By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: played 6 time, beat the game in legendary

We’re both The Lord of the Rings fans (the extent of which we’ve mentioned in this other LotR game review). When we were looking for games to get at Spiel Essen ‘25 on the Spiel app, we saw that a game called The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship was going to be available there. We found out that it’s cooperative and by Matt Leacock, so we decided to add it to our list of potential buys. Unfortunately, it was already out of stock when we arrived at the publisher’s area, but the world made us feel better by allowing us to say “Hi” to Matt Leacock and get a signed poster from him.

We finally got ourselves a copy from a friendly local game store earlier this year. We were very excited. The box isn’t too big, but it has plenty of components inside. The first thing we did was to assemble the dice tower. We were thinking how well made the cut-outs are. It’s beautiful, but when we tested it with three dice, a die got stuck inside. We followed the instructions to a T and made sure that all the parts are in place. We checked everything, nothing wrong with the assembly, there just happens to be a shelf inside that dice can get stuck on, especially when throwing in more than two dice.

We also like the other components, especially the wooden troops; they were so cute. We also like the wooden standees and the other wooden tokens. After checking out the components, we set up the board and assembled the Nazgûl miniatures. It was a bit frustrating because some of them aren’t well fitted to the stands. We were thinking about adding glue just so they won’t fall off from the stand (but we haven’t yet, so we just have to deal with it occasionally when we play). The game board is big and some of the cards are bigger than regular sized cards. As such setting it up needs a lot of space (at least 100 x 125 cm for two players).

During setup, there are two markers that players need to put on the board: the Hope marker and the Threat Rate marker. The Hope marker goes to the Hope track, this determines how much hope the characters have left. If the marker goes down to zero, the game is lost. It’s really nice that they used the term “hope”. If the characters lose hope, the world falls apart. This is a great mechanical representation of the importance of hope in The Lord of the Rings. The Threat marker, on the other hand, goes to the Threat track, which tells the player how many Shadow cards from the Shadow deck need to be drawn. The more cards you draw the higher the likelihood that a troop will spawn, a troop will move to conquer havens, and the Nazgûl will search Frodo. Higher Threat speeds up the loss of Hope. We like how the Shadow deck works. Most Shadow cards have two different sections. Which section to resolve is determined whether the top of the deck has a banner or a flag. Max likes it because it gives more variety to the game, and makes it less predictable than the original Pandemic.

Each of us must play two characters. Frodo and Sam (considered to be one character, just like Merry and Pippin) should be played in all games. For the first game, the set of characters is assigned for each player, but for subsequent games, the three other characters are determined by the randomly chosen objectives or are chosen randomly. We’ve never really been fans of not being able to choose a character freely, but we understand that it’s that way for balancing reasons and to make it more unpredictable for players to know what’s going to happen in a game session, which does increase replayability.

The number of objectives that need to be completed is based on the level of difficulty chosen. Regardless of difficulty, the ‘Destroy the One Ring’ objective is always the final objective. The other objectives, which must be fulfilled before finishing the final one, are chosen randomly. We really like the objectives, how thematic they are and how tied the characters are to them . The objective cards made each of our games very different. LotR nerds can easily see how much they want to be loyal to the books (Legolas has brown hair in this game!) while also keeping the game’s mechanisms interesting and balanced.

On their turn, each player can only perform five actions in total. One action must be performed by one character and four actions are performed by the other character. We like this mechanism since it allows us to think more carefully in terms of the allocation of actions. This game doesn’t have a communication limit so we were able to talk about strategies, and help us decide how to allocate our actions. There are six standard actions that almost any character can take and characters can have additional abilities and actions on their character card. After performing their actions for the turn, the player draws two player cards.

The player card deck contains randomly selected event cards, Skies Darken cards, and region cards. The event cards allows the player to do an event any time in the game, even on another players turn. They serve as free actions. The Skies Darken cards increase the Threat level and can in the wrong circumstances even decrease the hope level. The region cards contain symbols, which are required to perform some actions, for re-rolling dice or to remove extra troops after a battle. One interesting symbol is called Resistance, which is represented by a ring symbol. We assume it symbolizes resisting the power of the One Ring.

