LOTR

I've been a fan of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings since first picking up The Hobbit in middle school. Tolkien created a world I could see in my mind's eye and filled it with characters I could hear in my imagination. I was so excited to see the world come to life on the big screen that I saw Peter Jackson's "Fellowship of the Ring" five times in the theater. You can imagine my elation when a Lord of the Rings card game appeared that expanded on the written canon.

The card game, which came out earlier this summer, allows you to play as a group of heroes working to complete a mission. Instead of pitting players against each other, players cooperate to defeat a deck for each mission, and the game can be played solo, especially good for me because it can sometimes be tough to find people who want to play games.

My friend, West, and I broke in the game today and were surprised at the level of difficulty - not in game play but in defeating the missions. That should provide good replay value as well as a scoring system to compare past accomplishments against. There aren't many options for building player decks but that should get better as the monthly adventure packs are released.

The Lord of the Rings card game isn't the best game I've ever played but it is certainly above average and is a good first experience in the new "living" card games - games with monthly packs that expand the game.