Lord of the Rings meets Stratego

People were starting to drift away. The Welcome Back Bash was over. But that's no reason to stop playing!

Rachel was hanging around, and since it was just her and me, I decided we needed to get in a rare two-player game. The week before, I had picked up a copy of Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. I hadn't played it yet, just messed with the pieces and read the rules a half dozen times. It's another by Reiner Knizia, basically my favorite game designer.

In this game, one player plays as the good side, one plays as the evil side. The game board is a map of Middle Earth. Each player has 9 pieces, kept secret from the other player.

The basic game mechanic is a lot like Stratego. I loved that game as a kid... I haven't played it a while - I wonder if it has stood the test of time.

Anyway, you move your pieces across the board. When one of your pieces encounters an opponent, each piece is revealed, and the strengths of the two pieces are compared. In this game, each player then plays a card - changing the power of the characters in battle. The most powerful piece wins, and the losing piece is removed from the board.

The good side wins if Frodo makes it to Mordor, or the evil side has less than three pieces left. The evil side wins if three evil characters make it into the shire, or if Frodo is killed.

Chris, playing as the evil side, managed to kill Rachel's Frodo. Evil wins! I mean, CHRIS wins!

We only got to play through once, and there is a lot of quirky, character-specific rules that we had to keep reminding ourselves of as we played. I think a few more plays are necessary to fully get the game dynamic. But it certainly seems to have potential. I want to play it some more...