Eurodome - Lord of the Rings Edition

WELCOME TO EURODOME!




EURODOME is a sophisticated competition for the favor of MAN-TINA, the EURODOME QUEEN. Show support for your favorite game so it will score more VPs. EURODOME uses an auction mechanic. You have been supplied with exactly one EURODOME FLORIN that you will use to pay for your bid. Please bid clearly for your preferred game. I will eventually get around to tallying the totals and declaring a winner.

Although you should be familiar with both games, there is no rule that says you have to have played both (or either) of them. The only rule in EURODOME is this;

Two games enter! One game politely excuses itself!

Right now, you're doubtless working out ways to steal a kidney that you can trade on the black market for The War Of The Ring Collectors' Edition (hint: dandelion greens pizza is not an effective lure). So, just to be topical, this week's matchup is:

Lord of the Rings (Knizia cooperative game) vs Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (Knizia two-player game).

I have had both, and traded both away.

the Co-op game gives a pretty good feeling of the journey. the boards and the titles of the events are nice and make the game feel right. Having the Big Eye coming closer and closer to the hobbits is neat. Allows for other hobbits to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. There are alot of good things.

its just that the stupid card mechanic feels blah. it isn't real easy to explain to people what the various cards mean in terms of the story. I know what they are supposed to represent, but anyone I've explained it to feels a real disconnect.

the confrontation has less connection to the story...but is a better game. stratego with variable powers. quick and dirty, with head to head competition. I likes it. I wish I could get this back, but someone offered successors for it and I had to make the trade.

vote LOTR:the confrontation

Jesus. Two of the weakest games ever spawned by the Tolkien license go head-to-head. Excuse me while I die of apathy.

Vote: War of the Ring.

Place worker on Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation

Not a big fan of either. Confrontation is actually the one I traded away because I primarily play 2p games and there are a slew of other 2p games I'd rather play.

I hung onto LotR as a co-op game I can play with the fam when my daughter grows up. I don't like co-op games because of the alpha problem, and LotR is the worst of them for this, although the Corrupt Hobbit variant (with a traitor mechanism that first resurfaced in ShoC) makes it decent.

My vote:

The Confrontation is a great 2 player strategy game but ultimately it's (very) glorified Stratego. And I always thought Stratego was a great game for what it is, but still...

Lord of the Rings, the co-op game, is very unique (especially back when it came out, but even still) and has some great tension as it builds. And though it's largely abstract on first glance, it covers a lot of the thematic elements of the story, some in a clever way, like the putting on the ring mechanic. I like it in particular with the Battlefields expansion, which adds some more decisions and tension.

Lord of the Rings

Kudos to Juniper for upping the funny.

This is a really hard one to call for me. These are my two most favorite Knizia designs, because they exemplify really great combinations of mechanics and theme.

Lord of the Rings was a revelation to me and my girlfriend the first time we played it. We had read the books out loud to each other the summer before the release of Jackson's Fellowship, and I picked the game out when it was released several months in advance of the movie. The way the design abstracts the events of the books, creates opportunities for variation within the well-known narrative, and ratchets up the tension is nothing short of amazing. The problem with the design is twofold: The degree of abstraction is so high that you need to know the story well to really get into it; and the "puzzle-game" aspect can lead to alpha-player tyranny. This game is best played by a group of people who know and love the source material, and whose actual personalities affect the collaborative decision-making process. It fails utterly when any player approaches it as a decision-tree that must be negotiated in the most efficient way possible, and is not shy about directing the other players to make the "right" decisions.

The Confrontation is LotR: Stratego, a brilliant simplification of the narrative thrust and individual characters that comprise the story, and my #1 favorite quick two-player game.

As a wannabe game designer, though, the big box game takes the cake. Despite the inherent efficiency analysis issue, I still stand in awe of what Knizia accomplished with Lord of the Rings.

Vote: Lord of the Rings.

I like both of these games. I like Stratego, and I like the bluff/counterbluff aspect of Confrontation. However this doesn't really have a lot to do with the books. Okay, you could say there was a bit of a bluff with "let's march on Sauron's gate to distract him from our preposterous long-shot gambit" but that's not anything like the "where's Frodo?" aspect of Confrontation.

The books are about a lot of things but every significant plot twist hinges on the question of yourself versus your ideals (friendship primarily, but also integrity, right, your society, etc.). And I think this is captured perfectly by Lord of the Rings. Deciding whether to hurt yourself a lot or the group a little is the most important thematic element of the books, and -- regardless of the valid criticisms of what exactly playing card with a tree on it means -- Knizia nailed this mechanically. He fuzzes out the What in favor of exploring the Why.

