The Event Card system in War of the Ring is, without any doubt, an essential element in making the game what it is. Events add the narrative depth that a game based upon a book requires- Events also introduce a level of unpredictability which give to War of the Ring a high longevity, in spite of being a single-scenario game. Depending on the Event cards draw, the flow of the game can be drastically different.
Paths of the Woses
Except for the necessary clarifications, we had not in our minds to modify the Event system for the 2nd Edition. Some of the cards involving the Hunt, such as "Nazgul Search" and "Orc Patrol", were under scrutiny because they had turned up to be TOO useful, as we will see in the next article. They ended up not being changed, but during the testing process, it was brought to our attention that there were some cards which could be useful to revise.
Some cards, such as “To the Last Battle” and “Paths of the Woses”, were included in the game for their strong narrative value, but in practice they had a very small chance to be actually used in the game. That was really a pity, because some of these events were really interesting and great to use in the rare instances when this was possible- but they were too narrow to be perceived as useful, and most of the times, they were just discarded or used for their battle effects.
The Last Battle
We completely agreed that cool Events with little use are not that great, after all, and that this could become one of the ways to improve the 2nd Edition with respect to its predecessor. This proved to be not too hard a task – it was sufficient to adjust the conditions under which these cards were playable. They are now definitely more interesting than before. They are still not “basic” cards that can appear in any game, but there will be surely more chances now to see the Free Peoples marching to the Last Battle than before!
The Ents Awake: Treebeard
Another issue was noticed with the Ent cards, once again raised by the current War of the Ring Online World Champion, TMFKAMGAAACG (The Man Formerly Known As Magic Geek And Also As Curious Glenn). With his typical writing style, he blurted out quite bluntly and unexpectedly the following analysys.
“Recently I have been thinking a lot about Ents, and White Gandalf in particular.
Mostly this is because of the MASSIVE downgrade that happens re-entering the basic game.
The Ents are PATHETIC !
&, I used to waste Gandalf the White sitting in Fangorn just so I got to use them?!?!?!!”
(The truth must be told, when you get used to it, the brutal tone that Glenn has in its writing becomes sort of funny!)
The problem was that our veteran players were coming back to the basic game after a lot of gameplay with the Expansion, where the Ents have a quite different way of being played. As it happens, the prompt reply came from Kevin “Krieghund” Chapman and Kristofer “Veldrin” Bengtsson (I guess you should start to have an idea why they ended up in the “Special Thanks” section of the 2nd Edition rules). Why not use a similar pre-condition to the one which is used for the Ents in the Expansion?
Glenn’s complaint was that it was not so nice to have a Character like Gandalf sitting in Fangorn while he could be of greater use elsewhere (this might have to do with Glenn’s persistent attempt to make the Free People Military Victory a viable strategy, but we decided to take the hint all the same, this time!). The Expansion-like condition (Gandalf the White is in play, any Companion in Fangorn) solved the problem swiftly and the modified Events were tested successfully and successfully entered 2nd Edition in their revised shape, which you can see here.
We won’t go into the long and boring work which we did to smooth out and clarify the wording of many cards – a long and boring work, which hopefully will show up in a much shorter and less boring FAQ!
The playtesting was coming to an end… And so is our series of articles, with the 10th and last part, coming soon!
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