Review – The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

During the Fall ’24 semester, seven other professors and I read through The Fellowship of the Ring together, and it was a wonderful experience, full of fascinating discussions about theology, literature, Creation, and teaching. After we’d begun, I jumped into other Lord of the Rings content such as The Rings of Power, and then I learned that one of my favorite games (7 Wonders: Duel) was being remade with a Lord of the Rings theme! But was this a change for the better?

Yes. A thousand times yes. 7 Wonders: Duel was (and still is) an incredibly tight, well-designed game, to the point where I felt like the second expansion could do nothing but make a perfect game a tad worse. I was immediately excited to see the new theme and new artwork (Vincent Dutrait is a household name for a reason), but I was wary of the rules changes. There are actually many rules changes, though it still feels overall like 7 Wonders: Duel. And every single rule change is for the better. 

The biggest one is the lack of victory points. YES! I have been on a tirade for two years now about how adding up hidden or obfuscated victory points at the end of a Eurogame is such a stupid way to play a board game, completely lacking the tension of a race to a victory condition, like a flat countable 10 points in Dune: Imperium and Res Arcana, or five foreign colonies in Cosmic Encounter, or three columns in Can’t Stop, or just killing the other guy in a card battling game. I always felt that games that didn’t end with science or military victories in 7 Wonders: Duel were the more anticlimactic of the bunch. 

Now, we have three ways to win immediately, with one of them acting as an endgame tiebreaker if we get that far (control of the map). It makes sense thematically, although I would encourage players making comparisons to switch blue and red in their heads: the new blue works like the old red (getting a track to the end, with bonuses along the way), while the new red (the map) is replacing the old victory point (blue) system. I find players complaining about “changes in military” (e.g. the lack of bonuses) are not making this swap in their head like they should. 

While discussing the colors, science has been revamped as well, and now is related to the six races of Middle-earth. Since points are gone, these are now supplemented by just having insanely powerful bonus tokens, and one more way to get them (the first time you get three different tokens). It’s incredibly fun to see how powerful they are, and some that didn’t initially feel strong only felt that way because we were adapting to the new economy. 

And the economy is quite different: resources are now always one coin to get, all game long, and discarding a card gets you coins equal to the Age you’re in. These are big changes, and result in a very tight game where players end with 0-3 coins instead of 20-30. It makes every decision crucial, with the only downside being that yellow is now a very boring (but still necessary) card color. Of course, different coin values were also used to balance Wonders, which brings us to the last big change of the game.

There are no more Wonder boards. Instead, any player can, if they can afford it, grab a Landmark from up to three in the center (there are only seven all game) and put it into play, gaining a bunch of powerful bonuses, including a Tower for the map that can never be removed. The Landmarks are great, but expensive, and increase in price every time (a very smart system). The complaints from players in response would be: the new game is lacking in variability, and in “personality” – players don’t feel distinct from each other. I would disagree with both sentiments.

The now-overpowered race/science tokens go a long way to making players feel distinct from each other. And while the Landmarks are available to both players, players become more distinct after acquiring them. And simply by virtue of the order of the card layouts, players end up pursuing different strategies as the tableau pushes them one way or the other. I think it is absolutely crucial to this game that half the cards are face-down; it makes the game develop organically as unexpected possibilities crop up. Having said all this, I am sure the inevitable first expansion will include unique player powers, and I would still be just as excited to explore them, even though I don’t find them necessary.

In the end, I can’t find a single flaw with Duel for Middle-earth. An already amazing game with great artwork now has even cleaner rules, new strategies, less accounting, and even better artwork. The only complaint I can think of is, maybe you’re not a Lord of the Rings fan, but maybe others weren’t a fan of the “ancient civilization” theme, either. I guess my advice to you would be: find a reading (i.e. accountability) group so you’ll finally finish The Fellowship of the Ring, and see what you’re missing!