Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth

Sauron looked at his forces. The Nazgûl were hot on the heels of Frodo and Sam. Armies massed from their bases in Mordor and Rohan, even managing to push in at Linden. Then it began to fall apart.

Helm’s Deep was under control of Sauron and the dwarves had chosen to side with him, lured by their love of gold and the promise of treasures from deeper in the Earth that they could find. But something was wrong. An alliance of different races from throughout Middle Earth, and worse, those bloody eagles had got involved at the eleventh hour. And then the wizards. Two factions of right bastards, always unreliable until the exact time they could help bring everyone together to take on Sauron.

”Well, bugger,” I said, and started to pack the game away.

My lengthy relationship with Lord of the Rings

I was raised with Tolkien from an early age, my mum read The Hobbit to me and my brother during a rainy holiday and showed us the animated Lord of the Rings. She painted Rivendell on my bedroom wall as a kid and we all made a ritual of watching the films together when they were in the cinema. After some rubbish takes about Lord of the Rings when I was 20, I reread it at 38 and fell back in love. I’m a Tom Bombadil defender, I’ve argued about the eagles and how they would never have been able to sneak Frodo & Sam into Mordor unnoticed and even love the Scouring of the Shire now. I’m still not too keen on the poetry, I’m not a crazy person.

There have been a lot of Lord of the Rings tabletop games out there, including the first ever co-op board game I’d ever played by Reiner Knizia, which was… fine. My lodger and I got massively into the Lord of the Rings Living Card Game, although it’s not seen as much play since Earthborne Rangers hit the table and I’m on hiatus with a One Ring RPG campaign. So it’s something that’s seen a lot of play and despite my love of it, I’m not going to leap blindly into yet another Lord of the Rings game.

Charlie leaps blindly into yet another Lord of the Rings game

I like 7 Wonders, although I don’t play it anywhere near as much these days. I tend to play with smaller groups than the amount which would be optimal for 7 Wonders. I bought 7 Wonders Duel from someone in a covert-looking exchange at Brighton Station, after making a deal on Facebook. It’s a really fun distillation of the 7 Wonders gameplay loops into a game which works with two players, polishes up things like the science track. Even the expansions don’t add a ludicrous amount of complexity, keeping it to a sub-thirty minute experience.

When this was announced as a game using the 7 Wonders Duel framework, I wasn’t sure whether or not it would be different enough, but my willpower cracked when I saw the lovely box and Vincent Dutrait art.

How the game works

The game is split into three ages, each with a spread of cards which starts half face-up, half face-down. Players take turns picking a card, buying it using skills they’ve got or trashing it for money. If a face-down card is fully revealed by taking what’s on top of it, you turn it face-up, so while you might try to manoeuvre the other player into bad choices, there’s always that chance of a surprise when you turn a card over. That’s how those bastard wizards got me, after all.

The card types are:

• Grey cards – Skills replace the resources from 7 Wonders, they’re all illustrated with symbols which will be used to pay for cards. If you don’t have the relevant icon, you’ll need to pay money to the supply.
• Green cards – There are cards with symbols for six different factions to ally with. If you get six then you win, but either a pair or three different symbols will give you a fun new benefit.
• Yellow cards – Thesee cards just get you money, but while they take up your pick, they’re worth more than trashing a card.
• Red cards – These cards put little dudes on a map of Middle Earth, giving you a choice of two places. If you put a piece where your opponent has one, they kill each other, get pieces on all seven locations and you win the game.
• Blue cards – These cards move pieces on a little plastic track. Frodo and Sam are racing to Mount Doom and win if they get there, or the Nazgûl win if they catch up to them. To sweeten the pot, there are also bonuses both sides get.
• In the third age, there are also Purple cards, which move forces, discard troops or coins, representing the brutality of the escalating war.

I should also note that while I’m mentioning colours, there are symbols to help colour blind players.

In addition to the cards, there are landmarks, which replace the Wonders from 7 Wonders. Each one has a cost in skills and money if you’re buying a second or third one. When you get the landmark, you place a fortress on the map of Middle-Earth, which is a (mostly) permanent way of having a presence there. 

This means you’ve got a few different fields of battle: The green cards, the Quest of the Ring and the war or Middle Earth. Sometimes you end up too focused on trying to win the allegiance of the different races that you end up with the Nazgûl hot on your heels, or you draw an Allegiance token which gives you the seventh ‘Eagle’ faction and suddenly your priorities change.

7 Wonders and 7 Wonders Duel have a similar feeling, but there’s something incredibly tense with this game, watching your units get whittled down on the map while desperately trying to afford a landmark, chase Hobbitses around and so on.

This sounds like it could be a lot, however it lasts about 20 minutes or so, especially after a first play. Like 7 Wonders Duel and the city versions of Ticket to Ride, it somehow feels like a full game, despite taking barely any of the time. There’s variation from different landmarks and a selection of each chapter’s deck which aren’t used. It also doesn’t have the complication of the 7 Wonders science track or the extra actions of having to work out putting Guilds into the third age. 

I’m not going to get rid of 7 Wonders Duel as it feels a little more chill, but I’m definitely going to have a rematch or few with my partner and try to get a victory against her.