By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: finished the campaign

Earthborne Rangers was one of the games that had been on our radar for quite a while. Many campaign games are also legacy games, which are often not replayable and happen to have many components that aren’t compostable. The components of EBR are compostable, but it’s also a replayable campaign game. For some time we’d wanted to play GMless RPGs with just the two of us; we tried, but it was difficult and we felt we needed more guidance. It seemed that EBR could scratch that itch, giving us some structure without being so restrictive that we couldn’t create our own narrative. Additionally, the art style is beautiful and captures the ecopunk vibe that we like (and we both love green). So we were very excited when we were able to get our hands on it.

We played Daybreak before playing Earthborne Ranger. Before Daybreak, we were used to cards that are ticker and more robust. The feel of the cards of EBR is very similar to Daybreak’s, which are also plastic-free. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it wasn’t really a big deal for us. Some edges of the cards were a bit damaged, but not too damaged to ask for a replacement. It would have been nice if the cards were completely wrapped with paper, which was the case with Daybreak, to protect them during shipping and not just use a paper band. Unfortunately, the copy that we received also had one divider card missing, and it’s been weeks since we contacted Naylor Games and asked for the missing card, but we haven’t yet heard from them.

Earthborne Rangers is a deck-building/construction game that relies on cards for the world building. Most of the game consists of cards. While there is a map that shows the location, there’s no board to place your character, and having minis isn’t necessary. It is quite similar to a tabletop RPG. But unlike many TTRPGs, players don’t have to rely on the GM to decide whether an action is permissible. The rules are all set up in the game. While TTRPGs offer more flexibility in terms of what a player can do, in EBR, players get to choose the personality and the aspects or the stats of their character and don’t have to rely on dice to randomly generate the stats.

The prologue got us hooked very quickly. During the prologue each player first chooses a number of personality cards, followed by cards representing their ranger’s background and specialty. One of us chose a Forager-Shaper and the other chose an Artisan-Artificer. While we weren’t able to update them regularly during the game, you can check our character sheets here and here. The resulting ranger deck slowly changes over the course of the campaign, as there are opportunities to engage in some further deck building.

The prologue also walks players through the setup process that repeats at the beginning of each day/session. First, players set up their individual areas and draw a starting hand of six cards. This is followed by shuffling the challenge deck, the function of which we’ll explain later. Next come the location, weather and mission cards. We really like these cards as they really help with the immersion (we’d recommend checking out the soundtrack if you want your game session to be more immersive). These are determined by the current state of the campaign, which is noted down on a campaign tracker. If you’re curious, check out our campaign tracker, but be warned: it contains plenty of spoilers.

Then comes the potentially most consequential part, building the path deck, which contains the flora and fauna, the beings, the people, and some structures/ruins. This will include cards based on the path that was used to arrive at the current location, specific or general cards based on that location and sometimes additional cards related to a mission or the weather. What we like about the path deck is that it makes the world come alive and it gives more variety to the game as who/whatever you encounter when you draw a path card is random even though its construction is determined by the factors mentioned earlier. Finally, there are arrival setup instructions on the back of the location card, which shape the initial conditions the rangers find themselves in.

After setup, rangers take turns until everyone has decided to rest for the round. On their turn, each ranger can either play a card from their hand, perform a test or decide to rest. The test or the card that a ranger can perform or play is dependent on the available energy, the type and the amount of which is determined by the aspect, in their energy pool and the path card that they want to interact with. In the first few sessions we were trying to use all the energy in the energy pool effectively, but it gets tricky as the campaign and the days progress; we asked ourselves (and each other) whether we should use them all before we rest or just rest even if there are some left in the pool. We really like this mechanism since while at the beginning it seems that being efficient with your resources means using most of them before resting, eventually we would have to consider whether not using them all and drawing a ranger card during the refresh stage (the stage after resting) might be the better option. But this also means having to draw another path card, which could bring more risks and might have to be dealt with.

