By Kaysee and Max

September – the month where Advents Calendar and Spekulatius start to pop up in grocery stores all over Germany, including the city where we live and some other cities in Northrhein Westphalia. It’s also the time to start keeping ourselves warm, cozy up, and prepare our minds and budget for the biggest board game convention in the world – the SPIEL Essen (which also happens to be in Northrhein Westphalia).

There are 209 games listed as cooperative games on the SPIEL app as of this writing. It’s plenty, but we checked them one by one. There are many factors we considered in choosing the games that we want to have. Some of them are how difficult it would be to get the game in Germany outside SPIEL, how interesting the mechanics are, how interesting the theme is, whether we have played something like it, and how difficult it would be for us to carry them (we will only be taking the train to and from Essen).

Some of the games on our list will be or are already widely available in Germany and in some other countries, but we’d also like for some games from small/indie publishers to get some recognition. So while some of the games here might not be as widely available as games from bigger publishers (at least for now), giving them exposure may also help them get their games distributed and be more widely available and accessible.

So, without further ado, here’s our most anticipated, must-have games at SPIEL:

Kinsokuchi (禁足地)

Game designer: SHI-TEN-NŌ
Artist: Yoshihiro Arisawa
Publisher: Sugorokuya
Complexity: Light
Language: English and German

A horror game from Japan, where players are stuck in a forbidden land filled with curses. The game has a communication limit and has eight scenarios. What we find interesting is it has octagonal tiles, different from the typical hexagonal ones that are common in this hobby, and it seems to require a style of cooperation that we probably haven’t done before. It does require deduction and some “reading the room”. It also seems very thematic.

Mission Amazonia

Game Designer: Markus Lehmann
Artist: Victor Sales
Publisher: Humming Games
Complexity: Medium
Language: German

A deck-building game from Switzerland, players are sent on a mission to protect the Amazon rainforest. This became one of our must-haves as the game is not just educational, but also mechanically interesting. If uses a book as a map and we tend to like deck-building as well. They have an English version of the game but in very limited amount.

Potemkin Villages

Game Designer: Petr Čáslava
Artist: Ekaterina Bystroň
Publisher: Albi
Complexity: Light
Language: English

Potemkin Villages is a trick-taking game where players have to make sure that Catherine the Great would only see that the villages are prosperous. It is based on the historical Potemkin Village. The mechanisms for two players are similar to The Crew, but we expect it to be more thematic. It would also be our first game with some historical reference. The artstyle also caught our attention.

The Slasher

Game Designer: Katsunari Takahashi
Artist: Katsunari Takahashi
Publisher: Jelly Jelly Games
Complexity: Light
Language: English

Another horror game from Japan, this one is a 2-player only trick-taking game, where you have to work together to escape the killer. We like trick taking as a mechanic, but the cooperative trick-taking games we have tried were either not very thematic (The Fox in the Forest Duet), not primarily designed for two players (The LotR trick-taking games) or neither (The Crew: MDS). So, we’re very excited to try this one, as it should be perfect for us.

The Frozen Passage

Game Designer: Emi Kuji
Artists: Rie Komatsuzaki & Rie Takahashi
Publisher: Oink Games
Complexity: Light
Language: English, German

Oink Games are known for publishing very pretty, very small games. We really adore their style. While we’re not sure how closely the mechanics of The Frozen Passage are linked to it’s setting of navigating the Northwest Passage, we expect to have a lot of fun maneuvering around the communication limit.

Aridnyk

Game Designers: Yaroslav Kifor, Volodymyr Kuznietsov, Andrii Yanovskiy
Artist: Liudmyla Samus
Publisher: Koalla, boardova
Complexity: Medium
Language: German (also available in English but not at SPIEL)

The main thing that drew us to Aridnyk is the fact that the setting is inspired by the culture of the Hutsuls living in the Carpathians in Ukraine. We always appreciate board games that allow us to learn more about areas of the world we’re unfamiliar with. While we generally don’t play competitive games when it’s just us, for playing with friends and family we like games like this that can played either cooperatively or competitively.

