The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game | Playthrough

0:00 Hello everyone and welcome to meet me at the table. This is Colin and today we are going to do a playthrough of the Lord of the Rings the adventure book game. Now this game came out in 2023 I believe and I don't know why I never played it. I've had it since then and I've just never pulled it out. Well recently I pulled it out with my kids and we were really enjoying it and so I decided I'd like to showcase it here but I am going to use a couple house rules for this video. I also use them with my kids because I think it works better. So I'll explain those as we're playing. In this game we'll start at the Shire and we'll end at Mount Doom trying to dunk the ring so long as our corruption doesn't increase all the way to 15. As we play through the different scenarios our corruption will slowly creep up and if ever it's at 15 we lose the campaign but each different scenario is a small little puzzle which is kind of fun. So I'm excited to show this to you. Make sure to turn on those Klingon subtitles cuz I might make some errors and miss them in editing. This is a lighter Lord of the Rings game but one I'm still really enjoying. Let's do it. Chapter 1 the adventure begins. Frodo was going on foot. His plan for pleasure and a last look at the Shire was as much as any other reason was to walk from Hobbiton to Bucklebury Ferry taking it fairly easy. To set up the game you'll need to separate the cards out into different groups. We have our story deck. These are the general story cards. They're going to have some ring cards some

1:30 regular cards in there. Shuffle that up and you're good to go. We also have some special cards. I'm going to shuffle these up and set them aside. We can earn them throughout the campaign and they will actually go into this deck and then in future scenarios we can find them and utilize them. It's one of the fun parts. That's the only campaign portion of the game so to speak. We have a plot deck here and we have our chapter cards. There's eight different chapters so there's eight different cards. Each round will be flipping one of these over and activating whatever it is based upon the number. And one of the ways you lose a specific chapter is if this deck runs out and you need to draw another card and you can't you lose. We also have five Eye of Sauron cards. There are different spots within the corruption track where we will have to draw one of these. They're all bad. We keep that set aside for the entire campaign and we'll draw from that as we need to. Each of the eight chapters will be played out on a different page of the adventure book.

2:33 If you've played any of the other adventure games that should be similar or that should be familiar to you. I actually haven't played any of the other ones. This is my first one but it's really nice. You just open the book and boom it's there. We have specific tokens and miniatures that we're using. Sad that Gandalf is a token but you need him to be a token because certain cards can let you move miniatures and he's not considered a miniature. So that's why I didn't replace him with a cool miniature. Okay, let's read our setup specific for this adventure. We'll read our chapter rules, our challenges that we need to complete on this map and I'll tell you about my house rules and then we'll start. After receiving a mysterious ring Frodo leaves the Shire with his friends and heads towards Bree and the unknown. Yes, certainly the unknown. Find the chapter one plot card and put it near the book and that's what this is. That's going to determine how the Black Riders move during this scenario.

3:25 Shuffle the story deck and deal four cards to each player. Now when you're playing solo we'll draw four cards for ourselves. So these are the four cards that we have in our hand and then we're going to have a dummy hand of six cards face up that we can trade with. Every turn we'll have the opportunity to swap one card in our hand with one card that's here. I have them separated out. Those will be on the table. My hand will be the one that I'm holding in my hand so that way you can tell the difference. We needed to place Frodo the blue miniature, Sam the green miniature, Merry Merry is the one that's holding the mug so he is the yellow miniature and Pippin the red one and Aragorn on their indicated spaces. Place the Gandalf counter gray side up on his indicated space. Place one black Black Rider on each of the horse spaces and it's going to be me who always goes first but they always have a unique decision on who goes first. This time it's the player who last took a trip goes first. Shire.

4:21 Baggins. Black Riders move clockwise on the black smoke path. Black Riders cannot share a space with or move into another Black Rider space. They can't jump over each other. Characters move along the white paths in either directions. Hobbits cannot enter or move through a space with a Black Rider but Aragorn can. We have quick find a place to hide. If a Black Rider lands or moves through a space with a Hobbit move that Hobbit to the hiding spot. We lose this chapter if there's more than one Hobbit in the hiding spot or the plot deck runs out. Then we have to restart the chapter. Now this is what I'm going to change for this playthrough and this is how I play with my kids. If we lose the chapter we're going to continue on to the next chapter but we have to take corruption equal to the level of this chapter. So for this one it's only one corruption not terrible but when we get to chapters five and six that could be five or six corruption. That just keeps the game moving and it actually means you can lose the game cuz theoretically you could actually never lose this game if you never played any of the ring cards and that just seems silly. You don't want to watch me play a scenario over and over again. That's boring. Now in order for us to complete this scenario we have three challenges we need to complete. Once a challenge is completed we'll place a token there to denote it and then if things change and that's no longer completed that's fine. Once you completed you can move those miniatures or whatever and it's no problem at all.

5:45 In order for you to complete it you do need to discard a card with that specific symbol. There are six different types of cards in this game that's considered insight. So we will need to discard a card with an insight symbol which fortunately for us our dummy player hand has three of. Once we also have Frodo and Gandalf on the hearth and Sam must be on the road to Shire. Once we do that we will discard this and our reward is each player draws one card from the story deck and remove Gandalf from the board. Our next challenge well it comes in pints. Now theoretically we actually can do these two challenges in either order but based on how the game set up you really want to do the first one keep it secret keep it safe first. But this one says all four hobbits must be in the orange spaces in Bree. Then we'll draw a card from the special deck and place Aragorn on the Prancing Pony. Then we have the final challenge. We do not stop till nightfall. You can see we need three different types of cards here.

6:40 Well I should say two courage or one courage and two warfare cards. Aragorn, Frodo, Sam and at least one other Hobbit must be on Weathertop. At least one Black Rider must be in one of the spaces next to Weathertop. All other challenges must be complete. Once you do that we win this chapter. The one other house rule that I use is if we do lose a chapter but we've gained a special card normally you don't get to keep that special card. You'd have to take it out when you replay the chapter. We're going to keep any special cards even if we get them when we lose because we're not replaying chapters. We're just going to continue moving forward. Each chapter will have a one ring ability and how you can use that is by discarding a one ring card. But whenever you do that you increase the corruption track by however many ring cards you discard. For this chapter we could move a Black Rider one space by discarding a ring card but we're probably not going to want to do that because even if I lose this scenario I'm only going to go up in corruption by one so I probably won't to do that. But like I said later chapters we're going to be incentivized to maybe use that so we don't lose because when we lose we'll take tons of corruption.

7:46 Let's walk through how a turn works and we'll just start. We have a move phase. We can move a single character zero to two spaces or two characters one space each. Then we have our storytelling. In any order we can discard any number of cards to move any number of characters one space per discarded card. We can do that multiple times. So I could discard two cards and move two different characters. That's going to help us move them around. We can also complete challenges, play special cards, trade a single card with the dummy player because we're playing with just that dummy player. Then we have draw two cards from the story deck after we've completed the storytelling phase. Then we draw a card from the plot deck and we refer to the plot chart to see what happens and then if we have more than six cards in our hand we have to discard down to six. And if at any of those times we use a ring card by discarding or I forgot to mention rings are wild.

8:39 So if we need to complete a challenge and we need a warfare symbol we can use a ring as a warfare symbol. But if we do that and you know we succeed at that challenge we also move up on the corruption track one space. On the corruption track we can see every three spaces we'll be drawing one of these Eye of Sauron cards and none of them are good so we're going to try not to do that. When I first played this chapter it was a little bit challenging for me to tell where the Black Riders can go. This is the black smoke path. So this is where they're going to be moving. We can move through the white ones. Just remember our hobbits cannot move onto locations with the Black Rider and if a Black Rider moves onto a location where they are they go to that hiding spot. So that's how this scenario works. All right, let's just start. So we start with our move phase. We know we need Gandalf and Frodo at the hearth. So let's have Gandalf move two spaces. That was our move step. Nice and easy. Then during the storytelling step we're not going to need any of these mystery cards. So let's discard one of these mystery cards and we'll have Frodo move into the hearth. I do want to mention some scenarios you cannot have characters share the same space. This one that's not the case especially because we need to have more than one at the hearth space. I then think we're just going to discard both of these cards. We will need the warfare eventually, but the mystery we won't.