When a ranger performs a test, they have to draw a challenge card, which contains a challenge icon (mountain, crest, or sun). Some path cards, weather cards, mission cards, and location cards contain challenge effects, which are triggered if the challenge card drawn has the corresponding challenge icon. The challenge card also determines if the effort used is deducted, added, or stays the same. We feel that the challenge cards are the ones that create the tension as you don’t know whether it’s going to trigger some negative or postive effects. Depending on the location, weather, path card and the mission cards in play, drawing a challenge card may speed up fatigue. Fatigue is when a ranger sets aside a card facedown from the ranger deck without using it. If the ranger is forced to fatigue a card but they don’t have any cards left in the ranger deck, they need to end the day. We haven’t played all the specialties and backgrounds yet, but we think that Shapers have a huge advantage when it comes to decreasing randomness and mitigating fatigue since they have more options not to perform tests during their turn; they could, instead, play a card, which doesn’t require drawing a challenge card to clear or help clear a path.

Clearing a path card is one of the most important things to do in the game because it unlocks and helps progress some missions. But a ranger doesn’t have to clear every path card in play. How to clear a path card depends on the type of path card and the conditions written on the card to clear it. If the card is a being, a flora, or a fauna, it can either be cleared by harm or progress. We would always try our best to clear using progress if it’s a being. We were talking about the choice of using the term “harm” and what it means in the game. This is the part of the narrative that we wanted to be very much our own. We sometimes just define “harm” as disturbance. Sometimes we say that the fruits were harvested and the plants were disturbed, which what harm means in the context of flora. Sometimes when a companion causes a harm to the prey, it just means that they “shooed” it. We interpret the term depending on which context it was done. The narrative and the system are not too restrictive so that there is some space for us to add our own spin on things.

The results of our choices also didn’t feel punishing mechanically and let us freely choose based on what we think is the right thing to do. Without going into too much detail, there was a mission where we needed some prey. One of the preys happened to be not a living prey. When we read the entry after clearing the mission, we were so relieved that we got it. When we finally cleared the mission, the reward wasn’t something we found valuable, but we enjoyed curating the narrative based on which preys we got. We’re being vague here, but you’ll know once you’ve chosen and completed that mission. What we also find very interesting and really love is that clearing a being with harm may seem to require less resources than clearing it with progress, but every ranger has some Spirit (the aspect that provides energy needed to clear with progress) and is capable of compassion, but not every ranger has the means (cards) to cause harm.

Our Final Thoughts:
Earthborne Rangers is the type of game that we were looking for when we were looking for a more structured GMless RPG. It’s not a TTRPG, but it is also not a typical card game. There were times during the campaign where we hoped to not encounter Quisi (one of the characters of the Valley who is endearingly fatiguing) anymore, but we still enjoyed the journey a lot. The art style, the interaction between the mechanics and the theme, the balance between randomness and choice, and most especially having the space to create a world that is uniquely our own, are the things that make EBR one of the best games we’ve played together.

Kaysee’s rating: 4.5/5
Max’s rating: 4/5

Combined rating: 4.5/5

Reference:
Earthborne Rangers[Rulebook].(2023). Earthborne Games.

Title: Earthborne Rangers (2023)
Game Design: Andrew Fischer, Brooks Flugaur-Leavitt, Andrew Navaro, Adam Sadler, Brady Sadler
Illustration: Joe Banner (II), Evan Simonet
Publisher: Earthborne Games

Photos by Kaysee

The post Traversing the Valley Together (2-player review) appeared first on Schmeeples.

By Kaysee

Cooperative board games are the kind of board games I like to play with my partner. I enjoy working through puzzles together with him and discussing strategies to beat a game. Even when there are communication limits, winning as a team feels satisfying. The immersive feel of some co‑op board games (much like a GMless RPG, but with tokens, a more structured storyline, and less dice rolling) keeps us wanting more. Still, after trying many co‑op board games, I realized we live in a bubble, in Germany, where there is a huge variety of board games, so co‑op titles are easy to find not only in game stores but also in bookstores and some discount supermarkets. Abroad, however, we often struggle to find them in random bookstores even when other board games are available.

What co-op

Co‑op board games are games in which two or more players do not compete against each other; instead, they work together to achieve a common objective or reach the same final goal. Co‑op games are less common than competitive ones; only 12.74% of the board games listed on BGG are co‑op[1]. One could wonder why there are so many fewer of them compared with competitive games.