Bandido Alcatraz (10th Anniversary Edition)

Game Designer: Martin Nedergaard Andersen
Artists: Martin Nedergaard Andersen, Lucas Guidetti Perez, Ajša Zdravković
Publisher: Helvetiq
Complexity: Light
Languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch

We haven’t played the original Bandido in which the players have to stop a prisoner from escaping, but we’re looking forward to helping them escape from Alcatraz in this new 10th anniversary version. The art and the “tongue in cheek” theme are very charming. Given the short play time, this game seems perfect for those times where we don’t have the time for something heavier.

Flixo

Game Designer: Friedemann Friese
Artists: Ine Friese & Maren Rache
Publisher: 2F-Spiele
Complexity: Light
Languages: English, German

Just like prolific German designer Friedemann Friese, we’re both huge fans of the color green. The letter F isn’t as significant to us, but that isn’t going to stop us from trying one of his many games whose name begins with that letter. While Flixo is a more abstract game than most others that we play, it is interesting mechanically, because it reimplements a competitive game as a cooperative one.

Spirits of Valenor

Game Designer: Johannes Krenner, Alexander Pfister
Artist: George Doutsipoulos
Publisher: Pegasus Spiele
Complexity: Medium
Language: English (also available in German)

Thematically, Spirits of Valenor shares quite a bit of DNA with Spirit Island, which is one of our favorite games of all time. While much less heavy mechanically, it is a campaign game, which we also like. As with many of the games on this list, the art is an important factor and we definitely have a weakness for cute critters of any kind.

Yami

Game Designers: Hiroki Oba, Anthony Perone, Ryoji Suzuki, Hiraku Tezuka
Artist: Makoto Takami
Publisher: Musoka Studio
Complexity: Light
Language: English

Like the previous entry, Yami is a campaign game featuring spirits as the protagonists. We’re intrigued by the combination of trick taking and polyominos. We haven’t played any board game with polyominos, so it’s going to be a new experience. Although we should mention that we have of course played Tetris (and on the original Game Boy, no less).

There are some other must-have games for us that cannot make it to the list since they are either competitive or not suitable for two players. These are Mutter Natur, Mercenaries Wanted (a game by Cephalofair-the Gloomhaven people), and Cat Years. Games that could’ve made it to the list that we’re still considering are Neon Hope, Planet Pioneer Meteora, and Flame & Forge. We didn’t include Deckers – Duplicity, the new and first expansion for Deckers, even if we’re definitely gonna get it since the list is just for core games.

Not about SPIEL, but some updates regarding where we’re at now: we’re currently playing and trying out the highest difficulties of Forbidden Jungle and finishing all the scenarios of Voidfall. We will be posting a new review after a couple of days. Please keep your eyes peeled!

If there are some games at SPIEL that you would like us to try/consider more, leave a comment down below. The link to the list of games is right here.

Image Sources:

The Slasher
Kinsokuchi
Mission Amazonia
Potemkin Villages
The Frozen Passage
Aridnyk
Bandido Alcatraz (10th Anniversary Edition)
Flixo
Spirits of Valenor
Yami

The post Our must-have 2-player co-op games at Spiel 2026 appeared first on Schmeeples.

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By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: bought the game, used the 4E Rulebook, beat all the scenarios

On a recent trip to Belgium, we spontaneously decided to visit a local board game shop. While we thought that most games there would be in French and only one of us can read French, we hoped to find something that’s not language dependent. Imagine our surprise when we saw some copies of the French version of Eternal Decks. This game had been on our radar for a while, even though we thought it would be difficult to get our hands on it. When we returned home, we were very eager to start playing.

