ve beaten a cunning opponent” way, more a “I’ve cheated luck” kind of way. And when you lose, there's just a feeling of bitterness that "anyone would've lost with those cards!" With many players, I’m sure it’ll be different as you discuss strategies and come to each others rescue with your cards. I guess it builds a sense of camaraderie which is missing if it’s just you by yourself. Nevertheless, I found it really quite addictive and at least it meant Sam's cat was never alone for long.
I've got this game in my cupboard (Unless Sam has borrowed it) and I could never get to like it. It's seems like Reiner did this one for the endorsement money rather than something he wanted to do.
ReplyDeleteThe thing with it, as with most co-op games (Pandemic included) is that you tend to play the game to the strength of the best player of the game. If that person says, 'It's the best strategy to do this move' most people will go along with it and therefore you start to observe the game rather than take part.
If some personal agendas could have been woven into it or even somebody playing Sauron rather than the automatic moves he does, it might have made a difference for me....
It was worth your efforts Andrew if only for the post title.
ReplyDeleteI have fond memories of this but Chris' salient point above is making me question my recall. Am I right in thinking LotR is a co-operative game where you also manouevre - within strict parameters - against each other, as some players can fall by the wayside?
I don't know about falling by the wayside, but it's possible that one character (without the ring) may keep volunteering to take the punishment of the event tiles to save the ring, and so end his game early.
ReplyDeleteI saw on the geek that someone plays by working through the event tiles start to finish and then reshuffling, rather than reshuffling when you finish a board. That way, your luck always balances out. I may try that.
Doesn't the ring get passed between players too?
ReplyDeleteThat's part of the tactic, because passing the ring gets you two extra cards.
ReplyDeleteI also forgot to mention that I've been watching lots of Seinfeld recently, which means that every bad tile I uncovered was accompanied by a George Costanza-esque internal monologue about how unfair it all was.
Tolkien actually based the trilogy on an episode of Seinfeld I believe.
ReplyDeleteGeorge's dad was the only Hobbit character that made it into the final version of the show. "Ssssstop short!"
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I did try that method of working my way through the event tiles before reshuffling. It ruined the game. Bad luck may be cruel, but at least it feels good when you beat it. If the luck always balances out, then there's no real game there.
ReplyDelete