Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game

There has been quite a few Lord of the Rings games in recent years. I think that's a good thing. I hope this brings more people into the boardgame hobby. There are two games in the Lord of the Rings Trick-Taking Game series so far - The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. I have only played some of the missions in The Fellowship of the Ring. I was told The Two Towers is more challenging. That certainly makes sense. 

This is a cooperative trick-taking game. It is for 1 to 4 players, and it plays best with four. Like a book, it has multiple chapters, and every chapter is a mission you try to complete. One game is playing one chapter. The chapter specifies which characters are in play. Some characters are mandatory, i.e. someone must pick them. There are also optional characters. Cards are dealt to all players before they decide which characters they want to play. The character you pick determines the objective that you must fulfil, for example Frodo must win at least 2 Ring cards, and Merry must win either 1 or 2 tricks. To win a game, everyone must fulfil their objective. Based on the cards you get, you can determine which character is easier or harder for you to play. The player who gets the 1 Ring card must play Frodo. Ring is one of the suits in the game. I find it hilarious that you call the value 1 card of the Ring suit the "1 Ring". Sorry, I'm childish. One Ring to rule them all! 

Depending on the character you pick, you may be asked to exchange cards with certain other characters. This helps to communicate some information with your teammates. Normally you are not allowed to share information about your cards. 

Most of the rules follow standard trick-taking. The Ring suit is your trump suit. They are numbered only 1 to 5, while other suits go up to 8. You can't lead with the trump suit until a trump card has been played in a trick led by another suit. 

The ring marker on this grey side means the trump suit has not yet been played yet.

Use these tokens to mark who has completed their missions

One thing special about the 1 Ring is when you play it, you can choose to win the trick, even if by normal rules you would not, for example normally it loses to the 5 Ring. This means Frodo can almost always fulfil his objective. 

The gameplay reminds me of The Crew, which is also a cooperative trick-taking game with limited communication. Here, the objectives and characters are all related to the Lord of the Rings story, which is nice. You can't talk about what cards you have. Your communication is through your actions, e.g. which cards you pass, which cards you play, which characters you pick. 

What I enjoy about the game is how the story is told through the characters and their objectives. If you like Lord of the Rings and trick-taking, this is a no brainer. I'm not specifically a fan of either. I find the game enjoyable enough that I would always be happy to play with the full four players. For me it is not breaking new grounds, when I compare it to The Crew. However I would say the theme integration is done well. Even a casual fan of Lord of the Rings like me will enjoy the game. 

This is a campaign game. When you buy a campaign game, you will feel motivated to complete the campaign. It feels like unfinished business if you don't. If you do complete the campaign, you will have gained many plays of the game to make the purchase very much worthwhile. The tragedy of many games that we hobbyists buy is they don't get played all that many times.  

This above is a setup you have to do when you play a 2-player game. I almost played this, but we were able to get two more players to join us for a 4P game. So I have not tried the 2-player game and I don't know how it works. It looks cumbersome to me. The general agreement is the game works best with four. 

Asian Board Games Festival - Malaysia 2026 (Penang)

Asian Board Games Festival - Malaysia 2026 is happening Fri 7 Aug 2026 to Sun 9 Aug 2026 in Penang. Cili Padi Games will be there. This time I will have two new games, Pilgrim Poker and Malaysian Holidays. Pilgrim Poker will be available at the Cili Padi Games booth, and Malaysian Holidays at the Specky Studio booth. Come play with me if you are in town!  

boardgaming in photos: Rumble Nation, dnup

I played the physical version of Rumble Nation. This is a minimalistic area majority game. I normally dislike area majority games, but this one is just so clever. It's a game from Japan, and the setting is Japan too. 

You roll three dice to determine what options you have on your turn. You must use two of the dice to choose the region you will place your cubes, and the third dice determines how many cubes you will place. You are somewhat restricted in what you can do, but you do have meaningful choices throughout the game. I played this in KK with Buddhima and Jon. This was Buddhima's copy. 

Now that I have added Malaysian Holidays to my list of published games, I need to update this group photo. My next game Pilgrim Poker is coming out soon too, so this group photo will need to be updated again soon. 

I played the physical version of dnup. I must say it is much better playing this in person compared to playing in online async mode. This doesn't work so well in async because you don't remember well what has been played before. You break your session down to many small turns over several days. dnup is much more fun with table talk and discussions. You are able to better gang up on the leader. 

Reference card showing the four options on your turn

Notice the cards are rounded only at two corners

That day we playtested Buddhima's upcoming game called Change. I have played this before and this was a game I already wanted to buy after the first try. Buddhima has been a little worried about the timing of publication for his game, because it shares a similarity with SCOUT, dnup and Panda Spin. It too has cards which have different numbers at the two ends. You will also rotate your cards and change their values. After dnup, we played Change, and I am confident it delivers a different play experience compared to other games which shares this rotate concept. It requires a different strategy. 