The setup and the Rulebook

Eternal Decks is a cooperative card placement game that has some communication limit and stunningly beautiful art. The initial setup for the game is not the most difficult. It doesn’t have plenty of components. It only has a cloth that serves as a player board, different sets of cards, and a few wooden tokens. But the setup isn’t the easiest eiether; we’re not sure if it has something to do with us trying to figure out which deck or set of cards is which or us looking back and forth between the English and the French rulebooks to make sure that we got the correct cards. Understanding the rules, at least for the beginner mode, was easier for us than doing all the setup as it doesn’t have complex mechanics related to the concepts in the game.

The theme and the scenarios

We both really like the theme and the campaign of eleven scenarios in Eternal Decks. It tells the story of a group of explorers travelling through the Eternal Realm to preserve the existence of life in their own world. The art style is very pretty and it has a very minimalist theme with some abstract concepts, which doesn’t mean that the game itself is abstract or not thematic. It just means that while the theme and the art are already there to help with the world building, it still requires the theater of the mind. The non-restrictiveness of the theme allowed us to craft the world based on our own subjective and shared experiences.

As for the scenarios, each of them could be played independently, but we think it’s very much worth it to play through them in order at least once. The story might be told in a minimalistic way, but it’s still a good story and the mechanics do a great job of evoking the appropriate feelings. We really felt like explorers in a strange new world, learning how it works step by step. We also noticed that each scenario teaches the skills required to overcome the challenges of the next.

It’s all about the energy, dude

No matter which scenario, each player gets Energy cards and can play them on the Field rows or the River row on the mat. The Field card on the Field row (imagine it as one of the player’s starting points in the game) provides the information as to which type of Energy card (i.e. the color and the number) is required. But all Field rows share two basic rules: it’s not permitted to play two cards of the same Energy color or the same number next to each other. To us, the Energy cards represent the energy of a specific life form that we need to provide in order to revive an Eternal of our choice. Reviving an Eternal in return provides a set of Energy cards which in turn helps us to revive other Eternals.

As if all of this were not tricky enough to navigate, the Field rows in each scenario have varying Field cards that provide additional restrictions on the cards that can be placed in the row that they affect. Early examples are the Mountain and the Cave. The Mountain requires players to placed Energy cards in ascending order, while the Cave, its mechanical opposite, demands descending order. On the higher difficulty levels some rows have a deck of Field cards so that conditions change every time an Eternal is revived.

The Eternals

Most of the Eternals in the game are based on mythical creatures found in different cultures. They’re complicated. Some may argue they are friends, but some may think of them as foes. In any case, they are essential to preserve the cycle of life in the game. While they provide Energy cards, they also afflict the players with a Curse. Mechanically, this provides additional restrictions in terms of the type of cards that can be played.

Players can choose which Eternal to revive. This choice is very often a deliciously difficult one. There are quite a few factors to take into consideration when choosing. First, it matters who does the reviving, as this is the main way to gain more cards and running out means game over. Second, every Eternal afflicts everyone with a different type of Curse, so choosing the least bad one is essential. For instance, reviving the Skeleton will forbid all twos and eights from being played to the field, which is bad if either or both of the players are very likely to have those cards. Third, especially in the later scenarios it also becomes crucial to take into account which exact cards you gain from the Eternal, as you often need very specific combinations of cards to fulfill your objectives.

But fear not the Curses! They can be lifted if you add some specific combinations of Energy cards to the River for a Jewel, which you provide to the revived Eternal of your choice.

While any Energy card can be played to the River at any time, the River is not infinite. By filling it with Energy, you can gain a River Rare card, which functions like a joker mechanically. However, these are limited and can run out. Throwing too much Energy, a non-physical object, into the River will result in a gameover. Please keep the rivers clean.

