War of the Ring (SPI game)

The Dark Power also has the option of winning a military victory, played out by moving Nazgûl to various important Fellowship-controlled fortresses and rolling dice see if they are captured.

[1] Characters in the game are rated for their abilities in individual combat, magic, army leadership, endurance, and resistance to the lure of the Ring.

The latter rating determines the difficulty they have of voluntarily removing the Ring once they put it on; they gain various benefits by wearing it, but if they do so for too many turns, they become a "semi-Ringwraith" under Dark Power control.

[1] To simulate Sauron's conflicting needs of searching for the Ring versus directing his armies, the Dark Power player is given a variable number of "Shadow Points" each turn, which they can spend to perform various activities.

[4] Shannon Appelcline identified War of the Ring as the most notable of the early science-fiction and fantasy games published by SPI.

"[6] In Issue 40 of Moves, Neil Randall was initially impressed by the "wealth of details", and "the amount of research", and noted that "The graphics are beautiful, the play is fast, and the outcome is always in doubt."

But Randall had major issues with the Search System, where the player who controls Sauron has an opportunity to find the Fellowship of the Ring using the One Eye.

Randall pointed out that the Sauron player merely needed to stack all of the Nazgul onto Mount Doom, wait for Frodo, successfully search for him, and then kill him.

"[8] In Issue 17 of Phoenix, Brad Laidlaw admired the cover art by Tim Kirk that illustrated the battle between Gandalf and the Balrog in the Mines of Moria.

As much as he liked the game, Laidlaw noted that since the only realistically achievable way for the Fellowship player to win is to destroy the Ring, the Dark Power player can simply stack all their units on Mount Doom, attempt to spot the Fellowship when it enters the hex (with a good chance of success), and if successful, conduct a series of individual combats to attempt to take the Ring.