Wouter & Ymke 
If you’ve played The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth and thought, “this is already pretty tight… but what if it pushed just a little bit more?”, then Allies, the first expansion for Duel for Middle-earth, might be something you’ll want to look at.
It’s a small expansion. Really small. But it adds power tokens and ally cards, which basically means you get access to characters from Middle-earth that can step in and change things a bit. Sometimes in your favour. Sometimes… not so much.
What I like here is that it doesn’t try to fix anything. The base game stays the same. Same victory conditions, same structure, same flow. But now you’ve got these extra effects you can trigger during your turn, and they can mess with resources, the board, or what cards are available. So yeah, it looks simple, but it does add something. The real question is whether that “something” makes the game better, or just different.
👥 2 players, ages 10+
⌛ Playing time: 30 minutes
📝 Designers: Antoine Bauza & Bruno Cathala
🎨 Artwork: Vincent Dutrait
🏢 Publisher: Repos Production (Review copy provided by Asmodee Belgium)
The Base Game in Brief
If you haven’t played The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth in a while, here’s a quick refresher.
It’s a two-player game played over three chapters. One player is the Fellowship, the other is Sauron. You take turns, and on your turn you either take a card from the display or pick up a landmark tile.
That sounds simple, but it really isn’t. You’re building up your position in a few different ways at the same time. You’re collecting resources, unlocking better cards, moving along the ring track, placing units on the map, and trying to get race support.
And the game can just… end. Suddenly. You win immediately if you complete the ring quest, get support from six races, or control all regions. If none of that happens, it comes down to who controls the most regions at the end. So yeah, it’s one of those games where you feel in control… until you’re not.
Gameplay Overview
With Allies, you each get a small set of ally cards. Seven per faction. You shuffle them, draw three, and that’s what you’ll use for the game. The rest go back in the box. So you never see everything at once, which means you never quite know what you’ll end up with.
You also start with one power token. More tokens get added to the card display at the start of each chapter, placed on specific cards. As you reveal those cards during the game, you take the token first, then flip the card. Those tokens are what you use for your allies.
At any point during your turn, even after revealing new cards, you can call upon an ally. That’s something you do on top of your normal action, but only once per turn.
Each ally has two parts. First, an enter effect. You discard one power token, reveal the card, and apply the effect. Then later, if you want, you can discard two tokens to trigger the exit effect of that same ally. After that, it’s gone for the rest of the game.
So you’re kind of investing in them, in a way. You bring them in, then decide later if and when you want the bigger effect. The Fellowship side feels more about helping yourself, like getting resources or improving your position, while Sauron’s side is more about getting in the way, blocking things or limiting options.
Artwork, Components, and Visual Design
It comes in a small blister pack. Which already tells you what kind of expansion this is.
The artwork is by Vincent Dutrait again, and I mean… yeah, it looks great. No surprise there. The ally cards focus on individual characters, and they stand out nicely. You’ve got people like Boromir, Tom Bombadil, the Balrog… all very recognisable.
The Fellowship side is a bit brighter, more natural colours, while Sauron’s side goes darker with reds and blacks. Nothing subtle, but it works. The icons and layout are exactly what you’d expect if you’ve played the base game, so there’s no confusion and no need to relearn anything.
Component quality is solid. Cards feel good, colours are clear, and the power tokens are small but easy to spot. When they’re sitting on the display, they actually help you see which cards might matter more. It all fits in nicely and doesn’t feel out of place.
Our Experience
At first, it doesn’t seem like much. You add a few cards, a few tokens, done. But after a couple of games, you start to notice that your decisions shift a bit, especially around the card display. Normally, you’re looking at what a card gives you. Here, you’re often also thinking about whether it reveals a token, or hands one to your opponent. That small change comes up more often than you’d expect, and it can lead to turns where the card itself isn’t even the main reason you take it.
The allies themselves are where things shift a bit more. You’re not just using an effect and moving on. You bring a card into play, and it stays there, kind of hanging over the game. Your opponent sees it, knows something might happen later, but not when. That alone changes how the next turns play out. We had a few moments where someone held onto an ally for several turns, and the other player kept trying to play around something that never even happened.
That part worked really well for us. It gives your turns a bit more build-up. At the same time, it doesn’t always land. There were also games where we revealed allies, spent a token, and then never really found the right moment to use the second effect. That can feel a bit wasted, especially when tokens are limited.
There’s also more uncertainty. You don’t know what your opponent is holding, and that already changes how you play. You start second-guessing things a bit more, especially when they’re sitting on tokens and not using them, because something might be coming… or maybe not.
What stood out most, though, is how different the two sides feel. The Fellowship mostly helps you improve your own position, even if a few cards still interfere with your opponent. Sauron leans much more into blocking, limiting options, and getting in the way. In some games, that creates a nice back-and-forth. In others, it can feel like one side is spending more time dealing with problems than actually moving forward.
Our Thoughts
For us, Allies mostly comes down to how you use those power tokens. They are limited, and you only get them through specific moments, so you’re always deciding between using them now or holding them for later. That part is really well judged. You don’t get enough tokens to do everything, and that forces you to think ahead without making the game heavier to manage.
The enter and exit structure of the allies is also doing a lot of work here. You’re not just triggering an effect, you’re committing to it and deciding later how much value you want to get out of it. That makes timing more important than before, because an effect is only as good as the moment you use it. A strong ability at the wrong time doesn’t do much, and the game asks you to recognise that.
It also makes the game less open. You don’t always know what the other player is holding back, and that changes how you read the situation. That’s interesting, but it also makes the game harder to follow, especially if you’re not already comfortable with the base game.
At the same time, not everything feels equally balanced. Some ally effects can have a much bigger impact than others, especially when they interact with the display or the board at the right moment. That doesn’t happen every game, but when it does, it can decide things pretty quickly.
There’s also a noticeable shift in interaction. Especially on Sauron’s side, some effects are less about improving your own position and more about limiting what the other player can do. That fits the theme, but it won’t be for everyone. Some players will enjoy that, others might find it a bit much.
So where does that leave it?
For us, this is not something you have to add, but it is something that changes the feel of the game in a meaningful way. If you already enjoy the base game and want a bit more to think about during your turns, this is a good addition. If you prefer things to stay more open and easier to read, you might not need it.
And if it all goes wrong, you can always blame it on the Balrog. That feels fair.
📝 We received a copy of the game from Asmodee Belgium.