9:59 And we can move Sam two spaces, one, two. So, we actually have everyone in the right spot to complete our first challenge. Next, I'm going to do a trade with the dummy player, grabbing one of those insight cards and giving them the uh adventure card, which I'm going to need back eventually. But now, we can discard that insight card and complete this challenge. One challenge done in the first turn. Feels good cuz we have Frodo and Gandalf are on the hearth and Sam must be on the road to the Shire. Check. Each player draws one card from the story decks. That's just going to be us cuz it's only us. We have another adventure card and we will remove Gandalf from the game. That'll be it for the storytelling phase. We'll draw two more cards, an insight and a mystery. And now, we have our first plot card drawn. We have a nine. Nine is move either Black Rider two spaces. Why don't we move this Black Rider one, two over here? It is going to block off both Sam and Frodo, but now Merry and Pippin have free rein to start running over to the Prancing Pony. We certainly do not have six cards in hand. I only have three.

11:03 So, we can just start our next turn. Let's have Mug Merry and this is Pippin. Pippin is going to move two spaces, one, two. Now, what you don't want to do because this scenario, there are three plot cards, plot cards one to three, that makes one of these hobbits immediately go to the hiding spot. So, you don't want to have a character end their activation there because there's a chance that you could just auto lose them. I then think I'm just going to take all three cards in my hand, discard them, and we're going to move uh this is Pippin, one, two, three, all the way over to the Prancing Pony. And guess what? He's safe there. Those uh the Black Riders only go around here, so they will not go into that space. We didn't do a trade action. That's fine. We'll just draw Oh, we did get our first ring card in our hand, which is probably going to be useless cuz I don't think I'm going to use that in the first scenario. We'll draw that next card. We have an eight for our plot. Move both Black Riders one space. That's great.

12:00 This Black Rider is going to move away and open up this area for Sam and Frodo. So then, for our turn this time, let's have Frodo move one, two. We're going to get him out there. I need this courage card for the last one, so I don't think I want to discard that one. What I'm going to do is I'm going to trade that with this mystery card that's in the dummy hand so that I can discard this mystery card cuz we won't need that. And let's move Should we move Frodo cuz we can have him go one and then sneak through here next time. So, yeah, we'll move him right here. And I think that's it. That's all we're going to do. We'll draw two more cards. Okay, we have a warfare and a mystery card. I appreciate how quick this game plays. We're going to draw the one. This is what I was saying. Move any hobbit into the hiding spot. If it's already occupied, you lose this chapter. That's actually kind of nice for us. We can have Sam get pushed into the hiding spot and he just moved a ton of spaces.

12:57 Oh, thanks for that. So, I think then for our turn, we're going to have Sam move one, two, and we're going to discard this mystery card then so he can move one more space being safe at the Prancing Pony. I know I'm going to need this warfare card, so I'm going to swap with the dummy player for this insight card. I'm not going to need two insight cards, only one for this challenge here. So then, I will discard this and I'm going to have Oh, do I have We can't move on the white. We can move Yeah. Let's Let's move Merry to share a spot with Frodo. A little risky, but they move clockwise, so there's really no chance for them to catch up. Okay, then we'll draw two more cards. Oh, we have another ring card. So, we have two rings and we have an adventure card. We'll draw our next plot card and we have a 14. That is move both Black Riders two spaces. It seems they're starting to smell these hobbits one, two trying to get around, but we're still safe for now. Okay, they're totally blocking us off. So, I think because of that, we are going to have Frodo move one, two, and then we will discard this adventure card to have Sam move here.

14:10 And then we're going to swap this ring card. I need two adventure cards. I have two there. Uh oh man. Uh or do I take a chance and leave him there? Hmm. You know what? Actually, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to take that card back, put Sam back to here. He will not be caught even if they move two spaces. Nothing makes them move three. And then next time, we can get them through. So, I'm going to leave these three cards in my hand because everything that I have in the dummy player's deck, I need. Uh and then I'm just going to draw two. Oh, another ring card. And we have another warfare card. We'll draw up our card. We have a five. Move either Black Rider one space. That works pretty well. We'll have this one move one space right here. Remember, they cannot go over each other, so I'm going to have to move this one next time. That's fine. Frodo can move then one, two, and then we will discard this adventure card. Hmm. No, you know One, two, three, four, five. I have five cards in my hand. He's actually going to be safe for a while here and we just need to get Sam over there, but I need to have I've got two adventures and an insight in the dummy player's hand. I think I am going to discard both of these. These two to move Sam two spaces.

15:28 We're going to have him move one and then two. We then need to do a swap to start getting some of these better cards in our hand, so I grabbed that adventure card. We'll then draw two cards from here. Okay, we have a courage card and another ring. As you can see, there's a lot of ring cards and you got to deal with them. 10. Move either Black Rider two spaces. That'll work. We'll move this one two, one, two, and we're good. So, we can now move Frodo. Now, we don't have to move Frodo. We can move Sam. So, we can move Sam one, two, and now we have everyone in Bree. Our problem is we can only do one trade per turn. I probably should have been trading earlier. I have all these rings here. We're going to place that adventure card in our hand. We have two adventure. We just need that insight. Now, I could, if I wanted, I could use a ring, but then I'm going to go up one on the corruption track and I really don't want to do that in the first adventure. So, instead, I'm going to draw two more cards. Oh, I drew an insight card and I drew a mystery card. I'm going to discard the mystery card cuz I can only hold six cards. One, two, three, four, five, six. We'll draw our plot card and we have a 15. Move both Black Riders two spaces. We can handle that. We have one, two, and one, two. Okay, now we do have our movement phase and the problem is we don't want to move anybody. I actually think I'm going to move these two out. Well, I'm going to move one of them out two spaces because the next challenge, we only need to have three hobbits at Weathertop. Uh we can't leave Sam. Sam has to come with us.

16:59 We'll leave uh uh Pippin here with the apple. That sounds about right. During that storytelling phase, we'll discard these three cards to complete this challenge. All four hobbits must be on an orange space in Bree. Yep, we have that. Draw a card from the special deck. So, I've got the special deck right here and we have Galadriel's hair. Draw three cards from the story deck, then discard one card from your hand. If you discard a one ring card, do not advance on the corruption track. I've never The fun part of this game are the story cards or the special cards because I've never seen that one. Cool. We then have to place Aragorn onto the Prancing Pony and that is our second challenge completed. Now, all we need to do is have Aragorn, Frodo, and Sam Oh, good thing I thought about it being Sam. I swapped those two and at least one other hobbit must be on Weathertop and at least one Black Rider must be one space next to the Weathertop. All the challenges are completed. Well, I think it's safe to say we want to use Galadriel's hair. So, we get to draw three cards, one, two, three, and we got two of the warfare ones. And uh we're going to discard a ring. Yeah, we're going to discard a ring. So, I want to keep the swords if I can, although I have one that I can exchange and the courage, which I can also exchange. So, why don't I use these two cards to discard to let Sam go one, two uh jump over here. That's not Sam.

18:21 That is Merry with the mug. Uh but that's good. I could discard Do I Do I be risky? Do I be risky? One, two. Someone could get caught uh if we have to move them two spaces. You know what? I'm going to I'm going to leave them there. I think that's good. I've got three cards in hand. Ooh, I am going to exchange just so I have the right cards in my hand. So, I had a problem last time. I'm going to exchange that ring for a courage card. So, I have the exact cards I need to complete the challenge. I will then draw two cards from the story deck. And now, we have to draw plot card. We'll flip that deck over and we have a four. Move either Black Rider one space. Yeah, I think I'm going to do this one. I could do this one, which is where we actually need it to be. We need a Black Rider here or here, but I don't think we're ready for that yet.

19:11 Uh then, for our next activation, we'll have Sam move one, two. And then we will discard these two cards uh from our hand to have Frodo move one, two. That means we've got the hobbits. We just need Aragorn over there and he can walk through the Black Riders, no problem. And I still have the cards that we need. Yeah, this This should be good. We'll draw these two. We're good to go. We'll flip the next plot card and we have a three. Move any hobbit to the hiding spot. Oh, yeah. Okay, we can do that. Pippin with the apple gets a little scared, jumps over to the hiding spot. But that's fine. Uh during our next turn, we can just have Aragorn move one, two, and oh, I thought I could discard Actually, I can. I can discard these two to get him into or onto Weathertop. Then I can exchange this ring card with this card, and that means I have the cards that I need in my hand, but I can't complete the challenge because we need a Black Rider here here. So, I just got to wait for the plot deck to do that for us. So, we will draw the other two cards from here. We're good to go. We'll flip over that plot card, and we have an 11.

