This is my all-time favorite two-player game. The complexities of strategy along with the simplicity of play make it accessible but extremely satisfying.

My brother and I had been playing this game one night many years ago. It was the day before he left on a two-year mission for our church. He ended up sneaking in a win at the last part of the game. At that point, it was pretty late, so we went to bed. I kept playing the game over and over in my mind, and an hour or two later, I went to his room and tried to get him to play one more time. He refused flat out!

This gave me the opportunity to think about how to beat him for two years. When he did finally return, we had our fated rematch and I came out victorious! My family still reminds me about this every time the game comes out.

The game itself has the fellowship of the ring fighting to get Frodo into Mordor while facing hordes of overpowered servants of the dark lord Sauron. You move pieces around like Stratego on a grid and face off in battles. It is quick to learn, and each game can be completed in 15 minutes.

Strategy

The strategy for LOTR: Confrontation is very complex. There isn’t one great thing to do because once your opponent knows your strategy, it is completely obsolete. Refer to my post on what to do when people know your strategy for tips on other games, but in this game, you can’t have one set strategy. What you can do is know the strengths and weaknesses of each character and take advantage of them as much as possible.

I will lay out the strategies for each character on each side, and then talk about general strategies.

The Fellowship

Unit	Good For/Against	Bad Against
Gandolf	Sarumon Cave Troll Flying Nazgul Black Rider	Orcs (Watch out for Orcs when trying to bring out Gandolf the White)
Boromir	5 point characters	Warg
Legolas	Flying Nazgul	All others
Gimli	Orcs	All others
Aragorn	Sarumon	Level 5 Units
Merry	Witch-King	All others
Pippin	Scouting only	Warg
Sam	Staying with Frodo	With Frodo, no one
Frodo	No One! Run away!	Everyone!

Your goal early on should be to kill as many of Sauron’s minions as possible while preparing a path for Frodo to sneak through.

Gandolf is your main killer. He has an advantage over almost everyone, but don’t get tricked into sacrificing him to the Orcs. Use Pippin to test for weaknesses and attack characters with less than 5 with Gandolf. Eventually, you will end up getting killed by a 5 character, but then prepare to come back as Gandolf the white.

Sauron’s Minions

Unit	Good For/Against	Bad Against
Balrog	Protecting the tunnel All Characters (but Boromir)	Noble Sacrifice Boromir
Shelob	All Characters (but Boromir)	Warg
Witch-King	All Characters (but Boromir and Merry)	All others
Flying Nazgul	Scouting Frodo	Legolas Gandolf Aragorn
Black Rider	Scouting Frodo	Gandolf Aragorn
Saruman	Rushing past Gandolf and killing all weak characters	Gandolf Aragorn
Orcs	Gandolf	Gimli
Warg	Pippin Frodo	All others
Cave Troll	One free kill	Gandolf

Sauron has a distinct military advantage, but the fellowship can whittle away at your army until you can’t stop Frodo. If you can sneak past Gandolf, Saruman can do some excellent damage to the Fellowship. Use your 5 characters and sacrifice yourself to Gandolf. Guard the Gandolf the White space to ensure he doesn’t return.

You want to kill enough characters that you can force Frodo to move towards you. Whenever you attack Frodo, you open yourself up to him sneaking through, so if you can trap his movements and require him to attack you, you can usually win.

 

This is a great game. I suggest you pick up a copy and play often.