War of the Ring – Warriors of Middle Earth
Expansion of: War of the Ring (Second Edition)Warriors of Middle-Earth, the new expansion for War of the Ring Second Edition, brings a whole new level of strategy to all players of the award-winning Lord of the Rings boardgame, with many fresh and exciting gameplay possibilities to explore.
2 - 4 Players
Ages 13+
ajewo
This expansion adds six factions represented by mythical creates of Middle-earth. Each faction has its own set of rules and how it comes into play. When a faction enters play, a player also gains an additional faction die that can be used to recruit or play factions in play. There are new rules for each factions which are somehow similar. Overall, I find the new rules less overwhelming than the new rules/mechanics in the Lords of Middle-earth expansion because the new factions come out one by one instead all at once. The factions usually do not count as armies and act more like companions. They can be called to a battle if their conditions are met (usually based on the distance between the battlefield and the faction figures on the map). If factions take part in a battle, a player can draw corresponding faction battle cards and play them instead of normal event cards. The interaction with factions thus feels very indirect, mainly because the factions are not considered armies and they use a parallel game system movement and event card system (although, the Shadow factions travel along with armies like minions). In the base game, the factions were only represented by event cards without miniatures on the map, which was simple and fine. This expansion removes those event cards and adds a completely new faction event deck. The faction events depend on the location of the faction figures. Basically, you have now to consider the location of factions to play faction events. You also have to spend some time to built up and recruit faction figures to make use of them. While factions were only occasionally activated by event cards in the base game, they become an ongoing part with this expansion. In my opinion, this distracts too much from the core game. The most annoying new mechanic about this expansion is the additional faction deck with an additional hand limit of four faction cards. Firstly, the four cards add an additional mental load to the other six event cards in your hand. Secondly, the faction cards are designed in such a way that you constantly draw new ones to find the right one. If you apply a faction event at the right moment, you can do quite a lot of damage to an enemy army. There is little you can do to defend against factions, although, they are now part of the world map. I would recommend the Lords of Middle-earth expansion instead.
dara108
War of the ring is one of my top 3 favorite games, what in my opinion would make the game even better is more armies and more ways to battle. This expansion does not really do that, the rules are too fiddly and really extend the game time by adding a lot of bulk and complexity that does not pay out in the end. Six factions can be divided in two categories, those that you work towards the whole game to get a strong impact one time. It's a fine idea, but takes too much work and is a constant distraction analyzing cards. You can't really get rid of cards you are simply not interested in and constantly have to wonder should I keep or discard. And second type are the ones who have slight impact many times during play. I feel like unless you are bored, this expansion adds more work than value.
alexs34
I got another play of this expansion on 20170312. I like it more now. ====================== I played with this expansion once, as of 20170306. I'm disappointed. I feel like this expansion adds a lot of time to gameplay, but not too much to enjoyment or strategy. Cons: 1. Adds more cards to your hand, which means a lot more reading and pondering what decision to make. 2. Factions are used only via cards which are drawn from the event deck. Drawing only 1 card per turn from a 20 card deck means that you have a good chance of not getting the card you need anytime soon. 3. Due to the fact that you only have a single faction die, it seems like it would take forever to really get a good use out of the factions. I'm referring to recruitment, specifically. This is probably ok, I guess. In our game, my opponent and I got tons of the faction troops out by the end of the game. 4. My miniatures are far more bent than I thought, when I first opened the box. Nearly every eagle, spider, and Dunlending is bent somehow. 5. More miniatures on an already crowded board. Pros: 1. More options for strategy, meaning, subsequent games will be more likely to be very different than previous games. 2. The miniatures look very different from each other, and they have different colors than the original pieces from War of the Ring, so it's easy to differentiate the new pieces from each other, and from the old pieces. I think an improvement to this could be made where you draw two faction event cards per turn instead of one.