If he had done it the other way around, where it was clear what each individual action meant but the larger picture was vague, he would have ended up with something like War of the Ring, which is a great game and an excellent retelling of the story of the war, but not the story of the individuals in it and the emotional resonance of their choices. I.e. it explores the What and largely ignores the Why.

The alpha boss problem of all co-op games sucks, but that is a social contract/group problem and not a game problem, so I am comfortable discounting it.

Thus I place my one-florin bid on:

Lord of the Rings (the big box)

Wow. TOUGH choice. I really dig both of these games.

Lord of the Rings is proof positive that just because you abstract game mechanics, it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice a real marriage to theme. Every time I play, I get the feeling of being part of that 'fellowship'--we live and die together--as well as that sense of impending doom, impossible odds, the weight of sacrifice, the need to keep battling even when all seems lost. The expansions are uneven but they really put the icing on the cake.


Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation is another example of abstraction not necessarily obliterating theme. Yes, it doesn't make an ounce of sense why the Fellowship is scattered across the land, but their powers all make sense from a thematic standpoint. Boromir is going to redeem himself by nobly sacrificing himself for the greater good, Aragorn knows his way around better than anyone, Gandalf weilds supernatural powers to be a most fearsome opponent in combat. The Fellowship must use stealth and guile, while the Shadow player brings a driving forward, overwhelmingly powerful force that cares little for sacrificing its soldiers so long as their goal has been met. There's the nifty card interplay, maneuvering, guesswork...it's a great game that I've played over a dozen times and it never gets old.


Hmmm. I still haven't made up my mind yet.


I'm going to give the nod to Lord of the Rings. Playing the game always feels like an event, and it packs a thematic wallop worthy of far more complex Ameritrash offerings. It never fails to surprise me how some little cones, symbols, and a smattering of text layered over those beautiful Howe works will transport the players into the world in a way that much more complex titles fail to do. I never play it and think, "This is game A with bits of game B and C plugged in"...it's unique, enjoyable, and a hit with multiple audiences.

Both games are awesome, and certainly classics, so the edge is narrow. But there it is.

Both are great games...even though I didn't like LotR at first for most of the reasons that are cited by wayward fools who get pissy that the game doesn't have dwarf-on-Orc ass kicking or because it has friendship cards (which Tolkien would have approved of), I eventually realized the brillance of the game. It's still one of the better co-op games because it really gets at ideas like sacrifice and mutual strife unlike any other.

But THE CONFRONTATION is one of the best games ever published. It's incredibly tight, tense, and it really does tell a LotR story despite pretty abstract mechanics. The night I bought the game, Dollar Bill and I played it over and over again, like 17 times or something. It's one of those games I'll pull out almost any time it's just me and one other. The newer edition added some new fun stuff and increased its replayability, which is pretty much infinite anyway.

CONFRONTATION, all the way.

LOTR: Confrontation is a Euro game? Huh, I would've thought with its head-to-head player interaction, integration of theme, variable-player powers and piece elimination it would be considered Ameritrash all the way despite its Knizia pedigree.

Both are pretty good games, Lord of the Rings does nail down the "live or die together" aspect that Ken B. points out, but the rest is terribly abstract. And the game is really, really hard. We still haven't beaten it. I still have Friends and Foes and Sauron expansions in shrink because the thought of making the game harder boggles my mind.

My favorite part of the game though is the artwork for the friendship cards: The hobbits gathered together making stew. The idea of the hobbits offering the Army of the Dead a bowl of stew to become friends cracks me up.

Lord of the Rings: Confrontation is glorified Stratego and there's a problem with that? Stratego was one of my favorite games as a kid and combine that with my favorite fantasy series and we've got a winner.

Vote: LOTR: Confrontation

Of the two, I've only played co-op Lord of the Rings, so this is an easy one for me.

Vote: The Confrontation

Well, this one ought to be a smack-down.

The Confrontation is a very good strategy game in its own right, even without the LotR theme. Even so, it still feels very much like playing the CliffsNotes version of the Middle Earth saga, which isn't too shabby either.

Bid: LotR The Confrontation

Let's see. In one game, there's a confrontation, trash-talking, and mind games. In the other, we all sit around, hold hands, and decide together what the best thing to do is.

How is this a contest?
Vote LotR: The Confrontation

I always enjoyed the Lord of the Rings when I played it - maybe the people I played it with didn't spoil the co-op part of it. A bit abstract but still fun. And then when you add in the Sauron expansion it is a great game.

I owned The Confrontation - took it out and read the rules and cards and everything but never really got excited enough to pull it out to play and eventually sold it.

Vote : Lord of the Rings