How To Play The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking game

Introduction

The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game is a cooperative trick-taking card game where players will work together to complete goals set by their chosen character at the start of the round.

Game set up

The game set up for The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game couldn’t be simpler. Upon opening the box you are greeted with an instruction manual and three sections of the box. One contains the first chapter cards and a paper bag with counters in it, the other two sections are labelled Part 1 and Part 2, which you should only open when you have completed the relevant chapters. To set up a game, you will first decide how many players will be playing, it can be played from 1-4 players, if you play a 1-2 player game, the set-up is slightly different, but I will go into that later.

To start, you will give each player a reference card, then you will look at your current chapter card, place it in the centre of the table and read it aloud to everyone playing. You will then place a star token next to each character with a “ * “ after their name on the chapter card, this means that these characters must be selected for this current chapter, other characters without the “ * “ on the chapter card can be selected if you have enough players. You will then shuffle the main deck of cards and randomly place one card next to the chapter card, this is called the “lost card”. If the lost card happens to be one of the Rings, deal another card and shuffle the Ring back into the deck. You will then deal the rest of the deck cards to the players according to the player count, for a 2 – 3 player game deal 12 cards each, and for a 4 player game deal 9.

The player dealt the 1 Ring will take the Frodo character card and the Ring token on the cannot lead Rings side (grey side facing up). Make sure you use the correct side of the Frodo card based on the number of players, this can be found in the description section of the card. Starting from Frodo’s left, each person will select a character card, remember ones with the star token on them will have to be selected, however, this doesn’t mean that the first player to Frodo’s left has to choose them, as long as one of the players chooses them. Once all characters are chosen, remove the star tokens. Now that you have your characters, starting from Frodo’s left again, each person will look at their character and see if they have a setup action, this is indicated by a small hammer icon. Each character has a different setup action, this can be anything from exchanging a card with a player before the game or placing your hand face up on the table for the whole round.

Now everyone has their characters selected and has satisfied the startup action, we are ready to play The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game.

Game Round

A round is played by players looking at the cards in their hand and placing them in a trick to achieve everyone’s character goals. In the starting deck of cards, there will be four suits and a Ring suit, these suits represent the world of Middle Earth, you have Forest, Mountain, Hill and Shadow. Each suit has cards that go from 1 to 8 apart from the special Ring suit, which has 5. The game will consist of a round, which is played by players playing tricks, a trick is played as follows. The first player (Frodo) can play any card from their hand to the middle of the table, going clockwise, the remaining players will then play a card from their hand, this card has to match the first player’s card suit if they can. If you can’t follow the suit, you can play any card from your hand. Once each player has played a card from their hand the trick ends, the winner of the trick is the player with the highest number that matches the first player’s suit. For example, the first player plays a 4 Mountain, the second player plays a 7 Mountain and the third player doesn’t have any Mountain, so they play the 8 Hill, the second player wins the trick as they had the higher card that matches the first player’s suit, even though the third player’s card was higher, the suit did not match. The winner of the trick takes the cards played in that trick and places them facedown into a pile in front of them.

The Ring suit is slightly different, as I mentioned before, there are only 5 of them, whereas the other suits have 8. When starting a trick a player cannot lead with a Ring card until someone else has played a Ring card into another trick. This can be displayed by the Ring token being grey side up, once a Ring has been played in a trick, you will flip the token to the colour side and a Ring can then be used to start a trick. There may come a time when a player has to start a trick but only has Rings in their hand and the Ring token is still grey side up. In this case, you can start a trick with a Ring. The 1 Ring is the strongest card in the game, it can win any trick even if you don’t follow suit. Whoever plays the 1 Ring can decide if they want to win the trick, if they decide not to, then you can treat it as having rank 1 of the Ring suit, therefore 2 – 5 of Rings will beat it. Only the 1 Ring can win a trick, the 2 – 5 Rings win or lose a trick like any other suit. For example, I play the 8 Hill, player 2 plays the 5 Hill, player 3 plays the 1 Ring, and player 3 decides that they want to win the trick as they played the 1 Ring. However, if they choose not to win, the 1 Ring counts as a rank 1 Ring, meaning it loses to the 5 Hill, and the trick is won by the highest-ranked card in the lead suit, which is the 8 Hill from Player 1. Once you have completed your character’s goal, you can place a star token onto your character card to remind other players that you have finished your goal.

