Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation Board Game Review

Year Published: 2002/2005

Players: 2

Playing Time: 30 Minutes

Reiner Knizia, almost inarguably board gaming’s most prolific designer, doesn’t often deal in zero-sum, directly combative games. Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation is a departure for him in several key ways.

The results, however, remain quite stunning. The Confrontation is a surprisingly thematic, tactically and strategically deep two-player game that still manages to play scarily fast. It offers some wonderful opportunities to sink deeply into a rhythm with a dedicated play partner, where your experience together in the game deepens both players’ enjoyment and mastery.

Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation – The Premise

You play as the Fellowship or the forces of Mordor, and you’re trying to…

Ok, you know what, forget that. You already know the story of Lord of the Rings. I don’t need to explain the theme to you.

Mechanically speaking, The Confrontation will draw comparisons to Stratego, that classic 2-player contest from way back in 1946. Stratego features wildly variable setup, fog of war, as you can see opponent movements but may not have information about their strength, and plays in a tense, cat-and-mouse meets capture-the-flag sort of way.

That exact description could also describe The Confrontation. It slims down the number of pieces in play, gives each unit a situational ability (not unlike the bomb defuser or spy in Stratego), and instead of simply comparing unit strength to determine battle outcome, you both compare unit strength and have a rock/paper/scissors style card minigame with a small deck of cards that can amend outcomes.

Broadly speaking, the Fellowship wants surprise victories and to avoid combat. Many of their abilities let them slip away from pursuers, to fight another day. The Shadow forces, perhaps predictably, have more raw power at their disposal, so they want to hem in the Fellowship and pick them apart in battle.

Exceptions exist in the form of thematic touches, such as Merry, who immediately defeats the Witch King if they meet. Sussing out unit configuration is thus a priority.

Additional thematic touches come in the form of the map itself, which is symmetrical save for a few wrinkles. Passing through Moria offers quick travel for the Fellowship, for example, but if the Balrog is stationed there, using the pass is a suicide mission.

Finding Depth in Repetition

Stratego has survived because of the functionally infinite ways you can configure your forces, and how these correspond to different strategies, both tactical and psychological.

In truncating the number of pieces, the reasonable configurations for both sides in The Confrontation are perhaps fewer (though still considerable), but Knizia finds ways to layer in nuances via the powers and card system.

See, after 2-3 sessions, you’ll have internalized every card and ability in the game (and 2-3 sessions may only take you 45-90 minutes). But so will your opponent. At that point, it becomes more about zigging when your opponent zags than about optimizing one’s setup.

A dominant configuration and approach might win you three straight matches…until your opponent figures out a way to counter it. You’ll then look for wrinkles in the strategy to regain your edge, and the pendulum-like struggle for temporary dominance will swing dramatically.

It takes the game into the realm of the psychological, but never removes the importance of good tactical and strategic planning outside of those more nebulous mind games.

Variability and Character Powers

The original version of the game, released in 2002, has only a single set of abilities and cards for each faction. Frodo can always sidestep combat (if geographically possible), for example.

The 2005 follow-up features this exact same setup, plus alternate sides for each character. A few morph into different characters entirely, to match better thematically with the new ability.

Frodo isn’t as sneaky anymore, for example, but now Sam can take over as the ringbearer if Frodo goes down. This takes away one broad strategy but introduces another, and whereas Sam and Frodo likely wanted to travel together in the original, you may split them up to increase the space that the Shadow’s forces need to cover.

This is only one example, but it’s multiplied by each character. Some additional cards exist to add even more variance, but as of writing this review, I haven’t yet played with them.

I’m sometimes skeptical of this type of variance, since it often is simply a stand-in for actual depth in the design. I’m comforted by a couple facts, though:

1. I played with the base character abilities for a long time before trying the alternates, and hadn’t felt like I’d exhausted their potential.
2. The game’s quick playtime means that internalizing both sets of abilities – and, I assume, the optional new cards as well – will never take you too long. Knock out a few sessions with the new setup and you’ll feel at home with it.

The game even supports “drafting” characters and mixing & matching the original edition’s abilities with the later edition’s alternatives. I can’t say I’ve explored this in any detail, but I assume the new ways these bounce off of one another could be quite amusing.

The Sam/Frodo example above, though, is intended to be an encouraging one. It suggests new strategies for play without fundamentally altering how the game is played.

Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation: The Conclusion

Boy, what a convoluted section title, eh?

Anyway, am I overselling this game? Hopefully not.

Sometimes you’ll have a string of bad beats and cough up The Ring without much of a fight, or watch Frodo high-step into Mordor with nary a nervous moment in his journey. An online acquaintance even has a story of one of his games ending in the first minute with a truly surprising quick-strike tactic.

These will grate on some, but I see it as part of the experience. Re-rack ‘em and try again, learning from your past mistakes and developing nuances to strategies that seem to work. Double-think your way around your opponent’s stratagems, or watch as your own supposed cleverness proves to be your downfall.

It’s all amusing and quick, but manages to pack tension and narrative weight into the experience. The marriage of those things is no small feat.

If any of this seems like your jam, or you have a family member who’d enjoy this sort of IP-based romp, it’s worth seeking out. Outside its roots in Stratego, it remains quite unique in the gaming landscape, and should please fans of both Lord of the Rings and tightly-plotted 2-player strategy games.