Winning and losing

The winning condition in the game is dependent on which scenario it is, even though it always involves unlocking either Stars or Keys by fulfilling various objectives. We never felt frustrated when we lost in any scenario of the game, which is something we’ve felt in other games with similar systems. We wanted to try again and again. The last time we’ve felt this way was when we were playing Slay the Spire (the video game). We experienced losing multiple times in Stage C+, one of the advanced scenarios of the game, where winning sometimes seemed impossible (it took us five times before we were able to beat this stage). What we liked about this stage is it allowed us to improve and assess our strategies, thinking that there must be a way for us to solve the impossible. It could have ended as an eternal cycle of repeated loss.

Communication

When it comes to the communication limit, we think it’s really well implemented. We think that it is almost at the same level of communication limit as Gloomhaven, where open hand and mentioning what cards you have are not allowed. If anything, there is more information that can be communicated in Eternal Decks, as there are some types of cards that can be disclosed to the other players and an ability card where players may show their cards to the others. On top of that, each player has two Communication discs in their color that they can place on spaces where they think they could play some cards. Especially by placing a token on a spot further along a row it can be possible to give significant information about the cards in your hand. This allowed us to coordinate our strategies and work together effectively.

The degree of limitation, both of verbal communication and the use of (emblematic) gestures, is also determined by which scenario it is. Some scenarios do not allow some form of communication that is typically allowed in many scenarios. This also required us to come up with a different strategy and apply some more theory of mind, where we try to observe and understand what the other person is thinking when they perform an action.

Our final thoughts

We’ve never played anything like Eternal Decks. The intriguing world-building, the colorful art and the razor-sharp mechanics combine to create an immersive and stimulating experience for both of us. The later scenarios are very engaging and challenging even if one of them requires essentially perfect play in addition to a decent dose of luck. But what we like the most is how well it plays even if it’s just the two of us.

We also like that there’s a creative mode. We tried creating our own scenario only to realize that it was imbalanced. We’re still working on it and are very excited to try it again. It also made us realize how difficult it must be to design a game for the very first time which made us respect game designers even more.

One thing that we have to say though, is while we’re ok with the structure of the Rulebook, there’s a part in the Stage E setup in the Stage Description book where the placement of the text makes it difficult to interpret whether it is within the scope of a specific set up. We were only able to figure it out by reading the rules for that scenario.

But that one small bit didn’t affect the quality of our gameplay. And we can imagine playing this game multiple times and crafting our own story each time.

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

Combined rating: 5/5

Title: Eternal Decks (2025)
Game Design: Hiroken
Artist: MUJUNSHA
Edition: French
Publishers: Tricktakers Games, Pixie Games

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By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: Bought the game, survived all the scenarios (see the combinations of scenarios and socities that we’ve tried so far here)

The heatwave in Germany was about to arrive, when we discovered and bought a game called Frostpunk: The Board Game. We were looking for a cooperative game with a complexity rating higher than Spirit Island to play at home, because going out in the scorching heat and getting grilled by the sun wasn’t something we wanted to experience. We wanted to get our minds off of the reality and escape the heat. No better way to do that than to play a highly complex board game about surviving an apocalyptic winter.

Frostpunk: The Board Game is based on the video game Frostpunk, which was inspired by the Polish novel Ice by Jacek Dukaj. Neither of us has read the novel nor played the video game, but we do like stories that are dystopian or post apocalyptic. Frostpunk is not post apocalyptic, though, as players get to experience shaping a society during the apocalypse. It’s a survival game, and the initial setup itself was already a test of our survival skills even before starting the game.

The setup, the societies, and the scenarios

It took more than 4 hours for us to do the initial set up, which included reading the rulebook (and breaks and some showers). The heat wave didn’t just slow us down physically but also mentally. It was weird for us to flip tiles depicting snow and see the snowy white expedition cards, characters wearing winter coats, and the frozen meeple trees while sweating heavily. We were both somewhat confused and immersiveness seemed to be off the table. And the game was actually off the table, as it requires more space than our table has, so we decided to play on the carpeted floor. The confusion and questioning of choices didn’t stop after setting up the game; they continued and evolved as we entered and played the game. The immersion was there, but instead of the cold setting, it was triggered by the moral choices we had to make along the way.

