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. 

The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship

The Game

Fate of the Fellowship is a game I am keen to write about. When I first noticed it, my first thought was, what? Another Lord of the Rings game? Then I noticed the designer is Matt Leacock (Pandemic). As I read the rules, I noticed many elements which are similar to Pandemic. That got me curious. How does the Pandemic system work for a Lord of the Rings game? 

This is a cooperative game. To win the game, Frodo needs to get to Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring. In the game, this is presented as the last of four missions that the players must complete. The other three are randomly set up. All the missions are related to the story. For example, there is one mission in which you have to capture Isengard. Sorry I forgot to warn you that this post will have spoilers if you have not seen the movies or read the books. Too late! 

One of the missions

The final mission, which is always in play

Every player gets to play two characters from the story. On your turn, you get to use one character to perform four actions, and the other to perform just one action. After each player’s turn, cards are drawn for bad things to happen. This is just like Pandemic. There is an intense sense of urgency and a feeling of impending doom. The most common bad things which can happen are troops being raised in enemy strongholds and enemy troops marching towards ally strongholds. The board has a complex network of paths for enemy troops to move. All the paths start from an enemy stronghold and lead to an ally stronghold. However, because they crisscross, you cannot reliably predict how the troops will move. A group heading towards one stronghold might get hijacked by another card and change direction to another stronghold. It is important to battle enemy troops and prevent them from capturing ally strongholds because each time an ally stronghold falls, you lose two Hope. And Hope is the most important thing in the game. When you lose all Hope, you lose the game. Wow, this is motivational quote poster material. 

In Pandemic terms, Hope in this game is Outbreaks, but they are not exactly the same. In Pandemic the Outbreaks track is just a count of the number of Outbreaks that has happened. It will only ever increase. In Fate of the Fellowship, Hope can go up or down. Bad things will reduce Hope, but great feats like capturing an enemy stronghold increase Hope. In Pandemic there are three ways to lose, and you need to watch out for all of them. Here, these are all linked to Hope. When the draw deck runs out, you lose Hope for each card you must draw but can’t. When all enemy troops are deployed to the board and you need to deploy more, you lose Hope for each one you must deploy but can't. 

That ugly red splash is an ally stronghold captured by the enemy. Red are enemies, other colours are allies. 

All characters have unique powers, and it is absolutely crucial to utilise them well. In general, characters can move about the map to raise troops, lead troops to move (ally troops can’t move by themselves, they need to be commanded by a player character), order troops to fight. Cards come in four suits and are used in different ways. One suit is for raising troops, one is for die rerolls, one is for guaranteed kills during battle. Many character special abilities require cards in specific suits. Battles are resolved by die rolls. The dice determine how many ally and enemy troops are killed. 

You have Nazgûl’s in the game! They try to hunt down Frodo. They can be particularly deadly in battle. There is an Eye of Sauron token in the game, representing where the evil lord Sauron is paying attention to. Mostly Sauron wants to find the One Ring (which is with Frodo) and the Eye attracts Nazgûl to help hunt down Frodo. The Eye is attracted to where evil troops are being attacked. Sometimes you want to attack not for winning the battle but for distracting the Eye from Frodo and helping Frodo get to Mount Doom to destroy the ring. This is all very thematic. 

Frodo‘s mission is ultimately how you win. Carrying the ring is a constant burden and risk because unless Frodo discards a hiding icon card when moving, if there are enemy troops or Nazgûl where he is, he must roll dice and suffer bad effects. He can lose Hope this way and this may eventually cost you the game. 

The Play 

So far I have played four games, all on the easiest difficulty, and I have only won once. This game is hard! You have four missions to work towards. At the same time you must handle the merciless advance of enemy troops. This is more like War of the Ring than Reiner Knizia’s cooperative Lord of the Rings. At first I thought I should just focus on completing the missions as efficiently as possible. Battling was futile anyway. I felt it was more worthwhile to spend my efforts on destroying the ring. Boy how wrong I was! The military aspect cannot be neglected. In fact it is crucial to fight back to delay the deterioration of Hope in order to give Frodo a fighting chance. I found out that the good guys are actually pretty good at fighting. Many characters have abilities that help them battle. Legolas and Gimli do perform like Marvel superheroes. You have to fight and delay the advances of the enemy troops while at the same time make progress in your missions. 

I was very hardworking, more so than when I play Pandemic. I checked and noted down cards which were in the discard pile, so that when they were reshuffled back to the top of the deck, I had some idea what to expect next. I could better assess the risk of enemy troops attacking specific ally strongholds. 

