How to Play War of the Ring in 28 Minutes

[Music] hey shane what's up hey mike how's it going i was wondering if you could help me out with something sure what do you need well i'm teaching war the ring next and i know how much you and nicole go to the rings so i figured hey maybe you could help me out with the intro oh absolutely were you thinking we could like dress up and do a reenactment of the full council of elrond ugh i would love that but you know quarantine we probably shouldn't no i was actually thinking maybe just like a quick overview of the history history yes a musical retrospective of the use of song and poetry to tell the history of lord of the rings of course we're gonna have to cover the third verse of tom bombadil's song talking about hey mike i i just want something simple you know i'm just trying to get people interested in learning more of the ring you know the game oh okay i get it to understand the game you need to know how it all started yes starting with the beginning cimarrellian chapter one of the beginning of days it was all among the wise that the first war began after ardo was nearly shaped and air like there was anything that mike you know what i actually think i got this so uh thank you anyway um i'm gonna get started and i will talk to you guys later like i said hi all right bye now in that time the velar brought order to the seas in the lands of the mountains and you but shay jay what'd he say he's not into it dude the beacons are lit man garner calls for aid [Music] hey folks i'm shea parker and this is rtfm the show where i teach you how to play a game because one does not simply learn to play war of the ring this rule book is filled with more than just words there are mechanics there that are hard to remember and the setup takes just way too long but here's the thing it's a really fun game so i'm going to do my best to teach it to you now in case you don't know war of the ring is an epic two-player strategy game where you will take on the role of either the free peoples of middle earth or sauron's shadow armies both sides will be focused on two great conflicts the war that rages across the land and hunt for the fellowship of the ring succeed in either goal and you win but doing so is not going to be easy the shadows forces are endless and thirsty for battle but the walls of these great cities will be difficult to topple the ring bearers have stalwart companions but as you move forward they might just abandon you one by one sacrificing themselves for your protection or simply leaving for a worthier cause this game is not to be entered into lightly but as with the source material the deeper you go the more you'll find so let's dive in and learn how to play the war of the ring first off i want to thank all my patreon backers who voted for war the ring my rules lawyers get to decide which games i teach and if there's a game you really want to see covered by rtfm joining patreon is the best way to do that second my viewers are really good at spotting any minor mistakes i might make so i'm going to start taking a page out of rado's book and putting any corrections any klingon subtitles so please turn those on just in case now let's get set up first thing you want to do is decide which side you're playing as the goodies are the baddies once you've done that you've got a lot of soldiers to put down on the board each player has multiple nations and their units to contend with but this part of the rulebook shows the starting positions for everyone involved so just follow that and your map will look like this in no time you'll quickly notice that the shadow player has a significantly larger army that's not a trick the shadow is a lot stronger militarily but their win condition is also harder see taking over enemy cities and strongholds earns you points and the shadow player needs 10 to win whereas the free peoples only need four i'll talk more about that a little later once your troops are set there's a few more things to do this game isn't just about fighting battles it's also about getting our boys frodo and sam to mount doom with that dastardly ring to help with that you've got a fellowship of companions all of which will go in this companion box each has a card associated with them but for now just take gandalf the gray and place him face up on the top of the deck also remove gandalf the white aragorn and gollum and place these to the side along with gollum's figure next put the ring bearers figure in rivendell as the fellowship moves through middle-earth you'll count their progress and their corruption on this track if the ring bearers make it to mount doom the free peoples win the game regardless of how many points each player has but if their corruption reaches the end of the track the shadow player wins instead just a couple more things before we get started take each of the hunt tiles separate all the grey ones and put them in a bowl or bag something you can draw from without looking the others you can leave to the side for now on the board place each player's event cards matching the symbols on the back the three elven rings and each political tokens in their designated spaces i'll talk more about politics later but for now make sure that the tokens representing mordor eisenguard southerns and easterlings and the elves are flipped to their active side whereas all the others are inactive once that's all set up give each player their starting dice four for the free peoples seven for the shadow and you're ready to start [Music] a game of war the ring has you playing a series of turns until one side has won the game either by ending a turn with the points needed to win a military victory or by the ring bearers either making it to mount doom or succumbing to corruption each turn consists of six phases most of them are lightning quick whereas one of them is practically the entire game see what you're able to do in war of the ring is largely determined by those action dice we showed a minute ago so let's skim through the first few phases and get to how the dice work starting with phase one you recover your spent action