
           From the Games of MIDDLE EARTH
                 WAR OF THE RING
 
  Original game by Simulations Publication, Inc.  1977
  ADC2 version by John E. Amenta  (jamenta@yahoo.com)


  INTRODUCTION
 
  In 1977, SPI (Simulation Publications Incorporated)
  published a collection of games based on Middle Earth, 
  including a campaign game called War of the Ring.
  Many people I know including myself, have
  fond memories of SPI's War of The Ring,  since 
  the game reflected very much the same high quality 
  of Tolkien's extraordinary work, Lord of
  the Rings. The map of Third Age Middle Earth was
  arguable one of the most beautiful simulation maps
  produced by SPI.  In addition, the game included a
  wide range of counters, representing the many races
  and military might of Middle Earth, and a set of over 
  a hundred cards rendering many Middle-Earth magical
  items and monsters such as Shelob, the Balrog and of
  course The One Ring.  
  
  I have attempted to faithfully recreate as accurately
  as possible the original content of the game. You
  should find included with this ADC2 set, renditions of
  all the original War of the Ring cards, all the 
  unit-counters in both the original Character game and 
  Campaign game, (and separate ADC2 .OPS files that you 
  can load to play either the Campaign or the Character 
  game), and an ADC2 map that attempts to bring to you
  the colorful splendour of the original SPI map.  

  This ADC2 set of War of the Ring is meant to be freely 
  distributed and is not meant to be sold or redistributed
  for profit.  I am assuming the copyright for this game
  has now expired and thus can be freely posted on Nicholas
  Bell's excellent ADC2 website and ADC2 set archive. 
  I would love to hear any feedback you might have, or 
  your experiences while using this set.  Feel free 
  to send email to: jamenta@yahoo.com.  I hope you will
  enjoy the War of the Ring set as much as I enjoyed 
  putting it together!


  THIS VERSION 1.0

  MAP

  A lot of sweat and tears went into building the War of the
  Ring map for the set. I chose to use the latest scanning 
  technology that is provided with Aide-De-Camp II.  Although 
  ADC2 map scanning offers many advantages, I discovered a
  number of drawbacks also.  The first conspicuous one is 
  that if one doesn't have a real good scanner, scanning
  quality is not the greatest.  In addition, scanning your 
  own copy of the physical game map picks up all the creases, 
  divide lines, and unintentional mars or discolorations on 
  your personal (bear & prezel) map copy.

  So, in order to make a clean rendition of the original map, 
  it was required that the scanned version be re-worked by hand. 
  I also had to piece together several maps that were scanned
  separately, since the original map (actually there are two
  maps that come with the game) is too large for a single scan.
  Piecing the map together was a challenge in itself; re-working
  the map by hand was more than a challenge - it felt like a
  lifetime achievement. (heh) I decided to remove all the hex 
  numbering since the scanning was especially poor for hex
  numbers and one can use ADC2's map overlay tool to 
  re-number the map if one chooses.   Hexlines required 
  redrawing, and a lot of work went into making sure naming 
  was clear as possible without altering the art work of
  the original map (and flavor of it).  I also took the 
  liberty of making the coloration of the coastal hexes 
  a lighter blue than the original,  and there is actually
  one river that is named on the original map that is not 
  named on this ADC2 version (Can you find it?).

  Another hurdle to overcome with the scan map technology 
  (which hopefully will be alleviated in future versions of
  ADC2) is size of hex designation, and making sure the scaling
  worked correctly.  Unfortunately, it is impossible to match 
  hex size correctly and at the same time combine it with
  correct resizing i.e. if I place a unit on Rivendell, 
  and then zoom to level 2 or 3, that unit should show up 
  on Rivendell on the higher zoom levels (not in Mordor).  
  To solve this problem, I had to resort to making lots and
  lots of smaller hexes, so that for each physical hex you 
  see visibly, one can place a unit virtually anywhere, but it
  may not be an exact fit of the displayed hex; but the fit 
  is a close fit and appears to work.


