Customer Reviews

Risk: The Lord of The Rings The Middle Earth Conquest Game

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I got this game before the larger version with the complete map came out. Had great times during my freshman year of college playing with friends in my dorm. We played it like regular risk, not the version they make for it w/ the ring moving through territories. When the version with the full map came out I bought it and played it. After a few games my friends and I felt that Mordor was too easy to hold and that the map was unbalanced with it.

There are a few modifications that my friends and I make with this (short map) version of the game:

1) Make a sea port in West Rohan that connects with the other Rohan port

2) The game favors whoever goes first. We know that winning while not going first is a bigger accomplishment than winning while going first, so we have whoever wins go last next game.

3) We often randomly pick our strongholds and then take turns selecting territories rather than going with what the game has set up. However, I don't feel that the game in unbalanced the way its set up. Its just fun to vary it up a little bit.

I hope you enjoy as much as my friends and I have!

We are always looking for ways to have students socially interact with board games...computer ones are great...but classic board games are better. This type of game brings the classic game into the lives of the 21st century student. Great purchase.

I have enjoyed playing Risk with friends for around ten years now. It is one game that I keep going back to over and over again. I have primarily played the original version, but I have also played some PC versions with slightly altered rules. So I was extremely excited when I got this as a gift several years ago. I immediately talked several family members into joining me for a quick game. Sadly, that quick game turned into three hours of boredom with no winner. We kept the game for several years but never had the desire to get it out again, so we finally got rid of it.

This version of Risk can be played with the same rules as the original or with some new rules added to change up the action a little bit. And those changes add a bit of depth and would theoretically be good additions to the game. The problem is that the game map is way too balanced. By a few rounds into the game, everyone had taken regions of roughly the same size with the same number of bottlenecks. Every round after that, each person would spend all of their resources to gain one territory leaving their other front exposed such that they'd lose one territory. And after three hours of swapping territories one at a time with no end in sight, we gave up. The layout of the board does not encourage the use of different tactics like the original Risk does, so each player uses basically the same tactics every time regardless of position on the map.

The concept of this game is great, but it fails on execution. There is no reason to play it a second time.