20:21 Move either Black Rider two spaces. That works perfectly. We'll have this Black Rider go one and then two, and it's in the perfect spot. During the uh movement step, we'll have We'll have Pippin move, and then we'll discard these three cards to complete our final challenge. Our reward for completing this challenge is you complete the chapter. We're 6 days from Rivendell. He'll never make it. Oh, yeah, he makes it. Okay, that ends chapter one. Chapter two. Fellowship forged. After being wounded by the Nazgûl, Frodo and his friends arrive in Rivendell. Tempers flare as the delegation argue over what to do with the Ring. Elrond's house was perfect. Whether you liked food or sleep or work or storytelling or singing or just sitting and thinking best or a pleasant mixture of them all. Evil things did not come into the valley. Merely to be there was a cure of weariness, fear, and sadness. Here we have chapter two set up and ready to go. We have found the chapter two plot card, and this one is all about moving Elrond. One through four, he doesn't move. Five through 15, he moves. And when he moves into a character's starting space, that character has to return to their starting space. Kind of annoying. We need to oh, draw four story cards as well. One, two, three, four. And we get for our four story cards wow, no ring cards. That means we're going to get ring cards later.

21:43 Place Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Frodo on their indicated spaces. Place Elrond the counter on his space. We need to place the dwarf, elf, and man anger counters on the indicated spaces, and the player wearing the most rings goes first. Well, that's me. Tempers are flaring, so character miniatures cannot enter a space with another character or an anger counter from an opposing delegation. Any character can share a space with Elrond. Characters can move on the blue or white paths. You will unite or you will fail. Players cannot move Elrond. He is moved only by the plot chart and follows the white path. When he enters a character's starting space, that character has to return to their starting space. Kind of annoying. We need to oh, draw four story cards as well. One, two, three, four. And we get for our four story cards wow, no ring cards. That means we're going to get ring cards later.

22:34 Place Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Frodo on their indicated spaces. Place Elrond the counter on his space. We need to place the dwarf, elf, and man anger counters on the indicated spaces, and the player wearing the most rings goes first. Well, that's me. Tempers are flaring, so character minia tures cannot enter a space with another character or an anger counter from an opposing delegation. Any character can share a space with Elrond. Characters can move on the blue or white paths. You will unite or you will fail. Players cannot move Elrond. He is moved only by the plot chart and follows the white path. When he enters a character's starting space, that character has to return And then the Fellowship of the Ring. No character can enter the One Ring space until the final challenge. All characters can share the One Ring space.

23:21 I do like how the designers initially had them not being able to be in the same space and then they end together. Really thematically cool. You lose if Elrond reaches the end of his path or the plot deck runs out. We're not going to restart. We would take two corruption if we fail. The first four challenges can be completed in any order. We have the Doom of Men. Aragorn must be on the man anger counter. Then we discard two warfare cards and we succeed. You can just guess we'll do the same thing with the dwarves and the elves. We have one extra step with Aragorn. He must be on Boromir's space. And then you have my sword. All other challenges must be complete. Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, and Frodo must be on the One Ring space. If I feel like we're getting very close to losing, I might discard one single ring card to move Elrond back one space because it's better to get one corruption than two. Based on how the board is set up, Elrond is going to make Legolas jump back to his space first, and he needs to get to the middle area.

24:19 So, I'm thinking of leaving him here, and I'm thinking of starting with Aragorn. I'm going to have him move two spaces. We know that we need two warfare cards, and I see two in our dummy player's hand, which I'm going to show you in a second. So, I'm going to discard this mystery card, which we do need. We're going to need everything in this one, but I'm going to use that to push him one additional space. And you know what? I'm realizing we don't need any adventure cards. So, let's discard the adventure card as well, and he's going to move one additional space. I'm then going to swap this insight card with the warfare card. So, I have these two in my hand, and then I'm going to draw two cards. Oh, another courage one and adventure one, a good one to discard. We then draw our first chapter card. We have a seven. Elrond will move. He isn't going to give us a ton of time on this scenario. I've actually lost this one before. So, we'll see how this goes. We'll then move back to Aragorn.

25:10 He's going to move one, two. He's on the man anger. We're going to swap this courage card with the warfare card in our dummy dummy hand, and then use the two warfare cards to complete our first challenge. And that states remove the man anger counter from the board, which is nice cuz now other characters can walk through that space, and we get to draw two cards from the story deck. Don't be rings. Oh, that's an insight and another adventure card, good for discarding. I'd love to get Aragorn over here to Boromir, but he's actually cut off by the dwarf anger. So, I have these two adventure cards. Let's use them and move Gimli. Gimli can move one, two. That's it. So, we will draw two more cards. There's our first ring card. So, this is our hand. We'll flip our next plot card. Yep, he's going to continue to move. Elrond would make Legolas move back to his starting space. Good thing for us, he's already there. For our next turn then, we can move Gimli one, two.

26:10 We'll swap this ring card with an insight card because we need two insight to convince the dwarves. We have just that, so we will discard those two, and we've completed that. We'll remove the dwarf anger, which means now we can get to Boromir. However, Gimli's in the way because they cannot share a a space yet. We have removed the dwarf anger and then draw one card from the story deck, only one this time, and it's a ring. Bummer. We now need Legolas to move, so let's discard this adventure card. We'll move him here. He needs one, two, three, four, and we only have one mystery card available right now, and we did not draw another one, so we're not going to be able to do his next time. We also haven't even touched Frodo yet. Oh, that's a three. Elrond does not move.

26:57 Well, that certainly gives us some interesting choices. We'll have Legolas move one, two. I don't really want to move Gimli by discarding cards because Elrond in two turns is going to push him back there anyways. I don't want to waste it. So, I'm thinking I have an insight card that's now useless. We don't need insight cards anymore. So, I'm going to discard that insight to let Legolas move one space. And then I think I am going to swap another ring card with this dummy hand for a mystery card in our hand. So, we have one mystery card. We just need one more. Then we'll draw, and there's the other one. And we'll draw a warfare card. That means we should be able to take care of the elf anger this next turn. Elrond will move. We'll move Elrond right to here, and then it's our turn. We're going to have Frodo move one space and Legolas move to the elf anger. Remember, we can either move one character two spaces or two characters one space each. We need to get Frodo all the way over to here. So, I feel like that was worth it. We have the two mystery cards we can discard, and that means we've completed In the Hands of an Elf.

28:07 So, that means we can remove the elf anger and draw one card from the story deck. Oh, I didn't realize only one of them gave us two. So, that would give us another warfare card. This means we have two challenges remaining. We need Aragorn over to here. Now, he could go all the way around, or we could ask Legolas to move, and I think we're going to do that. We're going to discard a warfare card. I don't need that anymore, and he's going to move here. Then we can discard the other warfare card to have Aragorn move here, but now Gimli is in in the way. So, I'm actually hoping that Elrond will move, pull Gimli back. We can then get Aragorn over to here. Have I done an exchange? I don't think I did an exchange yet. So, I can exchange this One Ring with this courage card, and that means we have the two courage cards in our hand. I think so. Working out.

28:53 That won't last for long. We'll draw two. We've got two warfare cards. The question becomes will Elrond move? He better move. 14, he will. Moving Elrond to here pulls Gimli, and we actually say thank you to Elrond because now we can have Aragorn move one, two into Boromir's face or his space. His face. I mean, it is his face there, so We all know one does not simply walk into Mordor. Thanks to Boromir. We'll discard those two courage tokens or cards. We'll place a token here. We get to draw one card from the special deck. We'll draw up, and we have the Great Eagle. Move each character miniature up to one space each. At this point, we just need everyone to be in the ring space. So, let's use these two warfare cards. Oh, and I do need an adventure card to complete that challenge, but I do have one in the dummy hand. So, with those two cards, I'm not going to move Aragorn cuz there's a we could move one, two, and one, two. I I don't know.

29:55 Uh And if Aragorn gets pulled back, he's going to have to go one, two, three, four, five. My thought is I could swap for the ring, but from what I understand, if I do use the ring and increase our corruption and he goes back to the Gimli spot, then Gimli gets pulled back there. So, I don't feel like that's worth it. I think we'll just leave it as is. We'll draw two cards. Okay, we have three cards that we can use next turn. We'll flip our next plot card. It's a six. That will mean Elrond will pull Aragorn back. Bummer. Okay, now, theoretically, he won't pull anyone back after this. So, we'll have Aragorn move two for his turn. I can discard all three cards. I'm going to I'm going to do it. Discard all three. Uh that means I can't do any exchanges right now, but with those three, we'll do one, two, three. We've got Aragorn in here. Next time, let's say Elrond moves, we can do one, two, and then oh, I'm going to be one card short. We'll draw up our two cards, and we have a ring card, but we have Galadriel's hair. Draw three cards.

