Case study
of
War of the Ring
the boardgame

UX + UI
update

by

Roman Šeiner

Intro

Why even having this case study

Because using UX UI standards on raw product is always great idea to use creativity and help yourself in the future.

How do I approach case study

Checking player actions, zoom in and out of game sessions and analyze. Then I design component rework create a Companion App with use of AI (Perplexity+Claude Code+Figma+Vercel+Github)

Refreshed gaming experience

If the heavy-rules games can beupdated using heuristic standard and proper UX+UI rework, players tend to replay the game more often, engage in tournament activity and support actively the community.

This is no longer just nostalgic entertainment for rainy weekends. It’s a fierce business boasting year-over-year growth of over 12%. It’s scaling so rapidly that interest in the Czech Republic in 2024 actually surpassed the strongest COVID-era peaks, generating a momentum that leaves plenty of digital startups in the dust. Today, adult players are investing more money than ever before in premium physical experiences. So, if you're looking for an industry with massive capital potential—where exceptional UX and design directly dictate sales success—you're looking right at it.

Research

Map Design

Game is played on a map - continent of Midddle-Earth. Surrounded by elements related to mechanisms, completely flooding edges of map.

Cleaning UI so player can focus on map

Player's Comfort

You are managing your units in war times. Combination of painpoints, components, game tempo and other leads to having a bad time. This can be solved.

Cleaning UI so player can focus on map

Game's scale

Huge map, 200+ miniatures, cards, dice, tokens miniatures, all enough to choke your cat / baby on. Any organizers will serve you well. This hugely affect focus reservoir..

Cleaning UI so player can focus on map

During my standard research of War of the ring's community, I've encountered great feedback, answers and much more.

Thanks to all creators.

Discord

Subchannesl to discuss anything

New videos summarized

Memes

Youtube

great long game videos by Pros

Mechanics Teaching videos

Video reviews

BoardGameGeek.com

Great files to download

Active forums

Feels like dedicated wiki

Product `& setup

Few facts about the game so you can imagine product I focus with redesign

since

0

0

Playtime

0+ min

0+ min

Expansions

0

0

Logged online games

0+

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3-5 hours long

2-4 players

War game

Massive User interface

Dice

Lots of text

Challenging difficulty

Similarly designed games

these games have usually same Vibe, if these themes fit you more, go for it.

Dune: War of Arrakis

Star Wars: Rebellion

Design approach

vanila game board has elements all over the board, I designated only left and right orientation. Keeping elements by sides and not front gives you option to put elements like dice, cards and tokens right infront of you and keep you in touch with the game. Another layer above - in between of the regions where action happnes - would overwhelm the player.

Top and bottom sides are cleaner, so players can place their cards here and rest hands.

The middle is reserved for redesigned Hunt pool.

Left side shows Strongholds of Free people, which are main target for military victory.

Below is Shadow's space for his giant armies, so you can keep it army here and use one Flag token.

Righ side keeps Fellshowip / Corruption counter and Diplomacy track.

Shadow player usually takes bottom right for his cards, while keeping his armies closer.

Victory points are stored next to each of cities or stronghold.
Overall colours, fonts and markers were updated.

Painpoints

Focusing on actions, that needlesly take player's time or work against game's comfort. Time to rework game to your liking is time invested in your experience. And nobody wanta to spend 4 hours doing what feels tedious or wonky or worse.

Tideous game setup

Original

Updated

View Details

Not intuitive

Need rules fo setup

View Details

No need for rules

Region related mark

Fast

Proper Haptic experience

Original

Updated

View Details

Light weight

Damages overtime

View Details

Better weight

Protected

Smooth slide effect

Miniatures

Original

Updated

View Details

Poor identification

In plastic bags

View Details

Painted standees

Army organizers

Painted Minion / Companions

Unique details in rules

Original

Updated

View Details

Hard to search

1 reader at a time

View Details

Fast

Lists sources

Unique cases smart search

Unclear interface

Original

Updated

View Details

Discomfort location on map

UI not descriptive enough

View Details

Located in middle of map

Dice related location indicated

Feedback & Recommendations

Reel image
1/15/2024

Petr

The redesign brings significant improvements to the original components of the playing field. The most noticeable change is visible on the "Political track", where a contrasting font (dark brown on a light background) has been newly used instead of the original, less prominent solution (yellow on a light background). Thanks to this, the entire element is much clearer and more readable. The same color adjustment also contributed to the improvement of the "Fellowship track", which also received a nicer graphic design - it is complemented by the motif of Sauron's eye and elven writing. Also, tracking victory points by collecting color-coded tokens draws the player into the game more than the original method of simply recording on a point scale.

This case study resulted into clear identification, that are responsible for great experience:

player's comfort & control over the game's components.

WotR is a big scale wargame where every mistake is well punished and it often comes to messy sideboard, so overflown attention is well done. This should lead to smooth gaming experience and reshape what boardgame experience can provide in it's gameplay.

I am not changing the rules.

Plastic covers

card sleeves, plastic cases on tokens etc.
Adds weight and feels great in hand

Price: 3€

Neopren playmat

playmat is every game's pleasure point.
So naturally I changed UI so map is clean

Price: 80€ +

3D Printed elements

3D print mountains or even cities and srongholds. Middle Earth is

Price: 5€ +

Army bento boxes

Organize your armies. Better UX and important to know during play

Price: 3€

Rules fast and precise

Ask your favorite AI client, all you need is to upload official rules.

Price: 0-15€

Sideboard storage

Game gets messy as you progress, what's active, how many dice can you roll, etc.

Price: 3€