What Frodo Did Next.

Last night the call came to Bag End - it was time to set out on a long and dangerous journey; four brave hobbits would be needed to take the one ring to Mordor and chuck it in the volcano.

However we had to make do with two in the end as Merry and Pippin were apparently busy - IKEA in the latter's case. Perhaps Gandalf shouldn't have disguised the dire warning of evil dominions afoot as a 'game of Torres' - as that turned out to be spectacularly untrue.

Instead Andrew and I, still smarting from defeat to Sauron last week, took the little bastard on again. Andrew was Frodo and I was... Sam. If anyone hasn't played this, the game takes place over four boards, and during each one you have to negotiate your way nearer and nearer to Mordor, while the forces of darkness infiltrate the 'event' tiles and try and stop you. All the time Sauron is trying to drag the Hobbits toward the dark, and move himself to the light. Should the two moral opposites (represented by colourful Hobbit pieces and a one-eyed, kitten-esque Sauron) meet on the influence track, it's game over.

How this all works is through card-management, so it's kind of a fire-fighting game in the the vein of Year of the Dragon, except of course it's co-operative.

So how did we fare? Last week, we had managed to get ourselves to Mordor with nary a frayed nerve, but were left with a hollow feeling as a succession of event tiles at the start of the last board saw Sauron march to the final event, where he simply took the ring from us and laughed in our faces like a spoilt brat.

So this time, having taken a few hits stocking up on cards at Helm's Deep, we arrived at Sauron's house and decided the best bet was speed. We would expedite the destruction of the ring, post-haste! Ignoring the threat of Orcs, Gollum, and a sprained ankle, we hurried along the main track and within 5 minutes I was hurling the ring into Mount Doom. Hooray! Middle-Earth is saved.

Fuck you, Sauron.

But saved for what end? Just as with our previous defeat, the victory left us a little hollow. It's so abrupt; one moment you're trying to save the world, the next you're looking at the time and thinking should I have another beer, or would the sensible option be tea?

For me, this is LotR's downfall. During play it's quite fun, and the cooperative element feels novel - at least for our little group. Knizier manages to ramp up the pressure as the game progresses, but when it's over, it's - over. Like a shallow sexual experience for two people who don't really like each other, your relationship with the game feels not entirely worth the effort. It would be great if this final show-down had more oomph to it - it's own little board, perhaps, a game within a game, where suddenly there could be a competitive element between the Hobbits. Maybe I'll drop Reiner a line and suggest it.

So what did the hobbits do next? We played Trans-America, and Sam kicked Frodo's ass!

Lords of the Stone Age

Today’s plan for the same game to be played in two venues at once, with messages flying back and forth was slightly scuppered when it was revealed that Joe had lent out his copy of Ascending Empires. And also there isn’t really enough down-time during a two-player game to muck about with instant messaging or texts.

In the end the two factions went their separate ways. I believe that Joe and Steve went for A Few Acres Of Snow – a two player game that Joe has been itching to get people to play. Since two-player games aren’t leaderboard (at least, not usually), Sam felt in a co-operative mood and we chose Reiner Knizia’s re imagining of The Lord Of The Rings for our opening game.

I’d played it fairly recently, so I refreshed Sam’s memory of the rules, and we got stuck in. For most of the game, it was plain sailing, with Sauron barely twitching until Helm’s Deep, at which point he dragged himself a couple of spaces in our direction. Heading into Mordor, we had plenty of shields and I was confident of a successful campaign against the rabbit-eared monolith.

However, Sauron didn’t gain his reputation for evil for no reason, and in the last round, we went from comfort and confidence to panicky fear after a string of event tiles were turned over. Mordor is very deceptive: it’s events are bad, but they’re quite easy to avoid, and so you aren’t too bothered when the next event is uncovered. But this is a false sense of security. Each event takes you closer to Sauron’s victory, and we soon found ourselves standing one space away from defeat and two spaces away from absolute victory. It all depended on the turn of one tile.

An event tile... Sauron won. And he barely moved all game.

While the game was exciting while it lasted, and we couldn’t believe our luck with dice rolls, the end is a bit of a damp squib. Still, it was nice to team up with a fellow GNN regular and battle a common foe. I mean, one who isn’t Adam, that is.

For our next game we chose Stone Age as a nice two-player. Although I never win at this game any more, I still enjoy it. It feels very Roulette-ish, with the placement of the pieces and the element of luck. And I have to admit I had quite a bit of luck. By my standards, I played a very good game – getting my highest score by far. But Sam is not a man to be taken lightly at this game. Any confidence I had at my score was obliterated at Sam racked up the highest two-player score so far (sorry, Chris. I just couldn’t stop him).

Sam 337
Andrew 249

I'll leave it for Joe to explain his adventures in the snow with Steve in another post.

How do you solve a problem like Moria?

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.