31:01 This This may end up working. We'll flip that next plot card. It's a two. Elrond doesn't even move. Okay, that was pretty dang awesome. That means for our next activation, Gandalf or Gimli should be able to come in. We will use Galadriel's hair. Draw three cards, and then we have to discard one. One, two, three. We have these three. We can discard this ring. No problem. We can discard these two cards to move a Frodo in. We can then do an exchange for this card, and we can complete the adventure. And of course, by adventure, I mean chapter. All other character challenges complete. Correct. Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, and Frodo must be on the One Ring space. You've completed the chapter. We could have done that even if Elrond had moved.

31:51 Let's see, it would have been an 11. He would have moved next time. Chapter three, the Mines of Moria. The fellowship arrives at the dwarf mines expecting a warm welcome from Gimli's cousin, but instead finds a tomb. We must face the long dark of Moria. Be on your guard. There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world. It is a four-day journey to the other side. Let us hope our presence may go unnoticed. We all know that fails because of this person. Here we have chapter three all set up and ready to go. Let's read about the rules, our challenges, and start. Oh, and I do want to show you our dummy player's hand. So, we do have one ring this time, three adventure cards, a mystery, and an insight. We start by finding our chapter three plot card, and just like always, we'll draw four cards.

32:39 I think that's with every scenario. Okay, we have another ring card in our hand. Then we have to place Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Frodo, Gandalf gray side up, but not for long, on their indicated spaces. Shuffle the goblin counters, goblin side up. Place four goblins on the spaces surrounding the cave troll. Place the other two near the board. Place the Balrog on its starting space on the bridge. And the player who lost fought a goblin goes first. That is most certainly me. Only Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli can enter a space with a goblin. When they do, turn the goblin over. To defeat it, play the required story card. When defeated, move the goblin to the defeated goblin's track. To injure the cave troll, Aragorn, Legolas, or Gimli must be in two spaces adjacent to each other, one character on either side of the single warfare icon, with no goblin counters on either space. Discard a warfare story card to place a wound counter on the warfare icon. This chapter is considered one of the hardest of the full adventure box, so I'm excited for this. The Bridge of Khazad-dûm. Only Gandalf can travel on the bridge, obviously. During any player's storytelling phase, that player may move Gandalf to the next space on the bridge by discarding the cards indicated in the new space. If the Balrog and Gandalf are in the same space and one moves, both counters move together in the same direction. You will lose this chapter if the Balrog reaches the star space or the plot deck runs out. We have four challenges to complete. Speak, friend, and enter.

34:08 Gandalf and Frodo must be on the Doors of Durin. Play any a pair of matching story cards. So, that could be two of the adventure ones, two of the insight, doesn't matter. Just have to be the same type. Then we get to draw two cards from the story deck. We then have clearing a path. The first challenge must be complete, which makes sense cuz we have to get in there. There must be at least four goblins on the defeated goblin track. They have a cave troll. The first challenge must be complete. All four wound counters must be placed around the cave troll. That gives us a special card draw. That's two of them, actually. And you shall not pass. Gandalf and the Balrog must be on the same space. Frodo, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli must be on the exit space. All other challenges completed. Yeah, I'm telling you now, we likely aren't going to win this one, but we're going to give it a go. The first challenge is relatively easy. Let's have Frodo move two spaces. He's at the Doors of Durin. Then we will discard this insight card right here, so that we can move Gandalf to the Doors of Durin. Then we'll just discard these two courage cards, and we've already completed that challenge. This means we get to draw two cards from the story deck right off the get-go. And we get two warfare cards. In this scenario, warfare cards are kind of like gold.

35:23 Uh cuz we need four of them, so I'm certainly not going to discard those. I'm thinking of swapping this ring card uh maybe for an adventure. Yeah, why don't we do an adventure card cuz there's three in that dummy player's hand, but I think I'm going to hold on to that for now. So, I have these three cards. I'll draw two more. We got another warfare. That's three warfare in a row and another adventure card. Okay, then we have to draw a plot card. Our first card will be an eight. An eight is the Balrog moves left one space. Yeah, we're going to lose that way. The Balrog starts way over here, but the moment it gets to here, we lose. And the hard part is we got to get Gandalf over here and discard cards like crazy to get him to move over. Oh, I forgot to show you the One Ring ability. We can discard One Ring card to move Gandalf one space without playing any story cards. For our next turn, let's have Gandalf move one space to here, and then we'll have Gimli move here.

36:18 And I think I'm going to discard these two adventure cards that we have in our hand to have Gimli move two more. One, two, cuz we want to know what we need for a card. So, we need a courage card in order to defeat this goblin. But, we got to get rid of four goblins for that specific uh challenge. But, we also can't have a goblin in our space when we're attacking the cave troll. I do think for now, I don't really want to hold on to these cards. So, I am cuz I don't want to use them for something else. Uh I'm going to save them for when we want to attack the cave troll. So, I'm going to swap with the dummy player for this mystery card. We'll then just draw two cards from the deck. We got another one of these warfare cards. That is ridiculous. It's great to have the warfare cards, don't get me wrong. It's just I don't want them so quickly. Six, the cave troll recovers. Remove one wound counter. Oh, that's awesome. That does nothing, then. He has no damage.

37:13 For our next turn, let's have Aragorn move one, two. He's going to start getting himself over to the right spot. We're going to discard this courage card, and that means we've defeated one of the goblins. We can defeat a goblin without a friend, but in order to actually wound this cave troll, we need to start surrounding him. I'm then going to swap this warfare card with this insight card because I can then discard both this insight and this mystery card, and that will allow us to move Gandalf to this space. Now, I need two insight cards to get him to here. And that's still not good enough. I need to really get him, you know, maybe here. And then when they meet up and start getting pushed this way, I push them back.

38:00 I don't know. And here I am set with two warfare cards, which is great to be able to take on the uh the cave troll, but the problem is is I'm not prepared to do that yet. So, we'll draw two cards. We've got a mystery card, and we have an adventure card. We'll flip our next card. It's a 15. That Balrog's going to move. We'll move him up another space, and then it's back to our turn. I think we'll go ahead and have Aragorn activate next. Going one, two. Let's flip this one over. We need more courage. I don't have any courage, so we can't take that guy out. These two are not really helpful for anything except for the you shall not pass. Uh so, I think I am going to disc I could keep this mystery card. I'm going to keep the mystery card. I'm going to discard this adventure card, and I'm going to move Should I move Legolas or move Gimli? I can move Gimli over to here and just see what this is.

38:53 Oh, we need an adventure card there. Well, that's great. I will swap this card with an adventure card that we have in the dummy player's hand, and discard that to defeat the second goblin. If we can get rid of four goblins, we get a mystery or a special card, and maybe that will help us. We'll flip that next plot card, and we have a one. One to three, nothing happens. That's great at all, but I totally forgot to draw my two cards to end my turn. Oh, we have a ring, and we have Galadriel's hair. Okay. Well, oh, no. Wait, no, this is a special card. We can use it at any time. So, I'm going to use this discard uh draw three cards from the story deck. One, two, three, and we can discard any card. We have our other special card. We'll discard this ring, and no negative effect. Might as well do that. And then, should we do the Great Eagle right now?

39:43 Do we want all of our miniatures to move one space? It's hard to say no to that. I think but you know what the problem is? The problem is is I don't really need to have Aragorn move. But you know, everyone else can move and I think it's worth it. Move each character miniature up to one space each. It's up to. So we'll move Frodo here. We'll move Legolas. He's you know, just surveying the area here and Gimli will move to here. What do we need? Oh, we need another adventure card. That means during our regular move step, we can have Legolas join in. We've got him here. We can then have Aragorn use this courage card and we'll discard it to get rid of this Goblin and then we will swap this warfare card with the other adventure card here and discard it and that will take out this Goblin and that means we have four Goblins we've defeated. We have completed the first challenge and there must be at least four Goblins on the defeated Goblin track. Yep, we have four so that's completed. Draw one card from the special deck and we have Bilbo's journal. During the draw phase, you may choose two cards from the discard pile instead of drawing from the story deck.