This is Jon's worker placement game, about Grab Food and Lalamove delivery services. You prepare and deliver food, or you deliver items. In game design Jon is heading towards slightly more complex games. Not yet heavy games, but around light-medium to medium weight. 

One challenge Jon presents in this game is storage for goods. You can exceed storage temporarily within a round, but you need enough storage space to be able to carry over goods to the next round. To increase storage you must recruit, and once you recruit, your salary cost increases permanently. 

This is the worst starting hand in Mahjong Rummy. I don't have a passport - a straight flush meld of at least 3 tiles. Without a passport I can't play. I have already lost in the first round of play. Now that's player elimination. I can heap on tons of complaints as a modern gamer, but this is just a traditional gambling game and people have fun with it. There is some skill involved but it is mostly luck. You play this to spend time with family and friends, not for good game design. 

Now that younger daughter Chen Rui is back in Malaysia for her summer break, we have started playing our Regicide Legacy campaign. We are on Mission 9 out of 12 now. It has been an interesting ride so far. I am amazed by the amount of work they have put into creating this campaign. There is so much art created, and much of it is only used in one mission. If you beat the mission on your first try, you will use this art only once. Playing the campaign is playing many variants of Regicide. There is a story which unfolds as you progress. Your deck changes. You get to play with different powers. You fight different bosses. Some of the missions took us many attempts to beat, we also managed some with just one attempt. 

I have played a second game of Quartermaster General: East Front. This time I played the Soviet Union and Han the Axis. Han managed to get to Moscow, and even Vologda. At one point (above) I managed to encircle his forces, cutting off his supply lines. I gradually pushed back, but by game end I did not manage to reach Berlin. We were tied in points, and I lost on tiebreaker. What a close game! 

We played Soothsayers again. It's July now, and I'm still pretty confident this will be my favourite new-to-me game in 2026. 

I only recently discovered that the art is from a real tarot card deck, and not art created specifically for the game using the style of tarot cards. 

We played Madeira. I did horribly because I have forgotten many of the rules and I didn't relearn it properly. I want to blame BGA for making playing blindly too easy, but I know it is my own fault. 

I had a session with Jon, Ji Li and Buddhima. It's great to meet up in person to play. Nowadays I play more games online than in person. I should do physical sessions more. 

For probably less than 24 hours, the designer diary of Malaysian Holidays was on the front page of BGG. Of course I took a screenshot. 

Haratama

Haratama is a trick-taking game from Japan with a horror theme and great art. Every round, three card values are randomly drawn to become the penalty values for the round. That means if you win these cards you will be penalised. This is a game about scoring as few points as possible. Points are bad. 

Most standard trick-taking rules apply. You must follow suit if you can. There is a trump suit. However you are not allowed to lead with a trump card until someone has played a trump card. In the game story, the trump suit represents the demon, which is initially sealed and suppressed. However at some point when the first trump card is played in a trick led by a regular card, the seal breaks and the demon is freed. 

Every penalty card you win gets you a point, which is bad. However if you manage to win at least 8 out of 12 penalty cards, the demon possesses you. You become one. Now everyone else gets points instead. This, of course, is no easy feat. 

That’s basically it. What is interesting is how the penalty values will differ from round to round. You will need to adjust how you play depending on whether they are large or small, and how many of them you have in hand. 

Card backs - so scary!

This is a pretty clean design that’s quite close to standard trick-taking. The small twist that it offers is fun and viable. I have a soft spot for games which allow you to shoot the moon. One minor problem we had was with the font style. We thought the 8 was a 0. 

Torchlit

 

I have been playing many trick-taking games lately. I am not specifically a fan of the genre, but I don't dislike it either. If anyone suggests a trick-taking game, I'm usually happy to play. Torchlit is a trick-taking game which emphasises making predictions. Based on your starting hand, you secretly choose one card as your torch. This number is your prediction about how many tricks you will win. This card is kept until the final trick, when you have only two cards remaining. You have the option of playing this card normally and use your other remaining card as your torch, i.e. your prediction about the number of tricks you have won. 

Eight dungeon tiles are laid out like this. Every player gets a pretty wooden pawn. The dungeon tiles are just for recording how many tricks you have won so far. Everyone starts on the left, which means 0 tricks. The max is 7 tricks, and if you win more than 7 tricks, you circle back to the 0 space. Cards placed below the dungeon tiles are important. They are worth points. For every trick played, the winner advances his pawn. Some or possibly all of the cards in the trick will be added to dungeons based on the card values. For each suit, only one card will be added. If there are multiple cards in the same suit, it is the player with the lowest numbered card (not necessarily the weakest or the loser) who decides which card gets added. Having played the lowest card can be a powerful position. 

