The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth rules refresher

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You win the moment you meet one of three conditions: finish the Quest of the Ring, gather six different Race symbols, or be present in all seven regions of Middle-earth. You get there by taking cards and tiles from a shared display, one per turn, building up Skills, Coins, armies, and alliances.

To set up, decide who is the Fellowship and who is Sauron, and take your Units and Fortresses in front of you. On the central board, two Fellowship Units start on Arnor and two Sauron Units start on Mordor. Assemble the Quest of the Ring track below the board, with the Nazgûl piece sitting on top of the Frodo and Sam piece on its starting space. The Fellowship player takes three Coins, Sauron takes two, and the rest form the reserve. Sort the Alliance tokens into one stack per Race, shuffle each stack separately, and place them facedown in the notches above the board. Shuffle the Landmark tiles, lay three faceup, and stack the rest facedown. Finally, split the Chapter cards into three decks by the rune on the back and shuffle each one.

The game runs over three chapters. At the start of each chapter, lay out that chapter's cards in the central play area following the layout diagram, remembering that some go faceup and some facedown, and put the three leftover cards facedown in the discard. Sauron takes the first turn of the game, and from there you simply alternate. On your turn you do one of two things: take a Chapter card, or take a Landmark tile. A chapter ends as soon as its last card has been taken. Then you lay out the next chapter's cards and reveal Landmark tiles until three are faceup again. Because turns strictly alternate, whoever took the last card of a chapter does not start the next one, unless a card effect grants them another turn.

When you take a Chapter card, you may only pick one that is available, meaning it is not partly covered by another card. Then you either play it in front of you or discard it. To play it, pay its cost and put it in your play area, taking its effect immediately. To discard it, put it facedown in the discard and take Coins from the reserve equal to the chapter number: one Coin in chapter one, two in chapter two, three in chapter three. Either way, finish your turn by flipping up any cards that have now become available.

About costs. Some cards cost Coins, paid to the reserve. Most cards and all tiles require Skill symbols that you must already have in your play area, and for every Skill symbol you are missing you may pay one Coin to the reserve instead. There is no limit to how many you pay for. A card with no Skill or Coin requirement is simply free. Starting in chapter two, chaining matters: if a card shows a chaining symbol and you already have a played card with the matching symbol in its top right corner, you may play it for free, ignoring its Skills entirely. You can always ignore the chain and just pay normally.

Grey cards give Skills: Ruse, Strength, Courage, Knowledge, and Leadership. Each symbol may be used once per turn, on every one of your turns, and where two Skills are separated by a slash you choose just one of them each turn. Yellow cards give you Coins immediately. Blue cards move your character along the Quest of the Ring track, one space per Ring symbol. Green cards are the Races. Red cards let you place Units: pick one of the two regions shown on the banners and place all of the Units there. Purple cards only appear in chapter three and give maneuvers, such as moving one of your Units to an adjacent region, making your opponent lose a Coin, or removing one enemy Unit from any region.

Taking a Landmark tile means choosing one of the faceup tiles and paying its cost, plus an extra Coin cost equal to the number of your Fortresses already on the board, so your first tile has no extra cost. Put the tile in your play area, immediately place a Fortress on the region shown, and use its other effect. Then end your turn without revealing a replacement tile.

On the Quest track, whenever you reach or pass a Bonus space you may take its effect. Remember the Nazgûl piece rides on top of Frodo and Sam, so when Frodo and Sam advance the Nazgûl comes with them. The gap between them can only ever shrink.

For alliances, as soon as you have two matching Race symbols in your play area, take the top two Alliance tokens of that Race, reveal them, keep one in front of you and use its effect, and return the other facedown on top of its stack. Separately, once per game, when you have three different Race symbols, take the top token of each of those three Races, reveal them, keep one, and return the other two facedown to their stacks. The same Race symbol can count toward both conditions. All tokens are revealed to both players, nothing is hidden.

On the map, placing or moving Units into a region with no enemy Units does nothing special. If enemy Units are there, you trigger a conflict: each player removes one of their own Units back in front of them, repeating until at least one player has no Units left in that region. An enemy Fortress never triggers a conflict and never blocks you, so both players can be present in the same region. When an effect gives you several movements, you may move one Unit repeatedly or spread the movements across different Units, always to an adjacent connected region, resolving each movement and any conflict fully before the next.

The game ends immediately when someone meets a victory condition. For the Fellowship, Frodo and Sam reaching Mount Doom wins. For Sauron, the Nazgûl catching Frodo and Sam wins. Either player wins by gathering six different Race symbols on their Green cards, and the Eagle symbol on one Alliance token counts as one of those six. Either player also wins by being present in all seven regions, with a Fortress and slash or at least one Unit. If nobody has won by the end of chapter three, the player present in the most regions, again counting a Fortress and slash or at least one Unit, wins. If that is tied, the victory is shared.

A turn, played out

It is chapter 2, and you are the Fellowship with 2 Coins. In your play area sit a grey card with Courage, a grey card showing Strength slash Knowledge, and one Green card with a single Race symbol. One available card, with nothing overlapping it, is a Green card showing that same Race symbol. It asks for Courage, Knowledge and Ruse. It shows a chaining symbol, but none of your played cards has the match in its top right corner, so it is not free. You use your Courage and choose Knowledge from the slash card, giving up its Strength this turn. That leaves only Ruse missing. You pay 1 Coin to the reserve for it, leaving you 1. You could have discarded the card for 2 Coins instead, since this is chapter 2, but you want the Race. The card goes into your play area, and you now have two matching Race symbols. You take the top two Alliance tokens of that Race and reveal them to both players. You keep one and use its effect at once, and the other goes back facedown on top of its stack. The card you took was partly covering a facedown card, which is now available, so you flip it faceup. Your turn ends, and Sauron plays next.