LORD OF THE RINGS – CONFRONTATION

OBJECTIVE OF LORD OF THE RINGS – CONFRONTATION: The objective of Lord of The Rings – Confrontation is to reach your victory conditions before your opponent does.

NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 2

MATERIALS: A board representing Middle Earth, 18 character tokens, 18 Combat cards

TYPE OF GAME: Stratego-like strategic duel

AUDIENCE: Adult

OVERVIEW OF LOTR-CONTRONTATION

In The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, you will relive the epic battle between the Fellowship of the Ring and Sauron’s servants as told in J. R. R. Tolkien’s classic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Counting on the courage and might of its members, the Fellowship of the Ring tries to reach the Mordor unnoticed while the many powerful minions of Sauron relentlessly hunt down Frodo. keonhacai

SETUP

The player who controls the 9 companions of the Fellowship will be the Fellowship player. The other player, controlling the 9 evil characters, will be the Sauron player.

Before starting to play, it is recommended that players familiarize themselves with their own characters and cards as well as those of their opponent.

The Fellowship player inserts the 9 Characters tiles (displaying the green parchment) into their white bases so that the images and texts are facing him and not visible to his opponent. The Sauron player inserts his 9 Characters tiles (displaying the red scroll) into their black bases.

Now both players have 9 game pieces each, which will be called Characters. (Note: your opponent must not see the Characters tiles that you place in their sockets). 

Each player takes their 9 Combat Cards in their hand. The Fellowship player takes the Fellowship cards and the Sauron player takes Sauron’s cards.

The game board is placed between the two players so that the corner with The Shire points to the Fellowship player and the corner with Mordor points to the Sauron player. The Fellowship player chooses 4 characters (from his 9) and places all four of them in The Shire area. He then places each one of his 5 remaining characters in the five regions in front of The Shire (Cardolan, Enedwaith, Arthedain, Rhudaur and Eregion). For these 5 regions, only one character may be placed per region.

The deployment is the same for the Sauron player: he places four characters in the region of Mordor, and the 5 other characters in the five remaining regions: Dagorlad, Gondor, Mirkwood, Fangorn and Rohan. Again, for these 5 regions, only one character per region.

The central mountain regions must remain empty during the deployment. Note: A player’s characters must be placed on the board in such a way that only that player can see the identity of his characters.

GAMEPLAY

The Sauron player always starts the game. Then the players take turns playing until the end of the game. 

Movement

In turn, a player must move one of his characters forward, using the following movement rules:

• A character moves forward into an adjacent area. A character may never move laterally or backwards unless his ability text, Special Card or special rules allow it. For example: Frodo’s ability text states that he may retreat laterally when attacked.
• Characters can never move laterally when in a mountainous region (even using special maps or abilities, unless specifically stated otherwise).
• Players can have more characters in a region than the maximum number allowed for that region, as indicated by the number of dots under the region’s name.4 in The Shire for the Fellowship player and in Mordor for the Sauron player
• 1 in a mountain region
• 2 in all other regions
• A player may never move a character into (or through) a region that already contains the maximum number of characters belonging to him (even using special cards or abilities, unless specifically stated otherwise).
• A player can mix, at any time, his characters from the same region in order to deceive his opponent. (To shuffle, the player takes his characters and shuffles them behind his back or under the table and puts them back in the same region). This is always useful when your opponent knows the identity of one of your characters in a specific region. Characters from different regions can never be shuffled like this. A player cannot shuffle revealed characters until the action that revealed them is complete. 

Special movements

Yellow arrows can be seen on the board: along the Anduin river, and through the Mines of Moria. The Fellowship player, and only the Fellowship player, can move a character along one of these arrows. This counts as a forward move. Such movement can only be in the direction of the arrow, and only from the region where the arrow starts to the region where it ends. In addition, if a Fellowship character moves through the Mines of Moria while the Balrog is there, that character is immediately eliminated, without any combat.

Fights

If a character moves into an area occupied by one or more enemy characters, a battle takes place. The moving character is the attacker and the enemy character is attacked. If there are 2 or more unrevealed enemy characters in the area where the fight takes place, the attacker chooses which enemy character he attacks first. The attacker may also choose to attack a character already revealed in the region.

A fight can be resolved in 4 steps:

1. Reveal the characters