Nice WOTR preview, Chris! A lot of players have high expectations for this game, so hearing your initial opinion is quite valuable.
You criticize the unit/combat rules for being too vanilla, but my thought when reading your description was that a game I know we both like, Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage, has perhaps an even coarser unit differentiation, and still manages to get a historical feel. Perhaps WOTR's designers simply chose to emphasize other aspects of the game?
If Fellowship military victories happen too easily, that is certainly a problem. Could it be that good/experienced play by the Sauron player could reduce whose VCs to being highly unlikely, or are they a possibility no matter what he does?
I wouldn't actually say H:RvC's unit distinction is coarser than WotR - Hannibal's Elephants are rather flavorful. Regardless, the combat systems between the two games are, to my mind, simply not comparable. When resolving battles, H:RvC has a lot of inherent tension and decision making in the card play, which is of surprising subtlety. WotR is just rolling dice. The real comparison here is with Axis & Allies - would you play A&A if it had only Infantry and super-Infantry that took 2 hits and occasionally had a card you could play to boost them?
The trade-off here is, I think, balance. You get little unit differentiation, which is unfortunate, but in exchange you get reasonable play-balance, which A&A (despite its interesting bits) has never had. Since play balance is somthing very much to be desired in most cases (although to be honest, it's not clear if this is one of those cases), the loss is certainly not all in vain.
As to the VCs, it's hard to say. As I mention in the article, I don't think the Free People VCs lead to imbalance in the game - perhaps just the opposite. I just think they lead to play that simply doesn't make any sense in context of the theme. We all have different visions of Tolkien of course, but the number of us who can see a version of the War of the Ring in which Rivendell Elves are assaulting Moria or Carn Dum is, I would hazard to guess, pretty small.
This was all done, I am sure, in the spirit of making the game more interesting, giving both sides some options. My point of view on all this is, that if that's what I want, I have many better options available to me. Wizard Kings, for example. I am going to get sucked into this or not based not on how well balanced it is, but how well it plunges one into Middle-Earth. This is perhaps the one and only game in which I could live with a 90% play imbalance in favor of the Dark Lord, as long as the Sauron player could still be engaged in the game in some way.
I think that even semi-competent SA play would preclude an FP victory in all but the most improbable of cases. As it should be.
I found the unit differentiation to be fine. In the scale of this game (areas encompassing thousands of square miles), you're at the 60,000 foot level and you can't really see that much differentiation from there. In fact, that's one of my gripes with A&A type games - The unit differentiation seems a little silly given that the areas being contested are the size of Texas. Now, in a hex/counter game simulating a specific battle or something, then yes, you need different units. But not at a simulation level that this game is trying to achieve.
So Caleb, does that mean you think that Rick Young was wrong to include both tanks, infantry, and planes in Europe Engulfed? He should have just had individual strength points?
The idea that A&A needs fewer unit types seems somewhat ludicrous, I must admit. Planes, tanks, and infantry all have decidedly different properties, and it makes the game tactically and strategically interesting to have them available, never mind the fact that it helps the player feel more "into" the actual event.
Now, War of the Ring clearly doesn't need quite this level of differentiation. But it would certainly help the game, flavor wise and from a tactical decision-making perspective, to have some differences between infantry, cavalry, and, say, "big" units like Trolls and Elephants.
This sort of thing could be easily overlooked if there was somthing else here to really get excited about, theme-wise. For me though, there wasn't, quite. The cards were OK, the VCs are a little hokey but OK on balance, the dice are OK, the Fellowship "track" is OK ... but what I can't help but think is that the game needs something, some one thing, that is really cool and evokes the flavor of the books. While there is a lot of stuff that is OK, it seems to be missing that one thing which would make the game for me.
I don't want to go too far down this route, and let me reiterate strongly the caveat that I've only played once and it was at Origins, with all the difficulties this entails. I haven't read the rules or pored over the game myself, which I would usually do before writing anything. So, as always, your mileage may vary.
>We all have different visions of Tolkien of course, but the number of us who can see a version of the War of the Ring in which Rivendell Elves are assaulting Moria or Carn Dum is, I would hazard to guess, pretty small.
Knowing the game all too well, I think I can dare to say that that number is not going to grow thanks to our game, since it is an incredibly unlikely occurrence. 