40:56 That is cool. I'm going to hold on to that one. Now this might be a little bit risky, but I have these two cards in my hand. Why not use them? I have two of these characters adjacent here and here. We can deal two damage to that cave troll right now. Now I'm using some upgraded wound tokens cuz who wants to use cardboard tokens when you don't have to. So this cave troll is half dead and then I love this Bilbo's journal, but I'm going to swap that with my dummy player to get this card in hand and I can't discard it to do another one, but I once I move one of them, like I move Legolas here then that could let us deal the damage to the cave troll here. Seems like it should work, right? We'll draw two cards. There's another warfare and a ring. We are however going to a nine have to move the Balrog and that means we're literally two spaces away from losing. For a turn this time, we're going to move two characters.

41:51 Legolas is going to move here and Aragorn is going to move here. That means with the final two warrior cards here, we can actually just take out that cave troll. That is awesome. We've completed the first challenge and all four wound counters have been placed on the cave troll. That one's done. Now we just need to get out of here. This gives us a special card. We have Elven cloaks. Do not draw plot card this turn. Don't mind if I do. We're just going to use that right now. We'll discard that so we don't have to draw plot card. I can't believe I'm doing this, but I am going to discard my first ring card. That is going to increase our corruption to one, but that allows us to move Gandalf up one space. I'm going to have to do it at least one more time so that they can get into the same space and not be where we lose.

42:42 Really, I got to push him up more. I have no cards left in my hand. I'm going to draw two. Oh, I got a mystery card. I got a mystery card. That will work cuz I've got another mystery card in the dummy player's hand. So I can discard those to get him there. But first, I can move some minis. The most important mini to get out of here is Frodo. One, two because he is not able to go through any of the Goblins and if a Goblin shows up because there's two extra ones and they could show up. If they do it they'll block his path. So that's why I used his movement of two. I'm not going to use any other cards for this turn. I'm just going to exchange that one for this other mystery card. Discard both of these so that I can move Gandalf up one space. That's it. I have no cards in hand. I'll draw two. Oh, we have a ring.

43:30 I might use the ring again. We'll draw up our next card. We have a seven. Seven is the cave troll recovers and removes one wound counter. Who cares? He's that objective is already completed. Yes. For our turn then, we're going to have Frodo run one, two. Do I discard one more card? I have one of these insights. You know what I could do? I'm going to exchange. I'm going to do it. I'm going to exchange this other insight with my ring card. I'm going to discard both of these. Gandalf is now in the same location as the Balrog. They're fighting. Fly, you fools. I can just hear it. I have no cards left in my hand. I'll draw my two cards and we have an insight and a mystery. We'll flip our next plot card. It's an 11. The Balrog's moving. He is going to push Gandalf one space away from losing.

44:23 Oh man. We unfortunately have to get all of our miniatures here at the exit. Well, Frodo's going to get over there. We'll have Aragorn move one space. I've got these two. I am thinking I know I'm I'm going to do it. I'm going to swap this card for another ring card. Okay. I have these two. I'm going to discard Well, actually, why would I discard both of them? I'm just going to discard this card and I'm going to move Gandalf pushing him this way. I want to win this. By discarding now, I've increased our corruption by one to two. Then I don't need an insight to be able to complete you shall not pass, but I do need a warfare. So I'm going to swap that with a warfare that's in our dummy player's hand. We'll then draw two more cards. We have the one ring and another warfare card. I do feel like we're starting to run out of turns. 13, the Balrog's moving. Oh, this is so killing me.

45:19 This is most certainly the hardest chapter of the game. I'm going to have Aragorn move two spaces. I need that warfare. I need a courage, which I don't have and I don't have an adventure. So what I'm thinking of doing is actually swapping this card with our Bilbo's journal. So I have Bilbo's journal in my hand. I think I'm going to do it. This is going to be bad. I'm going to use another ring card and I'm going to push these two back again. This means we're hitting the third corruption spot and the eye of Sauron goes off. Discard one special card from your from any player's hand if able. No. I just grabbed Bilbo's journal and I'm going to have to discard it. We'll end our activation by drawing two more cards. We don't need an insight and we don't need a mystery. Although mystery, if the Balrog doesn't move, I could discard two mystery cards to push it back another space. That might almost be worth it. We'll flip over our plot card. We have a four. Place one of the remaining Goblin counters on the escape route on a space without Frodo or Goblin. Well, the joke's on you. I don't care about these. We can move through Goblin spaces no problem. So during our next turn, we have Aragorn in the right spot. We need both of them to move. I do think it might be worth it. We you know, we're delaying the game. We might run out of time.

46:42 But I am going to swap. No, yeah, is that what I want? No, no, no. I want this card. I'm going to swap this card with this one. Discard these two to push these two back. And that's all I'm going to do this turn. I still have this warfare card. I could discard this for a move cuz I've got a warfare No, no, I'm going to keep this in my hand. I'm going to keep it in my hand. I'm going to draw two. We need that card. We don't need that one. Is the Balrog going to move? A two, nothing happens. That means we can have Gimli move one, two. We'd flip this over, but there's no reason to fight it. We will discard the mystery card to have him move three. I am going to discard the warfare card cuz I can always get a warfare card from my dummy player. We're going to move him again. So that means next time we can move him in and then it's just Legolas.

47:30 Okay. We'll draw two cards. We have a courage and a mystery card. I think our biggest concern here is running out of the plot deck. A three, nothing happens. This means we can move Gimli to the exit and Legolas here. We will discard this mystery card and that will move him here. I think we have a chance of winning this chapter in two more turns. It's going to depend on if I draw too many rings. We've got another courage and it Well, lots of courage. Flipping over our plot card, we have a five. That's placing another Goblin. Once again, the Goblins don't bother us. For our turn, Legolas moves two. Can I discard two cards? I cannot. I can only discard but I think we can actually do it then. We're going to move Legolas over here. Oh, we should have flipped this guy.

48:20 So we will discard or I should say we've moved Legolas two spaces. Use this to discard get him closer. We're going to swap this card with this card in our dummy player's hand. And so now we have what we need. We just need Legolas to move one more space. We'll draw two more cards and then it's all about the plot deck. We have enough cards here. We have three actually. 12 means the Balrog moves. That's okay. Bring it on, Balrog. Unfortunately for Gandalf, Legolas will then move over here. We have the warfare. We have the courage and we have the adventure to complete this chapter. Chapter three done. Chapter four, the fellowship splits. After the ring tempts members of the fellowship, the travelers split and face their own fates. I will follow the orcs, he said at last. I would have guided Frodo to Mordor and gone with him to the end, but if I seek him now in the wilderness, I must abandon the captives to torment and death. My heart speaks clearly at last.

49:26 The fate of the bear is in my hands no longer. The company has played its part. Yet we that remain cannot forsake our companions while we have strength left. Come, we will go now. Leave all that can be spared behind. We will press on by day and dark. That was Aragorn speaking to Legolas and Gimli talking about going to save Mary and Pippin. We have our dummy player's hand set up and ready to go. There's two ring cards in there already. We have found our chapter four plot chart and this one it's all the same except for 15 it's slightly worse. We're going to be adding an orc to the the location that matches the number that we draw. So we're going to be placing out an orc once per turn. We also get to draw four cards. Here's our four. We also have a ring card. We've placed all of the characters on their indicated spaces. We've placed an orc in each area with an asterisk and put the other two orcs on the board below. The player who most recently floated on a river goes first. Well, that's me. The orcs guard the three paths surrounding the area they're placed in. Characters cannot move along the guarded paths.

50:29 Orcs can be attacked and removed from the board by Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas using the card combinations below. These characters must be in one of the three spaces adjacent to the orc to attack. Place the removed orcs at the bottom of the board. You'll see it in a second. So Aragorn it's warfare and anything. Legolas it would be the mystery and anything and Gimli it would be insight and anything. The biggest thing is it's two cards to get rid of one orc and we're going to be placing out new orcs each round. We lose if we need to place an orc and we do not have one available or the plot deck runs out. We only have three challenges for this scenario. Hide here quick. Frodo, Mary, and Pippin must be at the hiding spot. Then we do get a cool ability we can use with Mary and Pippin. If you remember in the movie they start chucking things at some of the orcs. Uh they can potentially help us remove orcs. Boromir will redeem himself. Aragorn must be at Boromir's rally point. Legolas and Gimli must be on all rally point space. I'm going to Mordor alone is the last challenge.