The game has nine scenarios, three of which are significantly more difficult than the others. Each scenario offers different conditions to determine whether our society has survived the apocalypse. Surviving also means surviving each round. A round represents a day. There are nine phases each day from the Dawn Phase to the Nighttime Phase.

The society we chose also determined how difficult it was to survive. There are six different societies to choose from which can either be played in normal or in hard difficulty. These also determine how many citizens and resources we have in the beginning. A society in this game consists of three types of citizens: children, engineers, and workers. Some societies can have an automaton, a gigantic robot, which is not considered a citizen. While a citizen meeple is equivalent to 1-4 or 1-10 citizens of its type depending on how many citizens of the corresponding type there are, an automaton meeple is equivalent to one automaton. Automatons are very strong and it is apparent that the game gives high value to technology.

As we tried different scenarios and societies, we noticed that some societies are more compatible with some scenarios than others. You may check out our record of combinations of societies and scenarios here. We also noticed that it was more difficult for us to adapt to a new society than it was to a new scenario.

Resource management: humans vs automatons

The basic resources for every society in this game are coal, wood, food, and steam cores. Some resources are easier to get than others. Civilians require plenty of resources to keep them safe. Wood is required to build shelters and other buildings. Coal keeps the generator heated. In the beginning it doesn’t take much, but over time more coal will be needed to keep everyone warm, especially after a storm hits. But heating up the generator causes stress. Having too much generator stress may cause it to break down or even blow up, which leads to a game over.

Automatons require a steam core to be built, but they don’t require much resources to use and no resources are required to maintain them as they are apparently quite sturdy, would never malfunction, and would never rebel and kill humans. We noticed that in every society in the game, it is more efficient to have more automatons than groups of civilians as they don’t require food and they don’t get sick. But we often times ended up having more civilian meeples, as we still like humans and it’s difficult to get a steam core. But mechanically we prefer automatons as they are more efficient.

Civilians lose their agency as we gain ours

We had to take turns using the available meeples to gather resources, remove snow from the vicinity, use buildings, or send a group of civilians to an expedition in the first round of the game, the Action phase. Building actions include passing a law, increasing Hope or decreasing Discontent, obtaining additional resources, removing stress from the generator, or developing new technologies.

This phase has a simple worker mechanic where only one meeple can use a building or a space to perform an action such as collecting resources and passing a law. Because there were always more actions that we wanted to do than meeples available, we had to be careful in terms of which actions to perform and tried to avoid performing cold actions as much as possible. Most of the communication between us happens in this phase. We also sometimes had to make sure not to think too much in advance as we wanted to avoid losing track as to whose turn it is.

A cold action causes an adult citizen or a child to get sick. As the number of sick civilians increases, the chance of citizens dying also increases. If the corpse marker reaches 10, we lose the game. Adding coal to the generator helps heat up the tiles and buildings so that the actions of the citizens are heated. It’s also possible to send a worker to an expedition which is not a cold action. This struck us as not very intuitive, since removing snow to reveal a tile is always a cold action yet expeditions are not. We thought maybe the group of people on the expedition has some additional equipment to help them survive, but it still leaves the question why removing snow is colder than going on an expedition far from the generator.

Michael Plower and his gang

Child meeples cannot be typically used to perform actions unless some conditions are met such as having a child citizen card, passing a specific law, and some other spoilery thing. We did our best not to pass that law. Every session we did our best to keep the children safe and comfortable. For one, the mechanics of the game are in favor of taking care of them and we also think that a good society has healthy kids. But sometimes a group of children in the game, specifically a group lead by a child named Michael Plower, who thinks he is an adult, wants to go out, help out, and look for areas with resources even after knowing full well that one of them would get sick. We couldn’t stop them.