I took this screenshot to keep track of cards in the discard pile.

I want to talk about this specific mission which must be completed at North Ithilien. You need to assemble ally units of three types in order to do this. North Ithilien is a space at the gates of Mordor, the enemy's heartland. 

The part of the story this mission relates to is how the allies assembled a somewhat big army to threaten Sauron. However Sauron has a much bigger army, and the resulting battle from the allies issuing this challenge is not expected to go well. The allies do this only to distract Sauron and to give Frodo a fighting chance to destroy the ring. This is a noble and heroic feat. This is about sacrifice for the greater good. 

Here you can see the allies are already sharing the North Ithilien space with some enemy (red) troops. Frodo and Sam are the yellow piece. In this game they always travel together and they are played as one character. Enemy troops are all over the place and it is hard for Frodo (and Sam) to avoid them. 

Now that the challenge to Sauron has been issued, all the enemy troops in Mordor congregated at Udun. You can't even read the text because it has been covered by enemy troops. Now Frodo has a clear path to Mount Doom. 

Enemy troops in Udun have advanced to North Ithilien, resulting in a huge battle. At the same time, Frodo sneaks into Mordor and heads towards Mount Doom. This last leg of the journey is difficult because many of the paths require discarding hiding (green) cards or tokens. 

Now we are at Mount Doom and Frodo attempts to destroy the ring. He must discard 5 ring (yellow) cards or tokens, and then do a final die roll. The number of dice depends on the Hope level, the lower your Hope, the more dice you must roll, which translates to a higher risk of failure. Managing the Hope level is crucial. You want to keep as high a Hope level as your can. 

This was my final die roll. All blanks meant I did not have to suffer any damage. The ring was destroyed, and we won! 

This is the die face distribution. Two thirds of the time you expect something bad to happen. 

Seeing this victory screen was a hugely satisfying moment for me. Woohoo! 

The Thoughts

I am amazed that the Pandemic framework works so well for Fate of the Fellowship. This is certainly not just pasting on a theme. There are many elements which makes this game different from others using the Pandemic system. The way enemies advance is from Pandemic: Fall of Rome, and it works well here. This is a Pandemic-system game that does not feel like Pandemic. This is a Lord of the Rings game. 

Fate of the Fellowship is a complex game. I would categorise it as a heavy game. It is highly thematic. If you like the source material, you will enjoy this a lot. There are many details you will appreciate. I find the game hard to win, and I think that's a good thing. That anxiety of not knowing whether you are going to survive is what makes the game exciting and engaging. 

I wonder whether the game will feel scripted after a while. So far of the four games I have played, we have been using the same set of mission cards, which showcase important events in the story. Due to the starting positions of the characters (which are fixed every game) and the locations of the missions, we generally complete them in sequence. Then it might feel like we are playing through the same story every game. However there are 24 mission cards in the game. The last mission is destroying the ring and that's fixed. So of the other three, you have 24 cards to randomise from. That sounds like a lot of variety. Also variability comes from the Shadow cards. Depending on how they turn up, the distribution of enemy troops on the board, and how they move, can be very different. Your own card draws will also shape the challenge presented to you. I am confident there is much replayability in this game. 

War of the Ring: The Card Game

The Game

War of the Ring: The Card Game is a complex card game for 2 to 4 players. It presents in game form the story of Lord of the Rings. Although also called War of the Ring, I would say the only similarity to the boardgame version is it is divided into two aspects - the story of the hobbits attempting to destroy the ring and the military campaigns in Middle-Earth. The card game is very different from the boardgame. 

You have two factions in the game, the Free People and the Shadow. Within each faction there are two groups. In a four player game, each player will play one group. Normally all four groups will be in play, even if there are fewer than 4 players, for the sake of completeness of the story. Some players will control two groups. The four groups operate fully independently, having their own draw decks, discard piles and hand cards. 

The game is played over 9 rounds. Every round represents one stage in the story of Lord of the Rings. The Free People and the Shadow compete and score points. By the end of the game, the faction with more points win. During the game, sudden death victory is possible if one faction outscores the other by a large enough margin. 

When setting up a round, normally you have one battleground card and one path card. The battleground is where war is waged. The path represents the story of Frodo and the fellowship of the ring. The Free People and the Shadow play cards next to the battleground card and the path card to achieve superiority. They take turns playing cards until they all pass or run out of cards. They can at most carry over two cards to the next round. When a round ends, the battleground card and the path card are scored by the faction with higher strength. 

This photo above is a little unusual because there are two battleground cards. This happened because of the special power of the first battleground card drawn, which required that an additional card be drawn. 