dice and draw event cards on the first turn there are no dice to recover so ignore that and draw one card from each of your event decks i'm gonna completely skip over phases two and three for now because they talk about things that we'll learn about way down the road phase four is just roll the dice but for the shadow player every eye you roll is immediately placed in the hunt box now phase five action resolution is what you'll probably consider to be the game starting with a free people's side each player will alternate using one of their dice to take an action or if you have fewer dice available than the other player you can forgo taking an action and pass so long as you have fewer dice you can keep doing this but as soon as both players have the same number of dice available you'll have to take an action alternatively if one player runs out of dice first the other player can take action after action until they run out so what can you do well as you can see each die has several icons on them and while they look a little different between the two different sets of dice the actions they represent are largely the same i'll also mention that some of these actions have a lot of intricate details so i'll make a blanket statement of if i don't cover it all of it right away don't worry i will later in the video now let's start simple and work our way up the palantir is an event action remember those event cards you drew you can use a palantir die to play any one of them for their top side effect the bottom side will be used during combat so you don't need to worry about that just yet sometimes they'll have prerequisites in bold but if you can play the card simply follow its instructions and then discard the card face down or if it says play on the table it means that card's effect are ongoing leave it on the table until it is discarded the trigger for which will be described on the card you can also use a palantir to draw one card from either event deck now you have a hand limit of six cards and you must immediately discard cards if you exceed that number if either deck runs out of cards do not shuffle the discard pile back in that deck is simply depleted next up we have the army symbol now the shadow player has a dive face dedicated to this action but the free peoples only have the combined muster army side which makes sense since sauron has been ready for this fight for quite a while whereas the free peoples are like but sauron's alive doubt it anyway when you take an army action you have three options you can play an event card with the army symbol on it you can move up to two different armies to free adjacent regions or you can make one of your armies attack an adjacent enemy army the muster die gives you a few options as well but we're also going to see our first bit of asymmetry and actions here first off you can use a mustard to play a muster action card but you can also use it to make a diplomatic action this means going over the political track and moving one nation one step closer to being at war however a nation can't make that last step until it's activated once a nation is at war they can use the muster die to recruit units looking at the map you'll see these little diamonds on a lot of regions these are settlements and they represent locations where you can recruit units as long as you control them and they aren't being sieged event cards can allow you to break these rules recruiting in neutral spaces nations not at war or besieged strongholds when using the muster to recruit you can choose to take one elite or two other units regular and or leader from your reinforcements and put them into play if you recruit two units they must be placed in different settlements you can recruit and settlements of two different nations so long as they're both at war but make sure you use the corresponding units for each place can't be putting dwarves in rivendell school are considered sour on leaders but they can only be recruited in a sauron stronghold lastly and this is for the shadow player only you can use a muster to bring one of your characters into play see you have three minions saruman the mouth of sauron and the witch king just ready to be tagged in but they also have prerequisites saramon for example requires eisenguard to be at war but once they are you can use a muster to bring him into orthanc these characters are very powerful in their own right and i'll let you discover just how useful they are on your own but the biggest advantage they give is that each of them lets you roll an additional die at the beginning of the turn oh and i'll also mention that the witch king is considered to be both a character and a nazcal which will be important for certain game effects now the free people have characters too but at the start of the game they're all in the fellowship in order to make use of them you're going to need to start with the character action as with army and muster you can use a character die to play a character event guard you can also use this action to move or attack with a single army containing a leader for the free people's player the character action has a number of additional uses which is probably why you have two character faces per die you can move the fellowship by pushing the progress counter one step forward and then resolving the hunt for the ring which will possibly reveal your fellowship and or add a little corruption after performing this action place your die in the hunt box it'll be important later if you're already revealed you can hide with a character action flipping your progress token back to the hidden side you can also use this cool sword to separate or move your companions when you separate choose a number of companions from the fellowship and remove their cards and figures let's say gandalf and legolas want to go on a little walk take a look at their character cards specifically this symbol and the number next to it this is that character's level and for our current purposes it tells us their movement speed now since gandalf and legloss are leaving together you'll only look at the higher number in this case