3/21 - War of the Ring, Collector's Edition with Ian

So Ian contacted me towards the beginning of the week and proposed getting together to play some games on Sunday. Now, Ian rarely takes the initiative in organizing gaming, and he rarely plans anything that far in advance, but I didn't think much of it. He mentioned playing War of the Ring, which is a game we'd played once before and quite liked. We arranged to play on Sunday and I didn't think much of it.

However, when I saw him coming up the stairs lugging an enormous duffel bag, I recalled that he had mentioned wanting to get the Collector's Edition of the game. Now at the time, I took this the way I would Rush Limbaugh's promise to leave the country if health care reform passed - sure it would be great, but I didn't seriously think it was going to happen - Fantasy Flight was selling the collector's edition for $450, and that's if you could get your hands on one of the 2000 copies that were made. Nonetheless, there was Ian, hauling it up the stairs.

OK, yes, $450 is a lot, but damn, this thing is pretty. I took the picture on this page while we set up, but you might want to take a look at the pictures taken by way better photographers with way better cameras or pictures of how much larger the game is than a child. The wooden box weighs over 30 pounds and contains over 200 hand-painted figures.

After unpacking setting up, and refreshing ourselves on the rules (which are substantial), we...took a 2-hour break to watch Duke throttle Cal. As I was going to play Sauron, I was hoping that evil triumphing over good (because good...is dumb! - or at any rate lacking a serious inside presence) was a good omen for me.

To the game itself: War of the Ring does probably as good a job as any game I have ever played of staying true to its source material. It's just a brilliant design, and the path the game takes is almost always some kind of alternative universe version of the books. The Fellowship races towards Mordor, shedding companions one by one, as the forces of evil march inexorably towards the strongholds of good, threatening to overwhelm them before the ring can be cast into Mount Doom.

Unfortunately, in this particular alternate universe, while Frodo was teetering on the edge of losing the last trace of his humanity (hobbitanity?) to the ring, evil managed to take a page from good's "dumb" book and leave Dol Guldur completely undefended after crushing Lothlorien and Rivendell, allowing the forces of good to just waltz in and set up fortifications. And then, just as Sauron's forces were about to overwhelm Minas Tirith and Frodo was about to let the ring overwhelm him as he stood on the footsteps of Mount Doom, Galdalf led a final, desperate assault of Orthanc (with no help from the Ents who apparently couldn't be bothered), and after holding off the first couple assaults, Sauroman, several Ring Wraiths, and a handful of other defenders were unable to hold them off, and when that tower fell, so did Sauron's hope of conquering Middle Earth and buying everyone puppies. Stupid fat hobbits.