When media is interpreted into another medium, sacrifices need to be made. There is a common theme of movie adaptations of books losing detail or taking the story in an unnecessary direction. The Lord of the Rings movie adaptations were great and captured the tone of the book, but the movies still had to sacrifice detail. When adapted to gaming there is an even greater change since the main priority is gameplay, not making a story. War of the Ring (which I recently reviewed) managed to be true to the source material by recentering the game around retelling the story of Lord of the Rings. But giving the players this much choice makes an incredibly imposing game to learn or teach and requires a huge commitment of space and time. War of the Ring: the Card Game changes the medium again from massive war game to decks of cards representing factions. It’s still produced by Ares Games but none of the designers of the original returned to build this game, instead being designed by Ian Brody. It sadly does not manage to compress the original game into a smaller experience but is interesting in its own right.
The card game is playable for 2 to 4 players with players taking decks of either the Shadow or the Free Peoples. When played with 3 to 4 players they form teams and separate the shadow and free peoples cards into 4 decks. Each round there are three different paths that represent different locations the Fellowship travels to which get worse for the free peoples the farther along they go. Additionally each round a random battlefield is chosen which has to be attacked and defended by specific factions. In each deck there are cards representing armies, characters, items and events. The armies and characters can be played on battlefields where they add attack or defense. Characters can also be played to certain pathways where the Shadow characters add corruption and Free Peoples characters defend against it. At the end of a round battles are resolved, if there is more defense than attack the defender wins and if there’s more attack the attacker wins, it’s essentially the same for pathways but replace attack with corruption. Once the players end the round at the 9th pathway the game is over, each battlefield and pathway is worth from 1 to 3 points and the player with the most points wins.
This game works well as a small game experience. Its components are compact and can be kept in a small plastic bag. The cards also have fantastic art that . But unlike the original War of the Ring, the card game has a lot of problems with two players and is much better with four. Despite needing to coordinate with another player, the decks are much better designed for four players. Cards like the Balrog are only really useful if they’re played on a specific pathway, when card changes from 1 in 60 cards to 1 in 30 there’s a large difference. There are also several confusing parts of the rule book. Cards can be played to the battlefield, path, or to reserve, but they always require the same cost. Characters can only be played to specific paths but they can always be played to reserve or battlefield. Attackers will always be eliminated at the end of round but defenders are only eliminated when they have to prevent damage. These rules make sense with more understanding of the game, but in the rulebook they range from unclear to straight up overlooked.
War of the Ring: the Card Game clearly tries to be a smaller version of the original. It’s a valid effort as the original is so big that many board game tables won’t have enough space. But it does not work as an adaptation of the original. Where the card game removes complexity it makes up for in a confusing rule book. Where the game removes scale, it limits the players to the source material. But on its own it is an interesting experience that can fit into a plastic bag and will only take an hour for a full game.
Where War of the Ring: the Card Game fails as an adaptation It makes up for with an interesting small experience. Out of 5 stars War of the Ring: the Card Game gets 3. A fun experience that fails to match its source material but is a worthwhile experience.
3/5