gandalf's three during separation you count the highest separated companions level and add whatever progress the fellowship currently has so at this moment these two can move up to four spaces they can move through enemy armies but have to stop if they enter a stronghold controlled by the shadow player they also can't enter a stronghold that's being sieged by the enemy sieging is this whole big thing don't worry about it just yet also once those companions have left the fellowship they can never return now if you have some companions outside the fellowship you can use a sword to move them and i mean all of them for just one action use their level to determine their movement speed and if they stick together you can keep using just the higher level character but they don't have to the shadow player only has one unique sword action and it's a variation on moving companions however it's a little bit more powerful the move minions action allows you to move all of your characters except saruman because he can't leave or think but it also lets you move the nazgul now the mouth of sauron has a move speed of three but the nazgul and the witch king all ride around on those flying dragony things so their move speed is infinity you can move each of them anywhere on the map except for a stronghold that is controlled by the free peoples and is not under siege to wrap up the different actions there's the muster army die which lets you choose one of those actions to take there's the eye of sauron which we've already said goes straight to the huntbox and doesn't give the shadow any action and for the free peoples there's the will of the west you can think of this as a wild card changing it to any dye face before using it or you can use it to bring out the good guys goodest guys aragorn and gandalf the white as the shadows minions these have some prerequisites but they also give you those extra dice to work with very helpful for the free peoples but it's important to note for both players if you lose a character that gives you an extra action die starting next round you won't be able to use that die anymore and the last thing you can do with the die is to just chuck it if for some reason you want to take an action without actually doing anything you can discard a die and not this isn't usually recommended but it's something you can do the free peoples also start with three elven rings that you can use once per turn to change one of your dice to a different face once you use it flip it over to the flaming eye side and give it to the shadow player giving them this ability to use later on once they use it remove the token from the game the only other restriction is that the free peoples can't change a die to the will of the west side nor can the shadow player change an eye to anything else though they can turn a die into an eye immediately placing it into the hunt box once both players had used all of their dice you move on to phase six where you check to see if either player has secured a military victory if not you go back to phase one get your spent dice back and start it all over again oh and if both players have enough points to win at the same time the shadow player wins as too much of middle-earth has been lost for the free people's victories to truly matter which is pretty grim so if you want to stop that from happening you gotta learn how to fight [Music] if you're gonna fight in this titular war you need to master three main elements army movement battles and politics and there's quite a bit of nuance to all three let's start with politics we've already talked about the political track in relation to the muster action but the tokens here can be moved in other ways and this track also prevents you from doing certain things until you're at war you know you can't recruit units in a nation that's not at war but you also can't attack with non-belligerent units or move them into another nation's borders even if they're friendly so let's go to war then right well first the nation has to be activated flipping the token over this can happen in a few ways if an enemy enters region within a nation's borders or attacks an army containing that nation's units they immediately become activated you also activate a nation by declaring the fellowship in a city or stronghold of that nation more on that later or by certain companions ending their movement or entering play in the cities or strongholds of specific nations see each companion card shows a symbol which matches either a specific nation or the free people in general boromir for example can activate gondor by showing up and toodling on his horn but if he goes to rohan that won't get the job done gandalf on the other hand can activate any nation once a nation is activated they can be moved to the at war space through mustering or through enemy action whenever an army is attacked you move all nations with units in that army down one space on the track this also happens if a nation's settlement is captured by the opponent there are event cards that trigger attacks and if they involve pitting two armies against each other that moves the political track how you normally would the three ants awake cards and the dead men have done harrow card will also affect the political track like a battle but all other cards ignore politics unless otherwise stated characters in nazgul also ignore the political track as far as movement and battles are concerned they can't fight on their own but they can be involved in army battles or move through enemy territory regardless of the current political landscape okay now that we've gotten the political talk out of the way let's move some armies and get in some fights regarding movement we've talked about the basics but i want to introduce two concepts that the game will refer to on occasion these are free regions and regions that are free for the purpose of army movement they're almost identical but there's a key difference a region is free when there are no enemy units or enemy controlled settlements the exception being that if you are sieging an enemy stronghold that region is considered free