51:28 Frodo and Sam must be at the riverbank. All other challenges are completed. Our one ring ability here is we can remove one orc from anywhere on the board. We have three orcs out on the board to start with just to make sure you understand how they work. Gimli cannot move from here to here. That orc is covering or blocking that. Same with this one. But Gimli could move here. He could also move to this spot no problem. That's how he would attack the orcs. I do think we're ready to just get started. So we'll start with our movement step. We can see here Mary with the mug is totally able to move to the hiding spot. That's where we need to get both Frodo, Mary, Pippin in that location. Not Sam, thank goodness. Sam is way over here. I can also move Pippin one space over here because he's moving away from where this orc is. We can then use Gimli here with this insight card and one of any card type. Discard those two to remove this orc and that means we're having free reign around here.

52:27 I could use this card and I think I'm going to. I'm just going to discard that to move Pippin into the hiding spot. So now we just need to get Frodo over there and we can complete that first challenge. I think I am going to swap this. I need an insight and I need a mystery card. None of those are in my dummy player's hand. So I'm just going to grab one of these adventure cards and then we'll draw two more. Oh, there's a ring card and an insight card. We'll draw our top plot card. It's number 10. We'll place that orc right here. Just know there's a total of five orcs for this scenario. So if there's five on the board we know we need to get rid of one for sure. So then for our next turn we can have Frodo move one, two. And let's discard this adventure card to let him move one more space. So we're now all in the right spot. I just need an insight and a mystery card. And what I could do.

53:21 Do I want to use this ring right away? Cuz I could discard these two and complete it. I think I'm going to. I'm going to discard these two. That will push up our corruption to four. We used that ring card as if it was a mystery card and we had an insight. We have Frodo, Mary, and Pippin must be at the hiding spot. Our reward now. Anytime after completing this challenge Mary and Pippin can each be used once to remove an orc from the board by moving to one of the three spaces surrounding the orc. Once used Mary and Pippin are removed and placed here. So they're one-time benefits to help us remove orcs. That's good because I'm not removing any orcs this time. Oh, two warfare cards. Let's flip that next plot card and we have three. Three means we're placing an orc right here. I wish I could get rid of that with Gimli but I don't have enough cards. So what I think I'm going to do for this turn I'm going to have Aragorn move one space to here and then I'm going to have Mary move one space right to here. And then we're going to remove Mary and remove this orc. But now we can't use Mary's ability anymore. We still have Pippin but that's it. I have these two cards. I think I'm going to hold on to them uh and just draw two more because we need cards in our hand.

54:33 Oh, and we've got Galadriel's hair. That comes in handy so often. Who would have thought hair would be helpful? 11. We'll place that orc right by Sam. For this turn let's have Aragorn move two spaces. One, two. He can now defeat either one of these orcs. I am going to defeat one with this uh warfare and courage card and let's get rid of this one. Uh because well, we're going to have to get rid of this one as well in order to get over to the rally point. I have three ring cards in the dummy player's hand. It's kind of annoying. So I'm actually going to swap this quick because then I can use Galadriel's hair. Draw three cards. One, two, three and discard one. I'll discard the ring and I have these three in my hand. What I think we'll do then we'll discard this adventure card to move Gimli. Gimli is free to move here. He's now in a rally point. We can then discard these two cards insight and any type to get rid of this orc. And now we'll have free reign for Aragorn to get to this rally point point.

55:35 Then all we need to do is get Legolas all the way over here and we need to get Sam and Frodo over to here. Let's then draw our two cards. Oh, we have two mystery cards. We'll draw up and we have an eight. It is confirmed in the FAQ that you can have more than one orc in the same section. That is annoying. Well, it's a good thing I'm not going that way. I think for this turn we'll have Legolas. He'll move here and then he could move another space but we need to get rid of one of these. You know what we're going to do? We're then going to just leave him here, move Pippin here, and then use Pippin's ability to remove one of these orcs. Just get them out of there. We can then discard these two cards to be able to move Legolas one and two. And now we have two out of the three in the rally points. We just need Aragorn here and we need two cards, one an adventure and a warfare card. We got an adventure for our card draw. So far looking pretty good. We have a five.

56:36 That is going to put a bit of a hamper on moving Frodo. Bummer. Frodo can move over here but then he's stuck. He can move over here but he's going the wrong way. We want him to go over this way. So I think the first thing we want to do is move Aragorn into this rally point, move Sam out of this space. We want to trade this card with a warfare card and we can discard these two cards to complete Boromir's redemption. Aragorn must be at Boromir's rally point and Legolas and Gimli must be on a rally space. Yes, they are. Check. We get to draw a card from the special deck. We will draw. We have wisdom of Elrond. Choose a player to draw two cards from the story deck. Well, I'm going to discard that and I'm going to draw two. Who else would do that? Okay, we have an insight and a warfare. At this point all we need to do is get Frodo and Sam right over to this riverbank.

57:29 Uh I could start discarding cards but I think I'm going to hold. Let's see what happens. We're going to draw a courage and we're going to draw another ring card. We'll then flip our plot card. It's a two. That's good and bad. Two is far away from Frodo but it's bad because four out of the five orcs are out and that one's really hard to get to. Okay, so it's our turn. We definitely want Sam to move one space here. I'd love to have Frodo move but I don't think I can. I'm going to have Gimli move to here. Then from that spot we can spend an insight and a warfare and that will get rid of this orc. And then we can discard this courage card and Frodo will have the courage to move here. Now he's stuck yet again trying to get to the riverbank because of this orc. Uh hopefully Gimli can come over here and take him out next turn. So we still have the one ring in our hand. That's the other thing. We could discard this to get rid of him.

58:25 Well, let's just see. Let's see. Oh, we have a mystery card. And we have another mystery card. Let's flip that plot card and it's a seven. Well, now that is just mean. Look at this. They're trying to stop them. I love it. Okay, we can do one movement or two movements. We're going to have Gimli move here. Let me see. Do I have any insight in my hand? I don't. Uh do I want to move Gimli there? I I want to move Sam there. Sam can move there for sure. But now he's stuck until we get rid of that. I could have Legolas move to here. Then I can discard this mystery card to be able to move Legolas right to here. And then I'm going to swap this with a warfare card cuz I don't need that for the last challenge and discard the warfare plus the mystery cards so I have no cards in hand but that will get rid of this orc. And now Frodo can move one and two. Yeah, that would work. That would work and then he can move over here. This is this is fun. We'll draw up two cards. We have another ring and a mystery card. Our next plot card will be a six. It seems we threw off their scent. That is behind us. Awesome. Now, what I'm thinking of doing Well, actually no, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to have Sam Oh, actually, I'm going to have Frodo move twice. One two. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. And then I'm going to discard this mystery card.

59:52 And I'm going to move Sam to here. That means they just need to get to here. And now, I don't have many cards in my hand. And by many, I mean I just have this ring card. I might discard this ring to get rid of that orc. Is that worth it? I'm I think it is. No, it's not. We'll wait till next time. Let's see what we get. We'll draw two cards. I'm being good. I'm being good. Oh, we have the great eagle. Move each character miniature one space. That's amazing. We'll flip over that plot card and we have a 13. 13 is right next to Gimli. We're okay with that. We'll start our next turn by having both of our hobbits move one space. Then we're going to use the great eagle. Move each character miniature one space each. We can move both of them to the river bank.

1:00:41 We'll move uh Legolas over to here. We'll leave Gimli. And I guess we can move Aragorn over to here. We then have to use this ring. Otherwise, I think we're going to lose because uh for sure one of these orcs are going to come out. And I don't have a way of getting rid of them. So, we're going to use this one ring. Discard it. And we're going to get rid of I don't think it matters this orc. That moves us up to five corruption. We'll then end our turn drawing two cards. We have a mystery and an insight. We'll flip our next plot card. It's a 14. 14 is right here. That's amazing. Trying to chase us down. But you know what? I think we're going to be okay. We don't have to do any sort of movement. We can swap this insight with one of the courage here. And we have the three that we need. We needed a courage, a mystery, and an adventure.

1:01:32 We'll discard these three. And we have just completed the breaking of the fellowship. If two or fewer orcs are on the board, you're ridiculous. I don't know how you do that, but we certainly have all five on the board. So, we do not get an extra card draw from the special deck. Chapter five. Last march of the ents. Separated from the fellowship, Mary and Pippin resolved to spur the ents into action against Saruman. I'm not altogether on anybody's side because nobody is altogether my side, if you understand me. Nobody cares for the woods as I care for them. Not even elves nowadays. Of course, it is likely enough, my friends. He said slowly. Likely enough that we're going to our doom. The last march of the ents. But if we stayed home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. We're now at the halfway mark for the game. And so far, only five out of the 15 corruption.