We won the introductory game, but lost the standard game the first time. We won again and won the other difficulty levels as well. The first game was quite difficult, but it got a bit easier as we played more, even when we increased the level of difficulty. But in a way we felt that we were just lucky whenever won because of the dice rolling mechanism that happens (which is dependent on how low Hope is and how many Nazgûl there are in Mordor, which means that if the Hope meter is full and there are no Nazgûl in Mordor then no roll is required) once Frodo and Sam reach Mount Doom and Frodo tries to destroy the Ring using five Resistances.

Our Final Thoughts:
Fate of the Fellowship is a really good game. One can see the amount of effort that was put into it. Despite the slightly underwhelming fulfillment we felt whenever we won, all the games that we had were fun. The different possible sets of objectives, events, and how the Shadow cards work, made us more engaged and excited. Sometimes we would smile, thinking about how different the paths and choices our characters took are from how it happened in the books. It’s like the characters are in alternate worlds but the only thing that is necessary and can never change is the destruction of The One Ring. Even if the final objective is always the same, the variety from the objectives and the choices we made made to a very fun game each time. As they say, it’s sometimes about the journey, not the goal.

Kaysee’s rating: 4/5
Max’s rating: 4/5

Combined rating: 4/5

Reference:
Tolkien, J. R. R.(1991). The Fellowship of the Ring. HarperCollins.

Title: The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship
Game Design: Matt Leacock
Illustration: Jared Blando, Cory Godbey
Publisher: Z-Man Games

Photos and non-board game illustrations by Kaysee

The post A Two-player Journey to the Alternate Worlds of Middle-earth appeared first on Schmeeples.

By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: played more than 20 times, completed all the chapters and beat the game in endless mode

We’re both fans of The Lord of the Rings. Kaysee has seen the movies twice, has read the trilogy, and tried to learn the Elven language and their writing system. Max has seen the extended edition countless of times and has read the books even more, so it’s not surprising that we got very excited when we found out that there’s a cooperative trick-taking game based on The Fellowship of the Ring.

The box is really eye-catching. We really like its stained-glass look. It’s just so pretty that you wouldn’t hesitate to display it in your living room. And, like many other trick-taking games, it is compact (4 cm x 10.4 cm x 21.9 cm). It has three compartments inside, each has a ribbon to keep track of the chapters that you’ve finished. The components are as beautiful as the box. It only has cards, including the chapter cards, the main deck cards, the character cards, and the reference cards, and five wooden tokens.

The first setup was easy. Players only need the first chapter card, four character cards, two star tokens, the main deck, and the One Ring token. The chapter cards contain flavor texts related to the story and the chapter-specific rules players need to follow. The character cards contain character specific objectives that players need to fulfill, some chapters can modify or add objectives. There are short chapters and long chapters. Short chapters last one round, while long chapters take multiple rounds to complete. The star tokens are initially used to help players identify which characters are necessary in order to finish the chapter. For two players, three characters are selected. The deck should then be distributed as if there were three players. The hand of the “ghost player” should then be arranged in a pyramid form.

The player who gets the one ring card gets Frodo, the ring token and gets to choose and control the character for the pyramid. The second player chooses another card, but all starred characters must be chosen. It is not allowed for the second player to mention which character they would want to choose before the first player has chosen their second character(s). Talking about what suits you have is not allowed, but the advantage of having a pyramid character is that both players can partially see its hand. We like this mechanism, but we can imagine a scenario being impossible to complete if a specific character is the pyramid.

Frodo is the one who leads the first trick. To lead a trick means to choose any card to play, but the ring cards cannot be chosen to lead in the beginning. The next character, the one on Frodo’s left should match the suit played. If they don’t have any matching suit, they can play any card, even a ring card. After a ring card is played in this manner, the One Ring token gets flipped to its other side, indicating that ring cards may now lead tricks. Whoever plays the highest matching suit takes the trick unless the one ring card is played. The One Ring is the most powerful card in the game, as whoever plays it gets to choose whether to take the trick or not. Taking into consideration who takes the trick is crucial most of the time to complete the objectives and the chapter. We would suggest having three 6-sided dice to keep track of the number of tricks won. If neither of the players have D6s, a paper and pen would do. Take note that not all characters need to win a trick (as in the case of Pippin).