for you free for the purpose of army movement covers all of that but enemy controlled settlements without enemy units are also included which means you can move into an open enemy settlement with a move action it's a subtle but important difference especially since those two qualifiers tend to come up a fair amount now let's put this knowledge to use say you've got an army action and you want to move some dudes on a map here's a few things you can and can't do first off when moving armies you can cross these white lines even if there's a river there but these black lines are impassable terrain if you move into an enemy settlement place a control marker on it to show that you've taken over that space you can't recruit units there but neither can your opponent you can merge armies by moving them into each other but you can't move any units twice with the same action so this wouldn't be okay you can only have 10 army units in a single region but characters leaders and nazgul don't count towards that limit if you ever have more than 10 army units you must remove the excess and place them back into your reinforcements also if your army gets too big for the map grab one of these tiles from the side of the board and swap them out this will usually only happen for the shadow player when moving you can split an army by leaving some units in their original space however the free people's leaders cannot exist in a region without army units so you can't leave them behind like this characters nazgul don't need any babysitters though so they can be left behind however if you're splitting an army with a character die at least one leader or character must join the moving units now i know everyone loves hearing about movement restrictions but i'm sure what you're really here for is the combat so let's dive in an army can attack an adjacent army provided there isn't a mountain in the way using the army or character dice when you do this first choose how many units you bring into the fight any units you don't bring in are considered the rear guard and are completely ignored during this battle forming a rear guard is optional but if you do it must contain at least one army unit also if using a character die there must be a leader in the attacking group the defending player however must fight with all units in the attacked region once it starts combat shakes out like this play a combat card roll dice for combat re-roll dice based on leadership remove casualties then choose whether or not to cease the attack or retreat if there are still army units and neither player has withdrawn start back at the top and do it again first both players have the option of playing a combat card remember how event cards have that bottom section is what it's for the attacker declares whether or not they will play a card first then the defender and then any played cards are revealed simultaneously and their effects play out some cards will have a timing element to them so to determine which effect occurs first check the number on the bottom if there's a tie the defender's card is applied first comic cards might have requirements like specific characters or units in combat or they might have you forfeit leadership which i'll talk more about in a second a combat card might also give you an extra attack before the main fight if this happens you don't get to re-roll it opponents cards don't modify your combat role and any casualties are removed immediately now let's talk about the fight itself during combat you'll roll dice based on how many army units you have in the region whether they're regular or elite units doesn't matter you'll roll one die per soldier up to a maximum of five each result of a five or six will count as a hit sometimes your dice can be modified for better or worse but a six is always a hit and one is always a miss regardless of any modifiers now after rolling for combat count how much leadership you have each leader and nas goal provide one leadership each and each character has a leadership value on their card add it all up subtract any leadership you forfeited due to combat cards and choose up to that many failing dice to re-roll you only get one shot at it though so if you have one army unit and three leaders you'll still only get to re-roll the die once and another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of combat cards modify attack rolls but not re-rolls after counting up the damage each side assigns hits to their units and removes casualties and here's where some people are going to cry foul see the shadows armies are mass-produced so when a shadow unit dies just put it back in your reinforcements however there are only so many humans elves and dwarves in the world so when a free people's unit dies it gets put back in the box effectively removing it from the game now when removing units one hit will kill a regular army unit whereas an elite unit requires two hits to kill if you assign a single hit to an elite you can downgrade it to a regular unit instead of killing it for the free people's player the regular unit you bring in can either be from your reinforcements or if you've already lost one from your previous casualties either way the elite unit is considered a casualty and is put back in box you can't assign hits to leaders or characters instead if all of the army units are eliminated all leaders and characters in that army are lost and all characters including the shadow minions are permanently out of the game if they die in combat it's important to keep in mind though that characters in a region without an army can't be the target of an attack which makes them pretty hard to get rid of after removing casualties the attacker can choose to cease the attack ending the combat and leaving all remaining units where they are if they don't the defender can retreat provided there is an adjacent free region if both players continue the fight you'll keep going through those five steps until at least one side's army has been completely eliminated if the attacker won the fight they can then move any units from those participating in the battle into the attacked