Co-op in board games seems to be a fairly new mechanic. If you ask someone who doesn’t play board games what they know about board games in general, chances are they would imagine and describe a game where two or more players are competing against each other. And if you tell them that there are board games where players don’t compete, they would react as if it was something really new. Even I thought that co-op is a new thing as I associated co-op games with Pandemic[2], which was only released in 2008. Yet there were co-op board games that were released even before that. Reiner Knizia’s The Lord of the Rings, a co-op game released in 2000, is one of the games that influenced Pandemic[3]. And even earlier than that, Wikipedia[4] claims that The Landlord’s Game by Elizabeth Magie, patented in 1903[5], can be played in co-op mode. But after reading the rulebook[6], I don’t think it can be played co-op in the non-monopoly mode. It’s still much more interesting mechanically and thematically than Monopoly though.

In the 70s some co-op games were developed by a company in Canada called Family Pastimes. They only produced co-op games, as the founders claim that children can gain sociological benefits for playing co-op games[7]. Even though they said that they received orders from countries outside Canada and some interests from teachers and the United Nations[8], the company is still small and doesn’t have a scope as wide as Parker Brothers. Family Pastimes to this day is still a relatively small company. Even in Germany the first game that won Spiel des Jahres was a competitive one. The earliest year where a co-op game became popular was in 1981, when Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective was released, which was also the first co-op game that won the SdJ in 1985[9]. The thing about this game is that it has some similarities to the tabletop RPG Call of Cthulhu. It’s possible that its popularity has something to do with the fascination for TTRPGs such as Dungeons & Dragons at that time, which are typically co-op, and not about wanting to play co-op games in general. Much like how co-op video games such as MMOs, many of which were influenced by D&D[10], are more widespread and popular than co-op board games.

What I view as the scarcity of co-op board games today may be attributed to the long culture of competitive board games worldwide. Unlike video games, war games and other board games such as chess, Go, and shogi have been existing for hundreds of years. They were invented during times where people were more likely to compete for resources to survive or use them to practice for war. They are still very popular to this day, not just because they are fun to play (I find them fun to play I admit), but also because there are pro tournaments[11], which further increase their popularity. Not to mention, wargames have been widely popular for decades (moreso in the US than in Europe after the wars)[12]. On top of that, the mass production of Monopoly and having a version of Monoply of every IP that I could probably think of might have fortified the idea that board games can only be played competitively. The long tradition and nostalgia[13], mass production, and marketing of competitive board games also resulted to having a huge demand for competitive board games[14]. Given how competitive games are more widespread, it wouldn’t surprise me if many people believe that the default mechanic for a board game is competitive and that many of those who play board games are more used to playing competitive board games so much so that changing how they play board games could be a challenge in and of itself.

Why co-op

There’s something about having those shared moments whenever my partner and I play co-op games regardless of the result of the game. But I noticed that playing co-op games can be a bit more intimate than competitive games; it may involve trusting other players in your group, having confidence in them and hope that they could equally trust you with your decisions without adding pressure to them and to yourself, and making sure that it is a safe space to lose and that it’s fine if your group were not able to beat the game.

Playing co-op games involves cooperation- a certain mindset. Not being used to having a specific mindset when playing co-op games may lead to some undesirable outcome in a gaming session. Playing co-op games does not necessarilly eliminate possible social conflicts within a group. This can be seen from the reports of players experiencing quarterbacking (or alpha gaming[15]). The conflict that players might have in co-op games is different from the type of conflict that players have in competitive games; it’s much more personal and undesirable in the former whereas in the latter the conflict is just part of the game and may be desired and agreed upon[16]. Staying inside the gaming space[17], the space where one steps in and agrees with all the rules that are within it, is one thing but behaving in such a way that wasn’t agreed upon by others is another.

Playing co-op board games seems to require so much of players, but one very fascinating thing I noticed is that playing co-op games has lead some groups to have their own systems to prevent alpha gaming which involves learning how to respect others and giving chance for others to express what they think[18]. I don’t know if getting used to doing this will extend outside board gaming, but I still think it’s a good thing to be able to come up with creative ways of preventing conflicts and exercising a form of respect that is different from the form of respect practiced when playing competitive games[19].

But it also doesn’t mean that people who aren’t used to cooperating when playing co-op board games are incapable of cooperating outside of playing co-op board games. There is also a sense of cooperation that is present in some competitive board games, but this is dependent on the mechanism of the board game and is still different from the type of cooperation that is possible or expected in a co-op board game[20].