Aragorn is an important character. Some characters can only be sent to fight battles. Some can only be sent to advance the story in a favourable way. Some can do either. One important element in this game is when characters are sent to do their jobs, they usually die, even if they are successful. Cards are a precious resource. Your deck will gradually thin, and that's something you must manage carefully. 

Cards can be played face-up in a reserve area, ready to be deployed in a future round. Some cards give a bonus when in the reserve area, like Aragorn. You put them in reserve more for this bonus than because you intend to send them out to fight. However they are available in case the situation becomes desperate. Sometimes it's a tough choice whether to deploy such cards. 

Playing a card normally requires another card to be discarded as payment. This payment goes to the discard pile, which means it will be reshuffled and returned to the draw deck when the draw deck is exhausted. If you have a card which you can't utilise well yet, you can use it as payment for another card. Some cards are only fully effective under certain situations or at certain times or locations. Your job is to manage the luck of the draw to utilise your cards to their fullest potential. 

This is one of the path cards. Path cards are numbered at the bottom right. The number at the top left is the victory point value. Characters who can be assigned to path cards have a number range specified. For each number there are three path cards and you will only use one per game. This creates some variability. 

We used dice to keep track of our strengths. In each faction (Free People and Shadow) there are two groups. Each group is further divided into nations, e.g. Rohan, the Hobbits, the Wizards, Isengard, Mordor. Each nation has its own emblem. Battleground cards (left) specify which nations may participate in the battle. You can't just send anyone you want. 

A character card on the left, and a matching item card on the right. Items can only be attached to specified wielders. From the storytelling perspective, this is nice and thematic. From the gameplay perspective, this is an additional challenge for the players. When you do manage to get a character to wield their item, whether it is by sheer luck or by good hand management, it is satisfying. 

The Play

War of the Ring: The Card Game is a highly thematic and story-rich experience. Every card covers some aspect of the Lord of the Rings lore. The core of the game is hand management. How do you make the most of your cards? How do you control the thinning of your deck? How do you decide which cards to use and which to sacrifice? You need to plan ahead and prepare your cards for upcoming battles and stories. You will draw cards at unsuitable times. Your task is to make the best out of the predicament you are put in. 

One key theme that keeps coming up in this game is sacrifice. You regularly sacrifice your cards, removing them permanently from the game. You lose cards in battle, even in the ones that you win. When you get desperate to play your one last card but you no longer have another card in hand to use as payment, you can choose to permanently remove the top card from your deck. It is risky, because it may turn out to be a powerful card. So how desperate are you? The game is full of difficult decisions. 

There is a sense of escalation for each battleground card and path card. Sometimes when both factions commit many cards to the same fight because both are adamant on winning it, it can become a very costly contest. This is also a game of deciding when to fight and when to concede. Resources are scarce. 

It is important to be familiar with your deck. One unique thing about the Hobbits is they don't die easily. Often when they are supposed to be removed from the game, they go to the discard pile instead. They will come back after the next reshuffle. That is nice, and that is something you want to make good use of. Knowing your decks will help you in strategic planning. 

The face-up cards in front of the players are the cards in reserve. I played the Free People and Han the Shadow. You can see I only had two cards in reserve (bottom of photo), while he had a ton (top of photo). We had a huge difference in power. I feel I didn't conserve my resources well. I didn't fully utilise my cards. In the early game I had some lucky wins because Han's card draws were atrocious. However he did better hand management and planning. Moreover, the natural tendency of the game is the Shadow faction becomes more powerful towards late game. In our game eventually I could not keep up and lost by sudden death. 

This was one of my groups. That huge face-up stack on the left are the cards permanently removed. The face-down card is actually my draw deck. The card at the top right the discard pile, and at the bottom right the only card left in reserve. I was running out of cards. I didn't have any more resources to continue fighting. 

The Thoughts

War of the Ring: The Card Game is without a doubt a gamer's game. There is a lot of text and many card powers to digest. The core game mechanism is not too complex, but there is a fair bit of rules to handle. It will take some time to get familiar with the decks. If you like Lord of the Rings, you will enjoy the details you find in the game. 

The game feels a little like a deck-building game, but you are removing cards from your deck, not adding to it. This reminds me of Lincoln from Martin Wallace, but in Lincoln the cards are more generic and have much less text and fewer special rules. The main impression I get from playing War of the Ring: The Card Game is the pain of making sacrifices. You are constantly forced to sacrifice some cards in order to play other cards. The life of every soldier fighting for you is precious. As a general, who are you going to send to their deaths, and for what strategic purpose? How do you make their sacrifices most worthwhile?