1:02:28 Feeling good, but the second half of the game is certainly more corruption heavy. Meaning I'm going to be pressured to want to use those one rings because if we fail this one, we increase our corruption by five. All right, let's see how this sets up. First, here is our dummy hand of six cards. Then we have our setup. Find the chapter five plot chart. So, let's look at this quick. There's a lot of words on here. Place a goblin in the location that matches the number that you draw, one through nine. If that space is occupied by any character or counter, place it in the next highest numbered space. Nine goes to one. If there's a goblin adjacent to the one just placed, flip that goblin to its fire side. Flip uh and then if we have a 10 or 15, flip one goblin to its fire side. If there are no goblins on the board, place a goblin in the highest unoccupied space. We also need to draw our own four cards. We have the elven cloaks. Nice. That might be fun to use right away. We then have to place Mary and Pippin on their indicated spaces.

1:03:26 Place the Treebeard counter on his space. Place the three ent counters on spaces two, four, and six. Place the five goblin counters on the goblin track, goblin side up. And the player who most recently was in a forest goes first. Certainly me. We have three chapter rules we need to adhere to. Moving the ents. Mary and Pippin are used to move ents. When one of them moves out of a space with one or more ents, one ent may move with them. Treebeard is considered an ent. Defeating goblins. If Mary or Pippin move an ent into a space with a goblin, discard one courage card or any two other matching story cards to defeat the goblin. Return the goblin counter to the goblin track. We may have fires. Hobbits and ents cannot enter a space with a fire. During a player's storytelling phase, that player can extinguish a fire if there's at least two ents adjacent to it. Discard any two matching story cards and return the fire counter to the goblin track uh goblin side up. We lose if there's ever two fires on the board or the plot deck runs out. We have three challenges we need to complete. The first one is a gathering. Mary, Pippin, Treebeard, and one other ent must be in Derningal. Then we have release the river. Both of the dam spaces must be occupied by ents. And the first challenge must be completed because we had to convince the ents to go and break the dam. Finally, we go and battle Isengard. So, both of the tower spaces must be occupied by an ent and all other challenges must be complete. You can see this needs a mystery and two of any

1:04:58 cards. We can always discard a one ring to extinguish a fire with one adjacent ent and without playing any cards. That is amazing. I'm probably going to have to do that. Let's get started, shall we? First thing we're going to do, elven cloaks. We're not going to draw a plot card this turn. So, we're going to have two turns free of any goblins. That seems kind of amazing. So, I'm going to have Mary with the mug. He's going to move one, two. He is now with an ent. And so, going forward, when he moves, he can move that ent into Derningal. I think I said that wrong last time. I am going to discard this adventure card. And that's going to allow Well, let's just have Mary keep moving. Let's have Mary move right to here with that ent. That's going to end our first turn. I want to keep these courage cards because that's how we get rid of goblins. So, we'll draw two cards. We got Bilbo's journal. And we have a mystery card. And we don't have to worry about a plot. So, we'll just keep going. We will then have Mary move one, two. And so, now we have Mary and an ent in Derningal. We'll then use one of these courage cards and switch it with one of our warfare cards with our dummy player. And discard this to get Pippin off of his bum. He's going to start moving to try and get Treebeard. That'll end our turn for right now. We'll draw up two cards. We do have an insight. We need two insights. And we have a ring card. This time we do have to draw a plot card. And we have the 15. Flip one goblin. We can't do that. Then we have to just place a goblin in the highest unoccupied

1:06:30 space. Well, that's kind of annoying. Could be worse. We'll place that goblin right here on the eight because nine is occupied. It's confirmed in the FAQ that you can move through those goblins, no problem. So, for our next turn, we're going to have Pippin go one, two with Treebeard. We're then going to discard one mystery card so we can move one space. We're going to share the same space with that goblin. And discard a courage card. If Mary or Pippin move an ent into a space with a goblin, discard one courage card. And we can defeat that goblin goblin. So, sign off. Nice. Now, we could move him one more space. But for now, I think we're going to hold. We'll just draw up two more cards. We'll then flip our plot card. And we have a one. One does work. We'll place a goblin right there. Okay, now it's our next turn. We will have Pippin move into here. And now we have what we need. Can I discard? Well, the first thing we are going to do is use this warfare card.

1:07:31 And we will trade it for this mystery card. And then I think we're going to use the mystery card. We're going to use this insight card. And we're going to use a ring card. I don't want to wait. I'm going to use those three. And we're going to complete the first challenge. That means we get to draw two cards from the story deck. And we have a mystery and a warfare. However, that will be our sixth corruption. And we need to draw one of these cards. And it says each player discards one story card if able. Okay, we can deal with just discarding a story card. We don't need a mystery card for a bit. So, I'm just going to discard this mystery card from my hand. We almost have what we need to be able to release the river. So, I think for our draw phase, we're going to use our Bilbo's journal. During the draw phase, you may choose two cards from the discard pile instead of drawing from the story deck.

1:08:21 You cannot choose special cards. We grabbed both an adventure card and a mystery card. Our next plot card we have is a two. That's not good. This means we're placing a goblin right here. And now we have two goblins next to each other. So, this one's going to turn into fire. And if we don't get rid of that and another fire shows up, we lose the game. Well, this is certainly interesting. I think what we're going to do for our turn is bring Mary with this random ent. And we're going to move one, two. We're trying to bring this one over to the dam. Then we'll bring them probably all the way over. My goodness, we got to bring them so far. And then what we're going to do is we're going to exchange this mystery card with one of these warfare cards. And because Oh, we took this ent. Okay, I'm going to take that back. We're not going to do that.

1:09:09 We're going to leave that ent there. And we're going to move Mary one, two. We're going to pick up this ent. We're going to bring that ent over there. That's because we need two ents adjacent to that fire. We can discard two story cards that are matching to be able to eliminate that fire. I don't want to lose because of that fire. So, we'll discard that. And I think that's all we're going to do this turn. So, we'll just draw two more cards, and we have Oh, yeah, look at that. More courage to get rid of goblins and another adventure card. We'll draw our next plot card, and we have an 11. If we had not removed that fire, we would have just lost this chapter. We have to flip this one to fire, and now we have one fire and no ents adjacent to it. This is going to be hard. I have only played this one once, and I actually haven't played any after the fifth chapter. So, I'm kind of excited to see the other ones. We're going to start off this round. We're going to have Merry move one, two over to here with an ent. We'll use an adventure card to move Merry one over, and now we have one in the dam. We need another one over there. I think I'm going to hold my cards. There's no way a second fire is going to show up right now. So, we'll just draw two. Ooh, that can be used to help us remove one. I might do that. Our next card will be a four. Four is currently occupied, so you go to the next number. That's number five. That is not adjacent to any other goblins, so we're okay. We'll now have Pippin move for this round. We'll have Pippin move with Treebeard right here.

1:10:41 And then we're going going to have Merry move one space to here. Then what we're going to do, we're going to discard in our hand we have a ring. We can discard this ring, and then we can extinguish a fire with one adjacent ent without paying any cards. So, we're going to get rid of this fire, but we're going to increase our corruption by one. That pushes us to seven. I think I'm going to have a little bit of fun here. I'm going to use these two adventure cards. We're going to move one time with Pippin, and then another time with this ent to here, and then we're going to discard this courage card, get rid of that goblin. All the goblins are gone. I have one courage card left in my hand. Going to keep that for sure. We'll draw two cards, and we'll see what our next plot is. Kind of hoping for a 10 to a 15 right now. That's a 14. We just have to place a goblin in the highest space without a goblin or anything in it. So, that would be right here. Let's then have Pippin activate moving one, two, and we just need to get him one more space. I do feel like it's worth it.

1:11:47 Let's discard this insight card, and we'll move one more here. So, now we have the two in the right spot. Unfortunately, I do not have the right cards in my hand. We'll go ahead and draw two. Oh, and we get two adventure cards. We'll flip that plot card, and we have a six. Six is not adjacent to any goblin, thank goodness. But, it's a little bit risky. During our movement step, we'll have Merry move one, and we'll have Pippin move one space. I've got to leave these two here for now. We can then discard one adventure, one courage, and one warfare, and we can complete Release the river. I love that part of the movie, and that lets us draw a special card from the deck. We draw a Shadowfax. You may move one character miniature up to three spaces. Should we use that? Yeah, we should use that. Let's use Shadowfax right away. We're going to move with Pippin. So, now we can move out these ents. They've already broken the dam.