region now things change a little bit when we look at these bigger rectangles on the board see middle earth is full of fortifications cities and strongholds and these are going to affect how combat plays out now fortifications in cities function the same but fortifications aren't owned by any player and thus don't earn any points what they both do is provide a defensive boost during the first round of combat see during the first round any army attacking a fortification or city will only hit on a six or higher but if the battle continues after that it plays out normally if you take control over an enemy city give yourself one point good for you now strongholds are a big deal because well they're just so strong and holding them is very important now controlling an enemy stronghold gives you two points but taking them is quite the task see at the beginning of any combat round in a region with a stronghold the defender can choose to retreat into siege if you don't you fight a normal combat on the fields if you do retreat though you can take up to 5 army units and as many leaders and characters as you want from the region and bring them into the castle walls putting them in the matching space on the side of the board there are excess units left in the region they'll continue the fight as normal but if not the battle ends immediately and the attacker can come on in this stronghold is now under siege which changes things in a few key ways after your opponent retreats into siege you'll need to use another attack action to start a siege combat this mostly follows the same rules as normal combat but with a couple changes like with cities the attacker only hits on sixes but unlike cities that penalty continues through each round of combat after assigning hits combat will end automatically unless the attacker chooses to downgrade an elite unit to a regular one which allows you to continue the combat for another round i'm honestly not sure what this is supposed to represent in game but it means that if you don't bring some elites with you you're probably going to have to spend multiple attack actions in order to capture a stronghold on the defender side the big difference is that you can't retreat from a siege however there is a way to fight back you can relieve a siege in progress by using an adjacent army to attack the sieging army but your units inside the walls don't get to participate you might also want to use an attack action to run a sortie which just means taking some or all of the units inside the walls and fighting on the fields at the end of each combat round you can keep fighting or you can go back inside the walls if you win the combat bring all units in the stronghold back out to the map in both of these scenarios neither player gets the defensive bonus though lastly i mention that you gain points for taking an enemy's city or stronghold but if your opponent ever retakes those territories you'll lose whatever points you gained so you need to hang on to them if you want to win and that about wraps up the war so now let's talk about the ring [Applause] while the war wages on a group of hobbits men an elf a dwarf and a wizard seek to eliminate the opposition in a more indirect way the ring bearers frodo and sam will attempt to carry the one ring the vessel containing sauron's very essence to the one place it can be destroyed the fires of mount doom in the very heart of mordor sounds easy right well it is fairly straightforward but it's also going to be quite the challenge now we've talked about how you can spend a character die to move the fellowship by advancing this token forward one space each time you move however sauron will try to hunt for the ring possibly forcing frodo to wear it in order to escape leading to corruption which is measured by this second token now there's a lot to go over here but first i want to go way back to talking about the phases of a turn real quick because i skipped a couple of them now after drawing event cards you have the fellowship phase where the free people's player can declare the position of the fellowship see we keep moving the progress marker along this track every time we move but so long as we stay hidden the ring bearers figure will stay in the same place let's say your progress is at five if you choose to declare your fellowship slide the marker back to zero and then you can move the ring bearers up to five spaces this would be enough to get us delorean which is helpful because when you declare in a city or stronghold that you control you could heal one point of corruption declaring a free people's city or stronghold also allows you to instantly activate that nation the elves start out activated because the ring bearers are considered declared in rivendell at the beginning of the game lastly during the fellowship phase you may change the guide of your fellowship but i'll talk more about that a little later phase three is hunt allocation which is when sauron can choose to place a number of action dice in the hunt box with the eye face up instead of rolling them you can place as many dices there are companions in the fellowship but you don't have to place any that is unless a blue die was placed into the hunt box last turn then you have to place at least one to remember this i usually do it during the recover action dice phase if you take out any swords leave an eye anyway let's talk about why you're going to want dice here see every time the fellowship moves the shadow gets to hunt for them well as long as you have eyes in the hunt box for every eye you have roll a die if you're only sixes then the hunt is successful and you get to draw a hunt tile if you chose a number that's how much corruption the ring bearers accrue if you chose an i count the number of successes you rolled and deal that much corruption damage and if you see this symbol it means that the fellowship is revealed flip the progress marker to the revealed side slide it back to zero and now the free people's player must reveal their fellowship this follows similar rules to declaring but with two big differences first you can't end the