Playing co-op board games also allows players to have more fun experiences even in sessions where they didn’t win[21]. While there can still be shared experiences when playing competitive games, the feeling of losing and winning is not shared. With co-op games, especially the narrative ones, losing doesn’t feel as bad since the experience is shared. One example is when my partner and I played Fate of the Fellowship; even if the result didn’t feel so rewarding, we still had fun during the game. We also had fun in some games where we lost. Having that shared experiences, which include joint decision-making and imagining some scenarios together, are for me some of the many things why I love co-op games so much.

Now and Finality

While co-op games are still not as widespread as competitive games, co-op games are gaining more recognition and it seems that the demand for them is also increasing. Co-op games such as Gloomhaven and Spirit Island are some of the highly rated games on BGG. The most recent Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres games are co-op[22]. That said, I don’t think that it will replace competitive games in terms of popularity any time soon. And I also don’t think that noone should play competitive games or that they shouldn’t exist anymore[23], but playing co-op games exposes people to a different type of bonding experience where losing and winning are shared, where the metagame and the social interaction, the form of respect, are different from what one experiences and exercises in a competitive game. And maybe some day when the general public think of board games, they wouldn’t just think of competitive games but games that could be enjoyed by a group of people (or a single person) without having to compete against each other.

[1] This is based on the number of board games categorized as cooperative out of all the board games listed on BoardGameGeek on 18.05.2026. It is even less than that as I noticed that some of the games on the list were wrongly categorized as co-op.
[2] Matt Leacock’s Pandemic (2008)
[3] On his blog post, Matt Leacock mentions that Pandemic was influenced by Reiner Knizia’s The Lord of the Rings.
[4] See Wikipedia – Cooperative board game
[5] There’s an article and a book written by Mary Pilon that provide more details.
[6] See Landlords Game Rules
[7] In this interview with Jim Deacove, one of the founders of Family Pastimes, they also claim that they were contacted by the United Nations, psychiatrists and teachers regarding the possible effects of playing co-op games. Whether a cooperative board game can improve children’s social behavior incomparison to competitive games is still debatable based on the article The behavioral effects of cooperative and competitive board games in preschoolers by Malin Eriksson, Ben Keward, Leo Poom, and Stenberg (2021).
[8] See this interview in 1978
[9] Spiel des Jahres winner in 1985
[10] See The Board Game As a Narrative by Pawel Bornstedt (2024).
[11] There’s the Fide World Championship and a long list of chess tournaments worlwide. There’s also a huge shogi tournament in Japan called Osho.
[12] See Pawel Bornstedt (2024)
[13] In Nostalgic bonding: exploring the role of nostalgia in the consumption experience by Holbrook and Shindler (2006) discuss the effect of nostalgia in terms of consumer behavior.
[14] Market.us report says that the demand for board games is increasing, but the industry is still lead by companies that produce Monopoly and other traditional board games.
[15] See Roleplaying as a Solution to the Quarterbacking Problem of Cooperative and Educational Games by Josh Aaron Miller (2021)
[16]This isn’t to say that social conflict doesn’t happen in competitive games. It does happen especially for some players who have difficulties accepting defeat.
[17] I don’t believe that we can all be completely in what is called a Magic Circle, where we have a certain way of thinking and behave in a certain way that is allowed in the game world and is completely untouched by the real or actual world. It is a term coined by Huizinga, Johan (1938) in his book Homo Ludens: a Study of the Play-Element in Culture. I believe that there’s an aspect of us that affects the game world and vice versa.
[18] Reddit may not always be the best source of information, but some Redditors on r/boardgames have shared some interesting solutions to prevent alpha gaming in a respectful way without resorting to conflict.
[19] Respect that players give to their opponents in a competitive game (e.g. accepting defeat) is different from the type of respect that players give to each other in a co-op board game setting.
[20] See Cooperating to Compete: the Mutuality of Cooperation and Competition in Boardgame Play by Melissa J. Rogerson, Martin R. Gibbs, and Wally Smith (2018)
[21] See The Allure of Struggle and Failure in Cooperative Board Games by Douglas Maynard and Joanna Herron (2016)
[22] Spiel des Jahres’ Game Archive
[23] See Melissa J. Rogerson, Martin R. Gibbs, Wally Smith (2018)

Many thanks to Max for proofreading.