Most other trick-taking rules are pretty standard. You must follow suit if you can. There is a trump suit - red (called dragon). When a trick is lead by red, you don't have to follow suit. This is different from other games. Normally only cards in the lead suit can win. That, of course, is overwritten by trump suit cards. That's standard. One more exception is that for the very last trick, you don't have to follow suit. This is the trick where you take your torch back and you may switch your torch - the prediction about where your pawn will end up. 

You play three rounds and add up your points

The reference cards have different art but the content is the same

You can refer to the reference card above to understand how scoring works. At the end of a round, if your torch card is correct (matches the position of your pawn), you score 3 points. Else, that torch is added to the corresponding dungeon, and it becomes worth 2 points for any opponent(s) there. At each dungeon tile, trump cards are worth 2 points, and regular cards 1 point. You score points for where your pawn is. If players share the same location, they must share the points there too, rounded down. 

Throughout the round you are manipulating how many points each dungeon tile is worth, and you are also manipulating the positions of everyone's pawn. You have made a prediction, and getting it right certainly helps, but sometimes depending on how the round goes, you may intentionally get it wrong because some dungeon tiles are worth doing it. Or if you have a better backup torch in hand, work towards that. You want to move your opponents to the same tiles, so that they are forced to share points. You want to stay away from others, so that you don't have to share. 

This is almost like a market manipulation game, because you are constantly adjusting the values of the dungeon tiles. Low cards can be good because they help you control which cards are added to dungeons. Your choice of suit affects whether more cards are added to dungeons. You don't know exactly which dungeon tile you will end up on, and you do your best to control that. 

Torchlit, despite the great-looking components, doesn't stray far from standard trick-taking mechanisms. I feel this is a game you play in a calculative way. More meticulous accountant than monster-fighting warrior. 

Railroad Tiles

Railroad Tiles is from the same designer duo who also brought us Railroad Ink and Dragon Castle. A quick way to describe the game is advanced Carcassonne. This is a tile laying game, and you get to place meeples. But this is not a fair way to introduce the game at all. Say this to people who already like Carcassonne to hook them. This game has its own place and in many ways is different. 

First of all, you don't add tiles to a central map and grow that map together. Instead, everyone has their own little map before them. Every round, several sets of tiles will be set up (see above), and in turn order, you claim one set to add to your own map. The sets don't have the same number of tiles. The tiles have different features. Players will value the sets differently. When choosing a set, you are also deciding the turn order for the next round. Whoever takes the leftmost set goes first next round.  

When you add tiles to your map, you can choose to do it in any order. Roads and railroads must line up. The various features on the tiles allow you to score points in different ways. I played this game with the electricity expansion added, so this is not the standard basic game. Railroad Tiles has many expansions and offers many ways to play. One way electricity helps you score points is if you power every tile of a city, which is three connected building tiles, the city is worth more points. The electricity expansion introduces one more way you want to connect tiles. You want to connect the corners of tiles which show electric cables, because that's how you supply electricity. 

The meeples you can place on your map are cars, trains and pedestrians. The general rule is the first meeple you place gives 1 point, the second one 2 points, and so on, up to 5 points per meeple. Every game round, players are allowed to place some types of meeples to help you score points, but whether you can place them depends on whether you have taken tiles that allow you to do so. 

The three tiles above are special scoring tiles you have in hand from the beginning. Everyone has the same set. In specific rounds, you are allowed to add one of them to your map to help you score points at game end. 

This special tile on the left scores points if its road is connected to two cities at both ends. The one on the right scores if it is next to a fully powered city. 

Every round there will be one set of tiles unclaimed. It stays while the other columns are refilled, and it gets a star token, making it more attractive. Star tokens are worth 1 point each. They can also be used to place a different meeple type from that specified for the current round. 

When the game ends, you need to find the largest rectangle on your map. Every tile in this rectangle scores 1 point. This incentivises players to build their maps in a neat, rectangular way.  

The windmills are from the expansion. They generate electricity.

I am surprised that the tile placement is more challenging than I expected. I wonder whether it is because we played with an expansion. That means an additional layer to consider. Every round when you consider which tile set to claim, you need to imagine and calculate how you will place them. If you are the first player to choose, there is a fair bit of mental work to do. It is interesting to puzzle out how to fit the tiles and how to maximise scoring. You need to consider several scoring criteria concurrently. When you evaluate which set to claim, it is not just about calculating how many points the set will get you now, you must also work towards several longer term goals.

Turn order for the next round is an important consideration. If the sets remaining for you to choose from are about the same, you probably want to choose the one nearer to the left so that next round you'll go earlier. It can be painful to see that perfect tile you want being claimed by someone else. You can try to persuade them not to take what you need, but whether that works... it depends. Maybe you can promise to be nice to them next round. 

Railroad Tiles is a decent tile laying game. I enjoy it enough to be happy to play, but it's not something I seek out to play. It must be doing pretty well, since it has so many expansions. If this is the kind of game you like, you will have lots of fun content to explore.