I played two demos in the Fantasy Flight area at Origins (Wings of War and Runebound), and in both cases was given horribly mangled rules presentations. What makes this even more amazing is how simple Wings of War is to play and explain. I think it's extremely likely that some of the rules were explained incorrectly, not to mention the fact that it's not a final version yet. I don't think this necessarily invalidates any observations, but the rules explanations in FFG's booth seemed really awful this year.
Actually, my demo of Wings of War (which I loved, by the way) was quite clean.
Most likely a rule or two was overlooked or screwed up, as this is the nature of these things, and sometimes a rule or two can make a big difference. It almost did for us, in fact, because we played one detail of sieges incorrectly for a round in which it might have made a big difference (normally, defenders in Sieges get a terrain bonus which reduces the attacker's hit number to 6, but this is lost in a second round in which the attacker can spend an elite unit to "press the attack"; in our first siege, the defenders got the terrain bonus in both rounds, which is pretty harsh).
Now, this is just a guess, but I can usually tell when things have risen to the level of being "horribly mangled", and I certainly didn't get that sense here.
Again, though, readers should take this for what it is, a summary of a modestly-complex pre-production game I was taught to play at Origins, not a review of somthing for which I have scrutinized the rules and card decks and played multiple times.
Chris,
Well, I don't know. I've not played EE, but if the unit differentiation in that game is limited to different "to hit" numbers, then I'd say I probably wouldn't like that either. In the War of the Ring, I don't think the "big" creatures existed in great enough numbers to be measurable at the level of simulation. In WWII, it's a little different because there were thousands of planes, tens of thousands of tanks, etc, so they COULD have an effect that was measurable from the 60,000 foot level, I guess. I think that the simple "to hit" change for different units is a boring implementation though. But I'm not a wargamer.
For me, the extra Elites brought out the flavor of Middle Earth: they stand for the relatively few but powerful elven warriors, or the hordes upon hordes of orcs that can spend themselves to wash over their enemies. In the books, much more is made of the vast numbers of "lesser" creatures like orcs than the presence of a few high-powered creatures like Trolls (Nazgul excepted, of course).
Well, there was AT LEAST one error then (not that it is necessarily a main factor about how you formed your opinion, but I think it is appropriate to point out).
When you assault a place like Osgiliath, Ford of Isen, Edoras, you hit with 6 on the first round and 5+ on the following rounds, and you do not have to reduce any elite. But when you attack a Stronghold (e.g. Minas Tirith, Helm's Deep), the attacker still hits with 6+ even in the following rounds (and an elite unit must be reduced as well).
When you play with the right rules, it is VERY difficult to conquer a Stronghold: usually Sauron has to use a combination of massive army, concentration of Nazgul, good event cards to take quickly a FP Stronghold.
On the other hand, for the FP (who usually has very small armies) becomes almost impossible to take a Shadow stronghold unless it is close to empty.
The major problem with War of the Ring is that it will test you, and not the other way around, as either a player or a reviewer. However repeat play value in this game enters the territory of addiction, so the players may not be able to help themselves develop a better understanding as they approach their tenth or twentieth game. Reviewers would do well to hold off until they reach this level of knowledge too, as unlike players they only get the one shot, and the likelihood is they will get it wrong if they rush something out after one game. There's no point in trying to interpret this game using past experience, because there are no good problem-free comparable designs. This is evident when Risk and A&A are mentioned in relation to a serious power-politics boardwargame that follows a book closely, that has the strengths aforementioned & below, and yet is easy to play but hard to learn. The quality of its design exceeds most players' ability to the extent that it will not be for everyone, unless of course they all get hooked. The theme is so powerful I would say it cannot be missed, and several of the the criticisms leveled here, about the game at Origins, can be applied more pertinently to Tolkien's book! The book definitely has a boring limitation in the outcome department. The game does not, and is quite remarkable is this area as well. The story of each play is rich, deep and unique to a degree that will surpise, but your memory won't be able to record the detail, especially if you play twice. And you will.
Returning to my first point, I'd say that taking a Stronghold is very hard at first but becomes less hard, and that attacking Moria with a strike force abstracted from a [clearly unassailed] Lorien garrison is not extremely unlikely given that no military organism can be strong everywhere, in every game. This is the best game of any sort since Wilderness War, and that one definitely sorted the gunfighters from the mummys boys. And yet War of the Ring is easy to play and therefore accessible to those non-gamers and Tolkien fans who will want to try it. The limiting factor is the fortitude of the gamer.