fellowships movement in a city or stronghold controlled by the free peoples second if the fellowship started ended or moved through a shadow stronghold controlled by the shadow player another hunt tile is drawn and if you moved through multiple strongholds draw one for each an eye drawn this way will deal no damage though after being revealed the free people's player must use a character die to hide again before the fellowship can continue moving oh and keep all of your drawn tiles in a discard pile refilling your draw pile only if you go through all of them now that sounds pretty rough but rolling a six isn't that easy to do thing is after you move the fellowship place the character die you spent in the hunt box and now if you move again this turn the shadow player will add plus one to their hunt roll for each blue die in the box meaning that the more you move the more dangerous it becomes also if the fellowship is in a region that contains a shadow controlled stronghold any shadow army units or any nazgul the shadow player will gain one re-roll for each condition that applies so moving is scary especially when there's danger of foot and moving multiple times each round is especially risky but there is something you can do to protect yourself if and when you get into trouble when you set up the game you put your gandalf the grey card at the top of your companion deck indicating that he is the current guide now the guide may impart a benefit that is used during the rest of the game but there's also something every companion can do take one for the team whenever you are dealt corruption damage you can choose to take a casualty to reduce the corruption gained by the level of the companion lost you either eliminate your guide or randomly choose a companion in the fellowship if the damage is higher than the level of lost companion the rest of the damage is added as corruption if the damage is equal or lower you don't gain any corruption but you still lose the companion if the guide is lost immediately choose a different companion to be the new guide whenever you do this the guide you choose must be the highest or tied for highest level companion so at first the guide must be either strider or gandalf but if they leave or die then you choose between gimli boromir or legolas after that it's the hobbits and if all the companions leave the fellowship that's when gollum steps in gollum is a special companion that immediately joins the fellowship and becomes the new guide when the ring bearers are otherwise alone he can't be sacrificed but his guide ability is pretty powerful of course having gollum in the group allows the shadow player to use some pretty nasty event cards so it's a bit of a mixed bag now the goal is to get to the crack of doom but there's no mount doom region exactly instead the last leg of this journey is represented by the final mordor track if the fellowship is in minas morgul or moranin during the fellowship phase you may enter mordor if you want to if so place the ring bearers on their first step of the mordor track this is not considered to be in the gorgorath region it's its own separate area now as soon as you enter the mordor track a few things happen first take all discarded hunt tiles and place only the eyes back into your draw pile also add any special hunt tiles that were created during the game these are created by event cards for both sides but when you play them you'll place the tile to the side until the fellowship enters mordor if a special tile is made while you're in mordor just add it to the drop pile next moving along the mordor track works a little differently than moving through middle-earth you won't move the progress counter anymore but you'll still use it to show whether you're hidden or revealed you still need to be hidden to move but now instead of moving and then maybe drawing a tile every time you want to move automatically draw a tile first if the tile is a grain number deal damage as normal if it's an i deal damage equal to the number of dice in the hunt box including the blue dice used for previous movement if the tile is one of these blue special tiles with a negative number move the corruption marker back that many spaces if you draw this tile roll a die and deal that much damage and if you draw any of the red special tiles with a stop symbol the ring bearers have to stay where they are instead of moving forward one space you can still take a casualty to help prevent damage but you can't separate companions anymore any ability that would separate them eliminates them instead i mean think about it this is a bad neighborhood and pippin does not know his way around and lastly if you don't attempt to move or hide at least once during a turn one corruption is automatically added to the ring bearers however if you make it to the crack of doom and you don't have 12 corruption the free people's player wins the game and that's how you play war of the ring thank you so much for watching and for my patreon backers choosing this game for me to teach it's one i've had on my radar for a long time if you want to help me decide which games i cover or if you want early access to the strategy videos that i'll be putting up very soon head on over to the patreon and pledge a buck or two i also usually do videos for the expansions right away but since there's a brand new war the ring expansion coming out later this year i decided to hold off until that one comes out and then i'll do all three of them together anyway my rules lawyers have voted and so the next game i teach will be this one i filmed this before the poll closed i didn't just forget and decide to fix it and post that would be highly unprofessional [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: RTFM

Views: 102,527

Keywords: board, game, rules, explanation, learn, to, play, Shea, Parker, RTFM, gaming, rtfm, rftmshow, show, tabletop, gamer, boardgame, games, tutorial, boardgames, how to play, war of the ring, lord of the rings, tolkien, brothers murph, nick, mike

Id: QCwj9WO3-To

Length: 31min 0sec (1860 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020