Duel for Middle-Earth

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth is a Tolkein-themed 'reimplementation' of 7 Wonders Duel, which was designed by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala and published by Repos Production in 2015. The art for this new Lord of the Rings edition is by Vincent Dutrait. It is, of course, a two-player game and, as you might guess, it has the 'free peoples' of Middle-Earth (hobbits, elves & co) pitted against the evil forces of Mordor. Tho' it's classified as a 'reimplementation' and it is very similar to 7 Wonders Duel, Duel for Middle-Earth isn't just a Lord of the Rings re-skin.

This is a card drafting game where, over three rounds, each player will be building their own tableau, taking accessible cards unlocked from a central display that has a mix of face-up and face-down cards. The face-down cards are only revealed as and when the card that overlaps them has been removed; adding much excitement as each of the rounds progresses.

Grey cards function like buildings in 7 Wonders Duel except that they give you one or more of five 'skills' (ruse/strength/courage/knowledge/leadership) in place of the physical resources generated by 7 Wonders buildings. Yellow cards give you coins. Green cards represent six of the races of the free people of Middle-Earth and they mirror the science cards of 7 Wonders Duel. You get to claim a valuable 'alliance' token if you have a matching pair of race symbols or if you have three different race symbols. Collect all six races and you immediately win the game.

Blue cards represent the Ring of Power; these let you move your hobbits or Nazgul on a Quest for the Ring track; functioning somewhat like the tug-of-war military track in the 7 Wonders game. If your hobbits reach Mount Doom at the end of the Quest track, the 'free peoples' player immediately wins the game; if the Nazgul catches the hobbits, the Mordor player immediately wins.

The biggest departure in this Lord of the Rings game is the introduction of a board representing locations in Middle-Earth. Red cards let you place units out on the board and purple cards, in the third round, may allow movement of units. There are also 'landmark tiles' that you can buy in order to place a fortress out on the board. Opposing units (not fortresses) occupying the same location eliminate each other but if a player has a presence (unit or fortress) in all seven locations on the board, then again it's an instant win. If neither player has seized victory before the end of the third round, the win goes to the player with a presence (unit and/or fortress) in the most locations on the board.

The alternative instant win conditions mean that in Duel for Middle-Earth you always have to pay close attention to what your opponent is doing; if, for example, you can see they are going for a green card set of allied races win then you obviously need to stop them from getting their sixth different race. There are instant win possibilities in 7 Wonders Duel too but players in that game are also collecting victory points and more often than not the game is won simply by having the most victory points at the end of the three rounds. Duel for Middle-Earth isn't just a reskin: it dispenses with victory points altogether so in this game there's a more direct focus on the in-game win conditions. In our plays at Board's Eye View, those games that haven't been determined by 'dudes on a map' have usually come down to the exciting race between the hobbits and the Nazgul: can they get to Mount Doom before the Nazgul catch up with them? You'll be hard pressed to get more thematic than that!

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