1:12:48 The water's rushing in. They'll move one, two, three. Now, we just need to get two of them over to here and be able to discard three cards, one of them being a mystery, which we have a mystery card in the dummy player's deck or hand, so we're good there. I do, however, have a concern about fire five. Five is not good. Merry is standing in five. Six, there's a goblin. Seven, it's there. We'll flip this one over to fire. Oh, boy. The question now becomes, do we try and get rid of that fire? I think we have to. I think we absolutely have to. So, we're going to have Merry move one here cuz we're going to Yeah, we're going to try and bring that ent over, and then Pippin Oh, Pippin. No, you know what? We're going to leave Pippin where he's at. We're going to go one, two. We're going to move that ent.

1:13:36 We can then swap this insight card with Yeah, you betcha. A ring card. And we're going to discard the ring card to get rid of this. That moves us to eight though for corruption. At this point, I'm just going to burn my hand. I've got two more cards in my hand. Pippin is going to move two spaces. One, two. We've got one in the right spot. Okay, we're going to draw up. We've got these two. We'll flip our next plot card. It's a 10. That means we have to flip one of these goblins to the fire side. Oh my goodness. At this point, I can either leave this fire and take a chance, or I can move no one. Well, I can move Pippin back by two to see if he can grab somebody else. Well, maybe cuz I can move Pippin here. I could go one, two. And then we're actually adjacent to this right now. I have one more ring card. I would increase corruption, or I could just go for it and go one, two.

1:14:32 And then I could discard these two cards, so I have no cards in hand. One, two. We have them in the right spots. We draw two cards, so we know we're not going to be able to complete it this round. But, if we can last this round and the next round, we'll have enough cards in hand cuz we do have a mystery card right here. And then we can discard two of any cards. We can then win this game. Let's see if we can do it. We took that chance. Is it going to be worth it? It's a nine. No, unfortunately, it's not worth it. We place this here. It is adjacent to one of the goblins. This one turns to fire. We have two fire. We just lost the chapter. That means we have to increase corruption by five. One, two, three, four, five. There's no way. We have two of these. Draw and resolve an additional plot card. Well, at least that happened at a good time, but that's not going to matter. And then the other one, at the end of your turn, draw only one story card instead of two. That's not going to matter either.

1:15:29 We'll never see this card cuz there's only four of them, and we're at 13. That means if I get two corruption of 15, we lose the game. But, that means we get at least see chapter six. Chapter six, Battle of Helm's Deep. The fellowship fights tirelessly to defend Helm's Deep, but are forced to retreat again and again as they face the overwhelming forces of Saruman. The horn of Helm Hammerhand will sound in the deep one last time. Here we have chapter six all set up and ready to go. If we don't win this one, we lose the campaign. I have a feeling it's going to happen. This one looks hard. I have never played it, so I'm excited to try it. We have our chapter six plot chart right here. This one one is actually really good. Two, add one orc. Seven to 11, add two orcs.

1:16:14 12 to 15, add three orcs. Oh my gosh. So, we have one good one. Oh, I forgot to shuffle the plot cards. We have to place Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli in their indicated spaces. Place the Gandalf counter white side up in its space. Place an orc counter on spaces one, two, three in the red area. Place three orcs on the board below. The player who most recently climbed a wall goes first. Well, that's me. We have our stages of battle here. Each challenge has an associated area of the board. You must complete the challenges in order. Cool. Placing orcs. When you are required to place orcs, place them in the lowest numbered spaces not already occupied by an orc in your current challenge area. There can only be one orc per space. We have removing orcs. During a player's storytelling phase, the player may discard cards to remove orcs in the same spaces as Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas. The type of story cards needed depends on the character that it's attacking. Aragorn is warfare.

1:17:10 Legolas is mystery, and Gimli is insight. Éowyn, Haldir, and Théoden can also remove orcs from their space with the card shown on their space. Place removed orcs below. Interesting. Waiting for Gandalf. During any player's storytelling phase, that player may move the Gandalf to the next space on his path by discarding the cards indicated in the new space. You lose this chapter if you need to place an orc and do not have one available or the plot deck runs out. Oh, boy. One time we could actually Well, 12 to 15, we could place out three orcs right away. Our first challenge is charge. Aragorn and Gimli at the culvert explosion and Gandalf on day two. Then we can remove all orcs from the red area and draw two story cards. Then we have, Come on, we can take them. Aragorn and Gimli at the causeway.

1:17:56 Legolas at Théoden. And then Gandalf at day three. Remove all orcs in the yellow area, but no drawing cards. Then ride out with me. Aragorn and Legolas in the great hall. Gimli in Hornburg. He's blowing the horn. I love that part. Gandalf at or beyond day four. Each player draws a story card. Do not remove the orcs. At dawn, look to the east. Gandalf is at day five or cliffside. You complete this chapter if Gandalf's on cliffside, draw a card from the special deck. So, we'd have to actually get him one farther. Here we have our dummy player hand, and we get to draw four cards. Okay, not great. We do have a one ring ability, but I'm probably not going to use it. Remove an orc from every space with a character miniature. Oh, that's kind of nice. So, that's not Haldir, which by the way still makes no sense. He's there, that's okay. Or Éowyn. Our first challenge is actually pretty easy. We just need Aragorn over here at the covert explosion. So, we're going to do that for sure. We can discard this adventure card here to get Gimli over here, and then I think we need to have Legolas to start attacking these orcs. Of course, what he attacks with is mystery, and I have no mystery cards. Should have thought about that.

1:19:10 Uh well, it is what it is. I will go ahead and draw two cards, so we get another adventure card, and we get a mystery card. We'll draw our top plot card, and it's a 12. Add three orcs to the current challenge area. The current challenge area is the red area. That means we have to place one where Legolas is, one where Haldir is, and where's number three? One where Gimli was. And if we don't get rid of some orcs, we're going to be in some serious trouble. And the worst thing of it all, we did not draw any of the warfare cards, and I don't have any in our dummy hand, either. Uh so, what I think I'm going to do for our movement, I'm not going to move anywhere. I'm going to leave everyone where they're at. I'm going to have Haldir use this card. You can see he can defeat an orc with this. So, we're going to take him out, put them over there.

1:20:01 I'm going to have Gandalf use this mystery card, cuz we do also need to have him at day one. Well, I can't believe I'm going to do this, but in order to take out that orc, to even give us partial chance here, we're going to use the ring, which is going to push up our corruption. This moves us to 14 total corruption. Now, we'll only lose if we draw a 13, 14, or 15. We'll draw that top plot card. Are you kidding me? That's a 13. We just lost. We would need to add three orcs to the red area, and we only have two in the supply. Uh that means we lost. Well, I had so much fun with this. I really wanted to go to chapters seven and eight. Just so you can see it, chapter seven was the Shelob's Lair. We'd be using Sam and Frodo, sneaking through.

1:20:48 We'd have a Gollum. And then the final chapter eight, they have both the final battle of the Pelennor Fields, as well as us trying to dunk the ring. This is It's a lot. They put a lot in this last scenario. I've still never played it. That's as far as I've gotten as chapter six. Uh because when you do lose, that is the one thing I can see why they would have you replay, because that was just unlucky with these cards, right? Uh but I do like having that pressure of, "Hey, if you lose, you keep going forward, but you push up your corruption for it." And it will feel so epic when we can actually win it. Hopefully, though, this helps you see if this is something you'd like to pick up. You know how much I love Lord of the Rings. If you have any other really good cooperative Lord of the Rings games you'd recommend, please tell me in the comments below, and I can pick it up. I currently also have the Lord of the Rings trick-taker, and we are loving that. We're at chapter eight or nine, so that's also great. I just haven't done a solo play-through one of that yet. I know Mike has one on One Stop. With all of that aside, thank you so much for watching. A huge shout-out to our patrons and subscribers. It's because of you that Bernt and I do what we do here on this channel. And if you're excited to see what Bernt and I have coming next, then I need you to meet me at the table. Goodbye, everyone. With all your energy, with all your energy.

1:22:09 It's a master plan to set me up against your enemies.