Throughout the game, players can only communicate information that is visible to each player during set-up, such as what their character goal is. You can’t discuss character preferences when choosing a character as it could reveal information, you also can’t show you hand to other players. The round ends once all characters have played all the cards in their hands (except Gandalf who has an extra card). If everyone has completed their character’s goals, then the round is won and you can move on to the next chapter card. If even one person fails their goal, everyone loses and you will have to set up the game again and replay the chapter you lost.

Two Player Set Up and Solo Mode

As I mentioned earlier, the two-player set-up is slightly different to the three or four-player game. In a two-player set-up, you will need to add a third player that is controlled by whoever is playing Frodo, this is done by creating a card pyramid that consists of a bottom layer of 5 face-up cards, a middle layer of 4 face-down cards and then a top layer of three cards, the middle card of this layer being face-up and the other two face-down (as seen in the photo below). In the case that neither player draws the 1 Ring in their hand, it is safe to assume that the third pyramid player has it and will play as Frodo, if this happens then the player to the left will make the decision for this player. To play the pyramid cards, you can only play cards that are face up and haven’t got any cards on top of them, once a face down card hasn’t got any cards resting on it, you can flip the card after the trick so it is available to use it on the next trick. Similar to how you would play Seven Wonders Duel.

When playing solo, the gameplay setup again is different from the previously mentioned. Instead, the player takes on all the roles of the four characters, still trying to fulfil each character’s goals. However, the difference is that they will deal four cards face up for each character’s hand. The trick will still be played the same, but after each trick, you will replenish the hands back up to four by drawing cards from a facedown deck of cards. This works surprisingly well, and you may think that it is easier as you can see what cards are in each hand and get to make all the decisions, however, there is a randomness element to this, as the deck you are dealing from can sometimes make you think the cards are against you.

Thoughts

When I heard that The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game was being released I knew I had to have it. I enjoy the trick-taking aspect in games and with The Crew Mission Deep Sea being one of my favourite go-to games with my friends and Lord of the Rings being my favourite franchises, it was a no-brainer. Even before opening the box, I was in love with the design, the box itself is compact and has stunning iridescent artwork on the front that glistens in the light, I just couldn’t wait to open it and play it! I was not let down, upon opening the box I was greeted with a compact game but one that offered a very thematic experience. The artwork on each card is stunning, showing off a sort of stained glass look, and the components are of high quality. The cards come with a nice textured effect and even the box is provided with soft velvet tabs for you to easily remove the cards from their housing. When paying through the campaign, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it leads you through the story of The Lord of the Rings, the further I got into it the more characters I unlocked, I saw characters that weren’t in the films but were however in The Lord of the Rings books. This pleased me as I was able to see characters that I loved from the books in the game and was therefore excited to see who else would make an appearance. The whole game is amazingly thematic, with each playable character’s tasks feeling like it would be something the character would need to do or complete in the Tolkien universe, for example, Frodo needs to win 4 or more ring cards, and Bilbo needs to win three tricks, I feel like this fits in with what the characters are like in the books, Frodo being the ring bearer and Bilbo being a greedy Hobbit. As you progress through the game, characters will be replaced, for example, when you enter The Prancing Pony, Frodo is no longer used, and instead, you play as his alias, Mr Underhill, it’s the attention to detail like this that made me love this game. Each chapter will add more cardsthat can change the way the game is played, this makes the game feel exciting to progress through as it makes it feel fresh, so you aren’t just replaying the same trick-taking game overand over.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game also offers a solo mode, which is amazing when compared with similar games like The Crew Mission Deep Sea which doesn’t offer this. However, with everything I love about the game, it does have its flaws. I feel like it has limited replayability as each character has a trick-taking goal, compared to The Crew Mission Deep Sea, which has 96 small task cards which can be chosen in multiple different ways to change the difficulty. You could play multiple characters in The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking game which would increase the difficulty, but it still isn’t comparable to The Crew’s 96 goal cards. Furthermore, The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game has less communication than The Crew Mission Deep Sea, as in The Crew you can communicate with a token to show teammates what your highest or lowest card of a particular suit is in your hand, this isn’t available in The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game. I would say if you love The Lord of the Rings and trick-taking games then this is a must-buy, but if this isn’t for you then similar trick-taking games I enjoy are The Crew Mission Deep Sea or The Fox in the Forest.