Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom is a game I got from a recent GameNerdz order. I believe it just came out in the USA (as of Sept. 1st, 2023): this is a Kosmos game, which typically has more of a European presence. This is a cooperative game in the Lord of the Rings universe. It’s a little surprising, given that we saw the Lord of The Rings Adventure Book Game just a few months ago! We loved that game: see our review of it here!

Even though the Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game was a lighter cooperative game, this one seems even lighter!

This Adventure to Mount Doom has only 50 minutes play time, with 10+ ages … the same age group, but this game promises a “full” Lord of the Rings Experience in 50 minutes!

Components

This is a pretty standard sized box.

The rulebook is very readable, if the font is a little small. It does a nice job showing and labelling all components and getting a good picture of set-up. The rulebook is only 8 pages! But it does a good job.

The box is probably too big for all its components.  Just some cards, standees, and dice.

The components are nice, despite the cards not being linen-finished. Everything is very readable.

Gameplay

This a cooperative game. Um, this is roll-and-move. Wait, wait, wait! Don’t run away just wait! It’s more interesting than you think.

Players do NOT play any individual Lord of the Rings character, they play the fellowship, trying to move the fellowship (piecemeal) from Rivendell to Mount Doom! See above as the fellowship starts with 5 groups on Rivendell!

Note that there is a die for each group (Frodo&Sam, Merry&Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli). Each turn, the current player will be rolling some dice and moving forward some members of the fellowship! Incidentally, the game does a great job, in both the rulebook and components, of making it clear which color applies to which group!

If you can get the ring-bearer (Frodo&Sam) to Mount Doom at the board, the players win!

On the left side of the track is a courage track for the Ring-Bearer: if it ever goes to the bottom, players lose!

Or, if all the Nazgul make it onto the board players lose!

Here’s the roll-and-move part … every turn, the current player rolls 4 dice: 2 colored (which allow the corresponding fellowship to move) and 2 black encounter dice (usually bad news). They choose one colored die for fellowship movement, then one black die for an encounter.

There are 6 encounter spaces at the bottom of the board: some are good (3 is green: Arwen is a friend makes it so you can avoid one bad space on the move) and some are bad (2 is Saruman: he amasses the Uruk-hai) and some are unknown until you flip them (1 and 6).

If the encounter card leaves the board, the symbol underneath is “usually” good: above, you can choose to move Gimli up to 2 spaces (after we take Arwen).

After you roll for the first choice, then you still roll the black dice and two more colored dice: you have no option on the second black die: you must take it.

At point, you execute your turn: Have the black encounter, move the fellowship character, have the second black encounter, then move the second fellowship character.

Every time the ring-bearer enters a new area, you have to clear the encounter cards and get the encounter cards for the next section of the board. As you expect, the encounters get less and less friendly as you get closer to Mount Doom.

There are other rules (how you can heal, how you fight, how you can get Gandalf cards, how you accidentally get Nazguls, etc), but at it’s core: this is a roll-and-move game: Per turn, you basically get to roll 7 dice total and get to choose 3 of them (1 black and 2 colored) and get stuck with 2 of them (1 black and 1 colored) (2 go unchosen or re-rolled). Note that you do get to choose which of the colored dice you roll, so that helps.

Once the ring-bearer gets to Mount Doom, the game changes a little: only the ring-bearer moves, and only 1 black die gets rolled: you just have to suffer the consequences and hope you get to Mount Doom!

Roll and Move

Are you still reading? Yes, this is a roll-and-move game. But there is some choice. You still get stuck with 1 completely random encounter each time (the second one), but at least you can choose the first. And you get to roll at least 4 colored dice and choose two of them. So, this isn’t quite like a roll-and-move like Life or Monopoly: you do get some choice..

And sometimes you will roll bad: see above as I barely get my fellowship moving with 1 and 2!

And sometimes you will cruise! See above with a 5 and 6!

There are reasons to choose lesser numbers sometimes: see above! If any of the three land on the space 2 spaces away, you lose courage! So, maybe you’ll take a 1 over a 2 to avoid the courage loss! There are choices along the way.

Solo Game

Congratulations on following Saunders’ Law and having a viable solo mode!  In this case, since no one plays any particular character (you just move parts of the fellowship depending on your dice rolls), it doesn’t really matter how many people: the Gandalf and friend cards can be used by anyone.  

In my first game, I lost horribly near Mount Doom as too many Nazgul came out: When all 7 come out, I immediately lost! It was frustrating, as my Nazgul came out because I rolled poorly on my second encounter rolls! I had no way to mitigate that! So, I just lost.

I had actually lost earlier, but I kept playing because I wanted to see the endgame. It turns out the Sauron’s Eye (see above) totally screwed me out of my courage, and my courage fell below 0 way before I lost to the Nazgul.

My first game was a learning game. Lessons: keep the courage up and stay away from the Nazguls!

My second game went a lot better: I almost lost, but Faramir made all the difference in the end game:

I used Faramir to move the last 4 spaces of Mount Doom: this avoided all the bad stuff along the way! I am pretty sure I would have lost had I not played this card at the end!

Both solo games were (correctly notated) at about 50 minutes. I lost my first game and won my second game.

Randomness

I had to have to have a long think about this game after playing it. Yes, it is perhaps a little too random. The second encounter roll can almost never be mitigated, and if you roll poorly, the Nazgul will eat your lunch and you will just lose.

But, you have some choices along the way. So, is this too random?

I am reminded of Ranier Knizia’s original cooperative Lord of the Rings game. We joke that it should be called “Getting Killed by Sauron” because it’s so hard … but you know why it’s so hard? It’s so random! The randomness there comes from the event tiles. You have no idea what event tiles you will get as you play, and so few ways to mitigate those event tile flips! Yet, we still seem to like the original Lord of the Rings game. Honestly, there is some nostalgia there, as the original Lord of the Rings game was one of the first cooperative games out there!

So, Adventure To Mount Doom maybe has a little more “bad news” mitigation or maybe the same? But it’s only 50 minutes! So, maybe my brain thinks “Lord of the Rings needs to be an Epic game, so 50 minutes is too short!” … but maybe it isn’t. I think the amount of randomness here is probably less than the original Lord of the Rings game by Knizia. So, am I a hypocrite if I like the Ranier Knizia game but not this one?

Cooperative Play

I couldn’t get my group to play this cooperatively. 

“Wait, this is roll-and-move?”

“Well, yes. “

“Is it kind of random?”

“Well, yes. But it’s better than you think!”

“You aren’t really selling it.”

So, they heard roll-and-move,  they figured it was too random, and they were done.  I think this prejudice might be widespread.

Conclusion

So, this game was better than I expected, but it’s still a roll-and-move. The solo game was okay, but I don’t see myself playing it again solo. And I couldn’t get my game group to play it.

But I encourage you to look into your soul and remember how random the Ranier Knizia’s Lord of the Rings game was and ask yourself to reconsider randomness. Adventure to Mount Doom is only 50 minutes, and there are interesting decisions along the way, even if it is maybe too random. At least it’s short!

In the end, I am keeping the game because I think this can be a good introductory cooperative game for people who have only seen older roll-and-move games like Life and Monopoly. I can see someone new to the hobby enjoying the Lord of the Rings theme and still getting into Adventure to Mount Doom. I also can see families with kids (at the bottom end of the age range: 10-11) enjoying this.

Hard-core gamers will probably hate this, or at least they think they will. It’s better than they think.