Every chapter and character has a different set of rules and objectives. Some chapters may take longer to finish than others. This is really good, as the different varieties make the game more exciting. That said, Kaysee finds the later chapters to be less exciting than the earlier and middle ones since there was tension that builds up in the middle chapters due to how the difficulty increases, but as one reaches the later chapters, there seems to be a drop in difficulty that can affect the excitement formed by the anticipation for something much more difficult.

Another thing that we both like is how the mechanics are connected to the theme. But there were a few times where some characters that could reasonably be expected to be available based on the story are in fact not. We assume it has something to do with the balancing of the game, so it’s not a huge deal for us. We also like the endless mode where the objectives may vary for each game.

The game is optimized for more than two players. To allow for a two-player game, the pyramid character was added. It works really well, but one player controlling two characters is something that we’ve both found mentally taxing at times as the decision making for the pyramid character is not shared.

Our Final Thoughts:
The Fellowship of the Ring is a beautiful co-op trick-taking game. The narrative and the theme were well integrated in the mechanics, and that’s really fun for those who like trick-taking games and The Lord of the Rings. People who aren’t fans of LotR may still like it due to the interesting changes of the mechanics in every chapter, but maybe not as much.

Although the decision making process is not equally shared for two players, we would still recommend it to two players who just want to play something less heavy and have some more relaxed evenings, especially if they are LotR fans and want to complain about how blond Legolas is in the movies and in this game.

Kaysee’s rating: 4/5
Max’s rating: 4/5

Combined rating: 4/5

Reference:
Tolkien, J. R. R.(1991). The Fellowship of the Ring. HarperCollins.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick Taking Game[Rulebook]. (2025). Office Dog.

Title: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game
Game Design: Bryan Bornmueller
Illustration: Elain Ryan, Samuel Shimota
Publisher: Office Dog

Photos and non-board game illustrations by Kaysee

The post A 2-Player Trick-Taking Journey to Middle-earth appeared first on Schmeeples.

By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: played more than 15 times, beat the game in one of the highest difficulties

The first time we noticed Deckers was on BoardGameGeek’s list of most anticipated games at Spiel 2025. Its cyberpunk theme immediately caught our attention. BGG describes it as a reimplementation of Renegade, a title we had never played nor heard of before. Kaysee checked the BGG page for Renegade and saw that it’s a cooperative deck-building game with a complexity rating of about 3.5. This really made us more excited to try it since we were looking for a game with mid to high complexity and Max really likes deck-building. Just as in Renegade, in Deckers the players (the titular deckers) are working together to defeat an intelligent Super-Massive Computer (SMC). We decided to jack-in and give it a shot.

We started playing Deckers the night after we bought it (we’ve lost count of the number times we’ve played it since then but it’s more than 15 times). The box is impressively compact (7.5 × 19.5 × 19.5 cm) and light (1.16 kg), which makes it easy to bring to board‑game nights to play with our friends. All the tokens, dice, cards, and tiles fit neatly inside, and the setup is very straightforward, given the complexity of the game. Building the network of five server boards is quick and can feel like a fun mini‑game in itself. The beautiful and vibrant art style fits the cyberpunk setting.

While the setup is light, the rules are not. There are many terms that we needed to remember. We’d recommend for both players to read the rule book, since it’s more efficient that way; if one player forgets how an action works, the other player can remind them of it. Neither of us has tried playing Deckers solo, but playing it together helped us differentiate actions and terms from each other and understand the rules better. The player aid cards were very helpful to us, but we still found ourselves checking the rule book every now and then since some definitions are much clearer in the book. It is important to follow every step in the sequence of the game and understand what happens at each moment and to take into account what is stated in the objective card.