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By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: completed all the chapters

We had fun playing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game despite it not being optimized for two players, so we were excited to play The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game to see if there were any interesting mechanical changes (also we‘re LotR fans so there’s that).

The art style is very similar to the first one, but the cards are much more vivid. We also like that they used paper instead of plastic wrapper for the packaging of the tokens and the decks which makes it easier to open and better for the environment (we have a copy from the 1st printing).

The initial setup for two players is still very similar; each of us plays one character, but one of us should play an additional character whose cards are open but in a pyramid form where five of the cards are faceup and the rest are facedown. The One Ring token and the ring cards are not yet part of the setup. Instead, two new tokens and five cards are added: the titular Two Towers, as both tokens and cards and the three Orc cards. All of theses cards don’t belong to any particular suit. As such they can only be played if a player doesn’t have follow the leading suit. The towers are similar to the One Ring, they win any trick that they are played into. Unlike the One Ring the player cannot choose to lose the trick, instead if both towers are played into the same trick, they both lose. The Orc cards are the opposite of the towers and always lose. We like these new cards as they add challenge to the game since they cannot be used to lead a trick. If a player is forced to lead a trick with an Orc (e.g. because it’s their only card left), the group loses the whole chapter. If a trick contains both tower cards and an Orc card, no one wins the trick and it is set aside.

As with the first game, each chapter features a different set of characters with their own goals and rules. These tend to be slightly more complex and interesting this time around. Likewise, many chapters still feature event cards that further change the rules. Unlike the first game, there is a big change after the first ten chapters, which correspond to book three of LotR. Without spoiling too much, the deck changes to become more similar to the deck in the first game, with some significant changes. This of course makes perfect sense thematically, as the later chapters are the ones featuring Frodo, Sam and the One Ring.

We were hoping that Two Towers would be much better for two players. We found the first few chapters to be both fun and mechanically challenging even though the 2-player friendliness is just the same as the previous game, and we were ok with it (we got used to it and we accepted it) but as we stepped in to Chapter 25, that’s when we realized that the game just became worse for two players. We could imagine this chapter being a bit easier for three or four players, but with two, it wasn’t. How the pyramid works in that chapter made us feel very frustrated. We’re still trying to figure out why they made the decision for the set up of the pyramid for this chapter to be the way that it is. With many challenging games, we get that feeling of great satisfaction after beating them, but not with this one. Even though we were able to finish the chapter after a few tries, it didn’t feel satisfying or rewarding. The relief that we felt is more of us not having to be in a very frustrating situation anymore (we could’ve just stopped playing it, but it’s the completionist in us that deterred us from just moving on) than being able to succeed. While it is not as frustrating and has a regular pyramid setup, Chapter 30 also proved difficult for us, due to the specific combination of character goals and the limitations introduced by the event card for that chapter.

We still decided to finish all the chapters. Some of the mechanical changes in part 2 were a noticable improvement and made the game more fun. We also liked how the theme and the mechanisms in part 2 felt very familiar, but were still different and interesting. We also liked the last chapter a lot and how the mechanism matches the theme. It was a good ending.

Our Final Thoughts:
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Trick-Taking Game was still enjoyable for us in most parts, but there were times where we thought that we could’ve enjoyed it more if there were more of us playing it, something that also crossed our minds while playing FotR, but it did occur more frequently and strongly while playing this game. It’s unfortunate because the interactions between the mechanisms and the theme here are much more interesting than in FotR. We were hoping for it to be at least as good for two players as the previous one if not better, but it wasn’t. Still, we’re looking forward to playing The Return of the King if it comes out in the future and hoping that it will have better mechanics for two players.

Kaysee’s rating: 3.5/5
Max’s rating: 3.5/5

Combined rating: 3.5/5

Reference:
Tolkien, J. R. R.(1999). The Two Towers. HarperCollins.

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

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

By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: played using the German version, played 6 times, beat the game in level 3, highest score achieved: 37 pts

There are plenty of trick-taking games for two players, but many of them aren’t cooperative. The Fox in the Forest Duet caught our attention at a book shop as it is both co-op and for exactly two players. Its art style reminds us of some fairytales collected by the brothers Grimm from long before. We decided to purchase it and give it a try.