  COUNTERS

  The counter dimensions should be the same as the dimensions
  in the actual game (at zoom level 3).  I also tried as best I
  could to capture the original color, look and style of the original
  game counters, since I felt for those of us who played Ring
  20 years ago (boy are we getting old!) I thought seeing those
  colorful counters once again would help recapture the flavor
  and atmosphere of playing it back then.  (For me it has.)
  
  Flipside definitions for the generic counters have been defined 
  in both .OPS files provided, so that a 10 Strength generic unit
  will flip to a 5 Strength and so on.  And I also stuck to the
  original counter distribution. Thus one will not find a generic
  three strength Orc unit. (Hint: to make a 3 Strength Orc unit,
  stack a 1 Strength with a 2 Strength Orc unit.)

  
  CARDS

  To be complete I decided to include all 112 War of the Ring 
  cards into the set.  I think about halfway through adding 
  these cards I began to wonder if I had lost my marbles since
  it ended up taking quite a lot more time than I think anyone
  might imagine.  It turned out it was impossible to simple 
  scan each card and then display as is.  The card scan just was
  not very good and wouldn't fit the maximum card size
  dimensions provided by ADC2. Therefore, each card had to 
  be reworked by hand.  (sigh)


  PLAYING THE GAME

  Two .OPS files are provided with the set.  The Character Game
  .OPS and the much larger and comprehensive Campaign Game .OPS.
  Both sets have the units setup in their starting location as
  specified in the WoR rulebook. The Nine Fellowship character 
  units are designated as Hidden so that the Dark Power player
  will only view those units via their Hidden symbol (or 
  completely Hidden if that option is selected for the game).  

  I have also taken the liberty of placing Servant of Sauron
  cards, Event deck cards, Magic cards, and Search cards directly
  onto the setup map.  This is not necessary and if players wish
  to make sure the cards are distributed randomly they will have to
  re-distribute the cards for each new WoR game they want to
  play.  However, I intentionally set-up the cards on the map
  so that new people to the set who may not have been as diligent
  as you who I presume are reading this readme file (you
  get a gold star) would know immediately that the cards are 
  available and can be placed on the ADC2 map as shown. 
  In addition, hands were created for the Fellowship and Dark Power
  player that can be viewed by both (via the Cards menu), and other
  hands that are private to each player including the Event 
  and the Magic card hands.

  Included also are the Force Pools for each of the different
  races.  Pools representing each of the scheduled reinforcements
  in the Campaign game, and Fellowship and Dark Power dead pools.
  The Character Game, though void of Military units, does still
  require Orc units to represent search parties. Therefore, 
  force pools for both Eye orcs (Sauron) and Hand Orcs (Saruman) 
  are included in the Character game .OPS.  Note that each generic
  Orc unit has a flip side (as in the original game) representing 
  half the strength of shown combat strength.  However, for the 
  campaign game, designated set-up units specific to a given 
  faction will not have flipsides.  Only generic counters will
  have flipsides as in the original game.

  I have also included a zip file containing .PDF files of
  all the charts, card lists with text, errata, and some excellent
  variants for WoR (I recommend highly the Hidden Unit variant). 
  These files I obtained from an excellent Tolkien Wargame website 
  created by  TZEENTCH  at: home.earthlink.net/~tzeentch666/Gaming/
  tolkienwar.htm check it out.  And much thanks to Don Grande who
  put together these first-rate files for War of the Ring.
   
  This ADC2 set is version 1.0.  I plan for a future 
  version to include units and cards for the known variants 
  and any mistakes found and reported by you or others
  like yourself who hopefully will find the set of some use and
  more importantly - fun.

  Enjoy!

  John Amenta
  January 3, 2001 

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  "He drew a deep breath. 'Well, I'm back,' he said."   
 







  



   
  
  
  

 

  



  


 
 