There are three types of objectives: bronze, silver, and golden. The number of objective cards that you need in a game can range from three to six and is determined by which SMC you choose and whether the SMC is upgraded or not. Whatever is written on the Goal section of the objective cards determines how you’re going to beat the SMC, but in any case, the goal on the golden objective card(s) must be fulfilled.

The game has a number of rounds equal to the number of objectives. Each round begins with the intel phase, during which players take note of the special rules introduced by the SMC or the current objective and the interactions between them. Next is the command phase, where every player gets three turns with the turn order freely decided by the players. For each turn you draw five cards, but the SMC will also spawn so called sparks to oppose you. The cards have different symbols printed on them, which are called commands. Different commands allow you to perform specific associated actions or to buy upgraded cards for your deck. Importantly, every card that you buy replaces another card in your deck, so that the total number of cards is always 15. After all players have had three turns, the SMC acts in the aptly named SMC phase. Finally, the round ends with the refresh phase.

Against Alpha-Moby, the recommended SMC for beginners, the first character that Kaysee chose was Monty (mainly because he’s green) and Max chose Oshin (just because he looks cool). After reading their character profile, we thought we made the wrong choice since Monty and Oshin aren’t really the best buddies. As we played, we realized that we made the right decision as we figured out how the infect action and the commands work.

We took advantage of Deckers having no communication limit. We talked about how we were going to position our characters and the actions that we were planning to take. For two players, we find the action step to be fast. If one of us isn’t sure whether to take the next turn, it is possible to let the other player take another turn. One mechanic that Max likes is how the deck-building works in this game; instead of adding or removing a card from your deck, a card is replaced by another card which makes it much more efficient in terms of decision making and game speed.

We were able to fulfill the final goal, but each of us had one turn left and we had to take them even if there was no way for us to be defeated by the SMC during its phase. We won, but Kaysee didn’t like the sudden drop in tension, she did like the flavor text at the back of the objective cards, though. We both decided to play again and chose different characters with a different set of objectives. We lost the second game. We tried again and won, then we changed SMCs, which made the game feel different and more difficult, making it less anti-climactic. We like the possibility of controlling the amount of randomness by choosing a specific SMC or character. Some SMCs and characters can make a game more random and some can make it less so. Having that flexibility and choice is a good thing if one wants to have a less random game. The playing time may take less than an hour if playing against a low-starred SMC, but it may take more than 3 hrs (breaks included) if it’s a 6-starred SMC.

For those who want an extra challenge, there are the three variants included in the rules. First, the server boards have a second side featuring fragmented servers. In this mode a server is spread out over all the boards instead of a one to one correspondence between servers and boards. Second, there are two upgrade cards for the SMCs, each adding a special golden Mother’s ghost objective and changing the rules for spawning sparks. Playing against an upgraded SMC straightforwardly increases the difficulty level. Finally, there are ‘packet tokens’. These are placed during setup and have various positive or negative effects when picked up in game.

Our Final Thoughts:
Deckers is a well polished co-op board game. The different sets of objectives that you can get, the different SMCs, and the addition of variants make the game highly replayable. The first game can be anti-climactic if you use the suggested objectives, as they are specifically chosen so that finishing the earlier ones helps with later ones. At higher difficulties you’re just glad that you were able to fulfill the objective, leaving no space in the mind for the anti-climactic. One thing that would be nice to have is a unique flavor text after defeating the Mother SMC.

We had a huge amount of fun playing Deckers as a couple. It’s not a cozy date night type of board game, but it allowed us to discover together how a specific action works and come up with different strategies to beat the game, which made for better evenings even in sessions where we lost. All in all, we would wholeheartedly recommend Deckers to 2 players who like crunchy games that require creative problem solving and who don’t mind a moderate degree of randomness.

Reference:
Deckers[Rulebook]. (2025). Deep Print Games GmbH.
SPIEL Essen 25 Preview

Title: Deckers (2025)
Game Design: Richard Wilkins
Illustrations: Lukas Siegmon
Publisher: Deep Print Games GmbH

Photos and non-board game illustrations by Kaysee

The post Deckers: Hacking the Mainframe Together 2-player review appeared first on Schmeeples.