The box is compact (16.5 x 11.4 x 3.2 cm). It has a rulebook, some small cardboard tokens, a small wooden token that represents the players, two reference cards, a deck of 30 cards, and a small cardboard road map. Unfortunately, two cards have some misprints and the quality of the cards in general isn’t ideal. It would have been nice if they had a linen finish.

The setup is simple, and it doesn’t take much space as you only need space for the small board, the trump card, and somewhere to play the cards. The gem tokens have to be placed on top of the small squares on the board. There are symbols in the squares, which indicate the number of red tokens the player should place. The board also indicates where the players should start.

One of the players shuffles the deck and hands 11 cards to each player and draws one card that determines which suit is the trump suit. The deck has only three suits. Whoever has the highest number of the suit played by the first player or the highest trump card takes the trick. The wooden token should then be moved toward the winner of the trick. The number of steps is the total number of steps at the top left of the cards, with each card having between zero and three steps. If there’s a red gem at the final step, it should be removed from the board. To win the game, there shouldn’t be any red gems left on the board within three rounds. Kaysee likes this mechanism as there’s something satisfying about removing something from a board and being rewarded for it, similar to a crisis-management mechanism in some crunchy games.

Some cards don’t have any movement numbers, but instead they give the player additional abilities like exchanging a card with the other player or letting the winner choose whether to use both cards to move or just one of them. We like this mechanism because it allows us to indirectly communicate something to each other since the game doesn’t allow us to share our strategies or show each other our cards.

The game has three difficulty levels and a scoring system. The highest possible score is 46, which can only be achieved in level 3 without losing a forest path and being able to remove a gem with each and every single movement. Trying to reach the highest score possible may excite some players, but not us, at least not with this game.

The first game wasn’t very exciting for both of us. We did win the first try, but we didn’t find it engaging. We think it’s probably because of it being too abstract for our taste and how the theme isn’t strong enough in this game. But we do like being able to win the game when we exchange cards and get the cards that we exactly need to beat the game. For level 3, we played for a bit more than half an hour.

Our Final Thoughts:
The Fox in the Forest Duet is a decent compact trick-taking game. Like other games that have a strict communication limit, it didn’t allow us to come up with a strategy together, and that’s ok. Communication limits can be fun sometimes, especially if it feels like we can read each others thoughts, but the lack of strong theme and excitement while we play this game didn’t help in terms of us wanting to play it again. We can, however, imagine playing this to kill the time at a boarding gate at an airport while waiting for the plane to arrive. We would also suggest reading the fairytales by Alana Joli Abbott (even though you’re not at an airport), which are much more suited for the modern times than the fairytales from long before.

Kaysee’s rating: 3/5
Max’s rating: 3/5

Combined rating: 3/5

Reference:
Abbott, A. J. (2019).The Musician and the Fairies. Foxtrot Games.

Title: The Fox in the Forest Duet
Game Design: Joshua Buergel
Illustration: Adrienne Ezell, Jason D. Kingsley, Roanna Peroz, John Shulters
Publisher: Foxtrot Games, Renegade Game Studios

Photos by Kaysee

The post The Road to a Clear Path appeared first on Schmeeples.

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 co-op 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 about how well-made the cut-outs were. It was 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 were in place*. We checked everything, nothing wrong with the assembly, there just happened to be a shelf inside that dice could get stuck on, especially when throwing in more than two dice.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We also liked the other components, especially the wooden troops; they were so cute. We also liked 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 didn’t fit the stands well. We were thinking about adding glue just so they wouldn’t fall off the stands (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 use the term “hope”. If the characters lose hope, the world falls apart. This is a great mechanical representation of the importance of hope in LotR. The Threat marker, on the othre 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. The section to resolve is determined by whether the top of the deck has a banner or a flag, which we think give more variety to the game and makes it less predictable than the original Pandemic.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

For the intro level, 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 to each player, but for subsequent games, the other three 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 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 liked 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 our turn, each of us 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 liked 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 each other decide how to use 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 allow the player to do an event any time in the game, even on another player’s 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, to re-roll 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 we 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 and events, and the way 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 were 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 for 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

*It’s not. We flipped one of the pieces, and now it’s fixed. Please see boardgamegeek.com/thread/3542211/anyone-with-problem… for more info in case you experienced something similar for more info in case you experienced something similar.

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

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