On Wargames -
Seeing as how the Consim Expo seems to dramaticly increase in size every year and the number of wargamers at Origins seems to shrink every year it would seem that wargamers who can't attend more than one con are starting to mass relocate...
The thing that makes this hypothesis harder to buy into straight-up is that the games played in the War Room are generally trending more towards stuff similar to what's played at MonsterCon. They had a big East Front System (GMT) game set up and occasionally being played, and a couple OCS games. There was definitely a tendancy towards larger games, with more of these games being played than in the past.
I suspect the people who are losing out are the fans of medium-weight wargames, who are going either to WBC or nowhere. Maybe CSW Expo can pick up these people eventually if they further expand their "non-monster-game" area. But I think the Pheonix location will always be a drag for them, given the fact that most gamers are still out East.
Yea... I really didn't have problems finding oppenents for medium sized games at the Expo (mostly what I play now) but the selection wasn't that hot. I was told that the open-gaming option was much larger there than last year though...
Lots of the medium sized strategy/war games I really want to play seem to be at the WBC... but I have no urge to play them in a tourny atmosphere so I don't have an urge to go there.
We'll see. The fact that Consimworld is going subscriber based might make an impact on the next year's expo as well..
I don't think I mentioned, I actually saw a Wacht am Rhein game being played at Origins. I've never seen it set up before, even at MonsterCon. And people were actually playing it for much of the weekend. That's the sort of game that really makes me roll my eyes ... I think the only game I've ever seen with more counters was Korsun Pocket, and that game was clearly completely insane. One thing about MonsterCon, it's been very rewarding to watch the 70s crap die off after people made the vain attempt to drag them out and play them the first year.
Anyway, barring somthing unforseen, I should make it back to MonsterCon next year.
One other thought re: WBC, I've been there once, and didn't have any real urge to go back. If I had infinite time, sure. But it just seemed a little unhealthily competitive. I like competition, of course, and part of the reason I travel to cons is to play some of my favorite games a bit more seriously (I loved the competition at ASL Oktoberfest, which I used to go to regularly, and the MECCG sealed deck events at Origins which had some token, but nice, prizes on offer). But somehow the competition at WBC seems to have crossed over a line from friendly competition to somthing else which I must admit puts me off a bit. And the eurogame tournaments are just wierd ... I mean, who plays Settlers of Catan for blood?
For me, I want some kind of middle ground, somewhere between the too-casual Origins where I too often play people who don't know what they're doing, and the too-cutthroat WBC. ASL Oktoberfest was perfect, but not so good if you don't play ASL (and is one reason I keep flirting with going back). Hopefully CSW Expo can fill that need for more general wargaming.
"The quality of its design exceeds most players' ability to the extent that it will not be for everyone."
Wow, I don't think I've ever heard someone claim that the quality of a game's design exceeds most players' abilities. I don't even know how to comment on that claim, other than to say that it is an odd one.
I guess it's a little like reading Proust or Joyce -- only some elite set can appreciate it. I hope I'm part of that blessed bunch.
Honestly my personal expectation is that WotR will be much more accessible than Joyce - even if this means our names will not enter in school books
The ability the game tests is the player's nerve, rather than brainpower. I would have used that word but for it sounding a bit rude. However, in the past some gamers have found this type of thing upsetting. An example made more apt by its simplicity is Tigris & Euphrates, which some won't play for this reason.
So I echo Matt's hope.
A quality possessed by great classic games, and a few others, is a clear demonstration of how it differentiates players' ability to play. In WotR this often concerns balance: as Sauron you have to balance violent, high casualty attacks with failure not being an option. You have to correctly balance the four Ring and Military victory conditions. You have to know whether to use a card for its event or its battle effect. You can tell which battle effects are the best [the ones with positive die modifiers], but can you afford to give up the events on those cards in order to use them in this manner? Can you afford not to crown Aragorn in order to keep Strider with the Fellowship? Probably not -- but can you crown him? Or is it better to mobilise more elves instead? Sometimes Gandalf the Grey can't get arrested, never mind killed, so Gandalf the White arrives a bit late. But do you promote his mid-life demise by keeping him as Guide of the Fellowship, or do you put in Strider, as being more useful in that position [but where he might killed too, before he returns to Gondor]? Do you mobilise everyone first, or do you blitz Minas Tirith quickly?
I hope people will play WotR a lot before they comment on it, since this will be to the game's advantage. On the conceptual side WotR is solid. It has the feel of a very good design. But it has the unassailable quality that even the testers want to play it again.
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