Highlights
- The Lord Of The Rings has inspired a variety of tabletop games, including card games, board games, and war games.
- The Lord Of The Rings: The Card Game offers a tense and strategic experience with expansions for continued play.
- War Of The Ring is a highly immersive and thematic board game that allows players to battle for control of Middle-earth's strongholds.
The Lord Of The Rings is one of the largest intellectual properties in popular culture and has been the subject of tabletop and video games alike even before the release of Peter Jackson's beloved film trilogy, such as the 1984 tabletop role-playing game, Middle-earth Role Playing, and the 1988 RTS, War In Middle-earth.
With such extensive and iconic source material, and a large fan base, The Lord Of The Rings is a figurative playground for tabletop game designers, though only some have managed to provide a solid experience for fans.
7 The Lord Of The Rings: The Card Game (2011)
This cooperative scenario-based card game is for one or two players, who each control up to three different heroes. Along with their heroes, players also have a deck representing their allies, along with event cards that they can use to support their heroes.
The Lord Of The Rings: The Card Game has players sending their heroes to battle the armies of Mordor and complete various quests. The game’s tension and conflict come mainly from the overwhelming amount of things that the players need to handle, and the limited resources they have, that force players to make tough decisions every round. Although this game only has three scenarios and twelve heroes, it is a “Living Card Game” that has a plethora of expansions for players that want to keep playing.
6 Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game
Released in 2001 with the launch of Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring, this tabletop war game from Games Workshop is a great experience for fans of both The Lord Of The Rings and miniature war games such as Warhammer that are looking to recreate battles from the trilogy.
In the game, players can control either the “Good” or “Evil” sides, covering all the major factions of the franchise. The game has a grand and strategic scale and focuses more on tactics and fantasy battles than on theme and narrative. Although Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game isn’t as popular as Games Workshop’s other properties, it remains a healthy and well-supported game.
5 War Of The Ring: The Card Game
This card game for up to four players has players split between two teams: the Shadow and the Free Peoples, represented by decks of cards. The game focuses on the central narrative of the Ring-bearer attempting to destroy the One Ring.
Each game has each team playing cards, battling over various strongholds while helping or hindering the quest to destroy the Ring. Teams also take turns between offense and defense, changing up the game’s dynamic every round. The game features over 100 original illustrations that have the game doubling as a work of art and provides a cheaper alternative to the sprawling War Of The Ring war game.
4 The Lord Of The Rings: The Board Game
Originally released in 2000 and more recently reprinted as an “Anniversary Edition,” The Lord Of The Rings: The Board Game has players take control of the Hobbits attempting to take the One Ring to Mordor. The game visualizes the Hobbits’ journey via “conflict boards” that represent the major plot points of the trilogy: the Mines of Moria, Helm’s Deep, Shelob’s Lair, and Mordor.
The game also features several “tracks” that players must progress through on each conflict board by playing various cards. The game’s challenge comes from playing the right cards at the right time and attempting to get through each conflict as quickly and efficiently as possible.
3 The One Ring RPG
This role-playing game is based on The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, and provides players with rules for role-playing in Middle-earth; traveling across it, battling enemies, and conversing with various characters. Like many tabletop RPGs, the game does require a Games Master, named the “Loremaster” in this game. The rulebook also contains a bestiary, as well as rules that allow the Loremaster to create their own enemies, called “Nameless Things.”
The One Ring takes place between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings as “the Shadow” returns to Middle-earth, and tasks players with traveling across the land in search of clues and to hinder the return of the Shadow. For players looking for an imaginative, role-playing-heavy experience set in Middle-earth, The One Ring is arguably the best system.
2 The Lord Of The Rings: Journeys In Middle-earth
The Lord Of The Rings: Journeys In Middle-earth is a cooperative adventure game for up to five players, though the game can also be played solo. The game has players battle their way through a large campaign made up of individual scenarios.
Each player has their own deck of cards with which to battle enemies, with each scenario tasking players with completing different objectives across a hexagonal map, though the game is extremely combat-heavy. The game also has a companion mobile app that helps to manage the game’s logistics and control the enemies for each encounter.
1 War Of The Ring
Now in its second edition, War Of The Ring is perhaps the most revered tabletop game to be set in Middle-earth. The game features a sprawling map and plenty of plastic miniatures to cover it as two players battle each other over control of various strongholds, with one player taking control of the Free Peoples, and the other the Shadow Armies of Sauron.
Alongside War Of The Ring’s grandiose war game mechanics are small, thematic touches that help to immerse players, such as the fact that while the armies of Shadow simply return to the supply when killed, the Free Peoples are killed permanently. Overall, the Free Peoples have a much weaker military than Sauron, which incentivizes players to focus on getting Frodo to Mordor, so that he can destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. War Of The Ring is a large-scale, complex board game that may be too heavy for some players, but for fans of both war games and The Lord Of The Rings, there’s arguably no tabletop game more immersive and thematic.