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Oct. 11th, 2002 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishSo, on Wednesday night we played the Lord of the Rings boardgame with the Sauron expansion. For those who haven't seen the game, it's a cooperative game where the two to five players take the role of Hobbits trying to hike the Ring into Mordor and destroy it before they become corrupted by Sauron. The cooperative nature of the game is pretty cool, although it can sometimes devolve into overly complex multiplayer solitaire. I like it.
The Sauron expansion adds one player who gets to be Sauron and try to beat those pesky Hobbits into submission, through the use of more cards to do unpleasant things to them, and also the Black Rider, who makes them lose if he gets back to Mordor after finding the Ring-Bearer. Upshot: excellent, excellent expansion. Better than Friends and Foes (the previous expansion). Makes the game significantly longer, though.
Basically, every time when you'd roll the die in the basic game, Sauron gets a turn. He can either play a card and smack the person who rolled the die around, or he can discard some of his hand and draw up to six cards. Sauron also gets a more limited turn at the start of every player's turn-- he can draw one card, or play a card and make the person do one of the bad things on it (their choice), or he can play a Nazgul card. Nazgul are very, very unpleasant, but there are only nine of them (duh!), they don't get reshuffled, and they're hard to come by.
This makes Sam (whose ability used to be "Roll the die and take only one damage from it") really, really irritating to Sauron, since his ability is now "Any time Sauron plays a card on you, pick one of the bad things on it and do it." The Fellowship managed to win by making Sam carry the Ring in Mordor, and then having him be the one to try and destroy it.
Also, Bad Kitty didn't move nearly as much as usual. This might be because only a couple of the Sauron cards have an Eye as a choice (as opposed to one of the six die faces), but the Fellowship also managed to avoid a lot of the Sauron-moving events. *shrug*
The Black Rider is a great mechanic. He starts on the Corruption Track at fifteen, and most of the Sauron cards have "Move the Rider 3-5 spaces" as one of the penalties. If the Rider gets to the Ring-bearer, he stops and turns around, and the Ring-bearer immediately gets a Sauron card played on him, and Sauron gets a Nazgul card. If the Rider makes it back to space 15, he tells Sauron where the Ring is, and the Fellowship loses. One thing that a Fellowship player can do on their turn is push the Rider back three spaces instead of playing cards, and there are various other ways of stopping him. Adds a lot of tension to the game.
The whole "Sauron takes a turn on a die roll" thing makes some events that were just kind of bad now REALLY bad. Also, Gollum (a card that's three wild symbols and a die roll) is now Sauron's special friend. (Frodo used Gollum to go through two other die-roll spaces in Shelob's Lair, so I got three turns to whack him around. Fun fun :)
Frodo fell getting out of Shelob's Lair, but the rest of the Fellowship survived all the way to the end. (I helped them out a couple of times, basically saying "If you don't cancel this, I win.") The game ended with the three live Hobbits about three steps from Bad Kitty, with the Black Rider one step away from killing them all. Sigh. Maybe next time.
The Sauron expansion adds one player who gets to be Sauron and try to beat those pesky Hobbits into submission, through the use of more cards to do unpleasant things to them, and also the Black Rider, who makes them lose if he gets back to Mordor after finding the Ring-Bearer. Upshot: excellent, excellent expansion. Better than Friends and Foes (the previous expansion). Makes the game significantly longer, though.
Basically, every time when you'd roll the die in the basic game, Sauron gets a turn. He can either play a card and smack the person who rolled the die around, or he can discard some of his hand and draw up to six cards. Sauron also gets a more limited turn at the start of every player's turn-- he can draw one card, or play a card and make the person do one of the bad things on it (their choice), or he can play a Nazgul card. Nazgul are very, very unpleasant, but there are only nine of them (duh!), they don't get reshuffled, and they're hard to come by.
This makes Sam (whose ability used to be "Roll the die and take only one damage from it") really, really irritating to Sauron, since his ability is now "Any time Sauron plays a card on you, pick one of the bad things on it and do it." The Fellowship managed to win by making Sam carry the Ring in Mordor, and then having him be the one to try and destroy it.
Also, Bad Kitty didn't move nearly as much as usual. This might be because only a couple of the Sauron cards have an Eye as a choice (as opposed to one of the six die faces), but the Fellowship also managed to avoid a lot of the Sauron-moving events. *shrug*
The Black Rider is a great mechanic. He starts on the Corruption Track at fifteen, and most of the Sauron cards have "Move the Rider 3-5 spaces" as one of the penalties. If the Rider gets to the Ring-bearer, he stops and turns around, and the Ring-bearer immediately gets a Sauron card played on him, and Sauron gets a Nazgul card. If the Rider makes it back to space 15, he tells Sauron where the Ring is, and the Fellowship loses. One thing that a Fellowship player can do on their turn is push the Rider back three spaces instead of playing cards, and there are various other ways of stopping him. Adds a lot of tension to the game.
The whole "Sauron takes a turn on a die roll" thing makes some events that were just kind of bad now REALLY bad. Also, Gollum (a card that's three wild symbols and a die roll) is now Sauron's special friend. (Frodo used Gollum to go through two other die-roll spaces in Shelob's Lair, so I got three turns to whack him around. Fun fun :)
Frodo fell getting out of Shelob's Lair, but the rest of the Fellowship survived all the way to the end. (I helped them out a couple of times, basically saying "If you don't cancel this, I win.") The game ended with the three live Hobbits about three steps from Bad Kitty, with the Black Rider one step away from killing them all. Sigh. Maybe next time.