The Lord of the Rings The Card Game The Fellowship of the Ring SAGA EXPANSION - Cooperative Adventure Game, Strategy Game, Ages 14+, 1-4 Players, 30-120 Min Playtime, Made by Fantasy Flight Games

I've been playing the LotR LCG for almost a decade, although I never got into the saga expansions. I'm happy that FFG decided to reprint them in these two-pack boxes. They're a great value, getting two of the "large box" expansions in a newer, larger box. The set contains six adventures. I would estimate that the player:encounter card ratio for this set is about 1:5--these expansion decks are huge. The quests use a large, unique deck of ~30 cards and a few very small other encounter packs with some common elements (the Ring, the ringwraiths, etc). As a result, it means that each adventure feels quite unique. I haven't had a chance to play them all yet, but I would estimate that these would be hard for someone with just this set and a core set to complete on normal difficulty. Probably not impossible--a few "recommended" deck lists are included, though I haven't tried them--but tough. I think LOTR thrives when it's tough, so five stars.

Exactly what my husband wanted

All perfect

Love the art. Haven’t played the game yet, but hey at least I get to look at all the pretty pictures.

I purchased this for friend and I have all 6 six original Saga's. This is incredible deal and I wish Fantasy Flight Games would release other 4 sagas as well. Flame of the West is probably my favorite and it is anywhere between $100 and $200 on ebay. It would be smart if they released it with Mountain of Fire.

Bought for my husband. He loves card building type games. And this is perfect. A little complex and we still have to look up things in the rule book. But fun to play. My 8 year old will play with us.

Item(s) arrived in good condition, tho it came in a very fragile box with no bubblewrap or any sort of protection. I finally got my hands on this one, I love LotR and LCG. Ayt! Down to the another rabbit hole.

Definitely ought to buy.

El juego llego en excelentes condiciones, todo perfecto. Excelente juego, muy divertido. Lo recomiendo.

Love this expansion for Lord of the rings lcg

...Down From The Revised Core Set Where It Began. This is the English language version so I assume a review in English is appropriate. Having thoroughly & repeatedly enjoyed the Core Set during my usual extended Christmas break, my splendid wife and I decided to take the expensive plunge and get the three Saga Expansions and the four Starter Decks; extravagant, maybe, but availability is very patchy and it would have been annoying if we were unable to complete the set. After playing Vantage a bit too much, it was time to either go back to a familiar favourite or break out The Fellowship. Simple choice. Oddly, the full-size box only contains four large packs of cards which, like the core set, took a fair while to sort into their respective decks. I’m not sure why the box is so big – there is plenty of room in the Core Set box, but then again, the rulebook would have to be a lot smaller so perhaps that’s the reason. There are some additional rules (some of which could do with a bit more explanation) and the rulebook is padded out with narrative for the scenarios, but core mechanics remain the same and the Core Set rulebooks still live on the table to keep track of where we are in the turn structure and the action window flowchart. As for the Core Set, no dividers are provided so, without the fan-made downloadable dividers on BoardGameGeek (thanks, Volmay), it would be almost impossible to organise the vast number of cards. I suppose the tiny, tiny set icons and numbers on the bottom of each card could be used instead. Rather than keeping the player cards for this Saga separate, we chose to merge them with those of the Core Set (which works with the dividers anyway). We decided to play the decks suggested in the rulebook as a starting point and have left the Starter Decks unopened, initially with the intention of only playing them when thematically appropriate (Defenders of Gondor in Gondor, Riders of Rohan in Rohan etc.). There are twenty-one quests comprising the six scenarios covering the main events of The Fellowship. I was expecting a more thematically sound journey, starting from a bunch of hobbits getting to Bree, meeting Strider, then Weathertop and the Council of Elrond and so on building decks along the way, but the suggested player decks include Heroes and Allies that do not fit the narrative; for example, Gandalf is one of the Heroes in the suggested decks and he’s not even around much early on in the Fellowship (good job he is, though; even the early scenarios would be difficult without him). It would be fun to try to play in a narratively correct manner but it would be very difficult; there would be a lot of player deck maintenance, after the Council you’d need the main characters as allies to play alongside your chosen heroes and the encounter deck would need constant maintenance to keep the game balanced. Theme moans aside, it is as tense, pacey & engrossing a game as the Core Set and, even in easy mode and having tweaked our player decks, we have lost quests (Frodo ran out of life in ‘The Flight to the Ford’ scenario) and as for ‘The Ring Goes South’ scenario, the Watcher in the Water enemy is a really, really nasty business but is handled with elegant mechanical ingenuity (once one understands it!). Needless to say, we have not yet successfully completed the scenario. We have yet to tackle the ‘Journey in the Dark’ scenario which is reportedly even more difficult (level eight) than the previous scenario (level six) and are not even remotely looking forward to encountering the Balrog. Much more losing will ensue I expect. The scenarios are cleverly constructed & thoroughly thematic and, even with only six scenarios, there are many hours of gameplay. We tried a couple of scenarios in campaign mode just to see what it’s like but we got a bit confused and, my word, some of those Burdens are irksome, despite the Boons. There is loads of replayability, especially if we take the dive into the Starter Decks (whose contents may hopefully help us lose less often!), play in non-easy mode and have another go at campaign mode. When we eventually get there, it will be interesting to see how the divergent story arcs are handled in the next Saga expansion after the Breaking of the Fellowship, though we definitely need to tweak decks and maybe have a clean run through the Fellowship at least once first. We are beginning to understand why this is more a lifestyle choice than a rainy afternoon play-and-put-away game (having said which, we have put it away after many days play to give our old brains a rest; but not for long). Excellent stuff. Rulebook: 9/10 Complexity: 9/10 Component quality: 10/10 Replay-ability: 10/10 Gameplay pace: 9/10

With originals becoming scarce, it's nice to see a reprint/debit of this

Fun game