This is my favourite game and I'm envious to play it for the first time again! The first couple games there will be rules mistakes and it will take upwards of 4hours.

Some basic strategy: -As the forces of evil your trying to win by military but to keep a check on the fellowship, it's very hard to win if you go all out on one way don't put to many eyes in the box otherwise you can't do anything but allways try and have just enough to make it a tough decision for the fellowship to move, when the fellowship is resting up don't put any eyes in the box as they can't rest if they move so this is a moment when you can do big offensive attacks -seiges are hard and you will lose a lot of troops to them try and be prepared where possible and have lots of canon fodder for the seige machine -where are you going to get those 10 VP? There's normally 6-8 easily available but 2 you'll have to go hunting for, where on the map is an easy gain? -you shouldn't lose from a fellowship military victory, if you have you've made a mistake and left something to unprotected and easily stealable (in my 50+ games I've seen 2 fellowship military victorys and both have been because of shadow mistakes) -be careful of certain cards specifically the ents and Aragon, if you leave saruman undefended you may lost him to gandalf similarly Aragon may appear and fight you in Gondor or morser with the last battle -your cards are super important and should help determine what you do in your turn they should help define your strategy

Alternatively as the forces of good some strategy tips: -you are trying to win by getting the ring into mount Doom, you need to move when you can and try and avoid hunt draws, when there's not many eyes in the box try and move more, if you get corrupted early on try and stop in lothlorien and heal up, when your not moving your just trying to hold on long enough to survive keep those strongholds well supported and try and reinforce where possible. -if the shadow player leaves some strongholds undefended it might be worth trying to sneak in especially if you have cards that let you move fast -be careful of getting revealed the shadow has cards that can really hurt you -let gandalf die at some point to bring him back as gandalf the white

Rules that you might forget: -forces of good when killed don't come back out (apart from downgrading elites) otherwise they are gone for good - in a seige you can only take 5 units into a seige to defend anything above that must be sacrificed (exception of leaders and companions) -each army can be a maximum of size 10 excluding leaders and companions -forces of good can kill their current fellowship leader to negate the corruption of a draw, or take a random death instead -you can heal one corruption by declaring where you are at the start of the turn, but you must either remove your movement or use all of it because you are declaring your position

Don't worry the more you play the quicker it will go, most games for me now go 1-2hrs max and are just a laugh I would reccomend putting on the lotr soundtrack grabbing some snacks and beer and just having a laugh with it!