The advisors

Each society has advisors – the role of the players. Since there’s only two of us in our game sessions, our societies had only two advisors. Each advisor has a specific ability that can only be used if a corresponding Hope is active. The game includes responsibility sheets for each advisor, which are supposed to serve as a guide for each phase and make it easier for the players to keep track of the rules by dividing and assigning responsibilities to each advisor. We didn’t find them very useful and decided to not to use them and just refer to the rulebook.

One of us mostly used the Foreman Advisor and the other advisor was chosen depending on the scenario and starting Hope we have. Each player gets an advisor card and five citizen cards. Some of the citizens are children and some of them are workers or engineers. The citizens cards each of us get to have are partially random as we draw six citizens and then choose five of them to keep.

Hope and Discontent

While Frostpunk seems to be a grimdark game, it is not, as hope is important narratively and mechanically represented as Hope. In the game, Hope is very much defined by what tendencies the society can have and what can be activated with it. The three concepts that can be active are Justice, Care, and Motivation. If the society has Motivation, the citizens are more likely to be able to work and perform actions. Having Care means people are more likely to recover when they’re sick. And having Justice may deter people from harming others or causing instability in the society. Losing all the Hope tokens on the board is another way to lose the game. Having Hope as a mechanism in this way means it represents a very distinct interpretation of what hope means.

The flipside of the coin is Discontent, which also has three concepts that can be active, representing a societies darker impulses. Roughly speaking, Greed is the mechanical reverse of Justice, Anger that of Care, and Apathy that of Motivation. Filling the Discontent track predictably also causes a gameover.

The system behind Hope

We find the mechanisms behind Hope to be very interesting and think that it has a very intriguing complexity. There’s a mixture of randomness and choice behind it. Adding Hope means either drawing a Hope token from a bag or activating a Hope token on the board. While the Hope tokens that you get are generally random, the type of Hope token that gets activated is mostly determined by choice. Hope sometimes serves as a resource to spend, as you can get opportunities to exhaust an active hope in order to cure someone, motivate someone to work again, or keep the society content or in-check. There is a degree of ludo-narrative dissonance here, as in reality hope isn’t something that you lose when you do something that has a positive consequence. Hope can also delay or stop things from spiraling out of control. For example, it may decrease the number of sick citizens and prevent them from dying, which would lead to an additional loss of Hope.

There’s plenty more to say about Hope. For instance how its disambiguation or restrictiveness leads to one of the thing it activates being questionable in context of some Morning Cards and some spoilery things. But this (the review) is not just about Hope, it is also about the hopelessness we felt despite having plenty of Hope tokens on the boards, but still not being able to finish a scenario objective. It is also about the suspense of the Morning Phase.

Morning to Dusk

During the Morning Phase we have to draw a card. The suspense comes from the possibility of drawing cards wherein no matter what you choose there’s a negative consequence. The differences between the choices are that some of the consequence may happen during the Dusk phase and some of them may happen soon, and some of them have more negative effects than the others. Not all Morning cards are like that, but it’s our least favorite phase of the day. It is mechanically interesting but practically stressful. We were just looking forward to end that phase and be able to control convince the citizens to be more productive and prevent them from being a danger to themselves.

We also find many of the laws interesting. There are two consequences for each Law and only one of them can randomly be added to the Dusk deck. We find some law consequences to be inconsistent with some possible actions in the game. Without spoiling and giving too much detail, one example is passing a specific law and building a fighting arena where citizens and even automatons were allowed to fight. We only sent automatons to the arena, but neither of the consequences of the law is aligned to what we were trying to do.

We also like the suspense from drawing a card from the Dusk deck especially after prioritizing short term gains during the Morning, knowing that the there’s a possibility that our society is going to get screwed. There are ways to set the Dusk deck in such a way that negative consequences are less likely to happen. Again, without spoiling, we’re just going to say that choices matter a lot in the game, and it gets a bit easier once you know what the consequences of your choices are.

Interaction between theme and mechanics

Despite some possible thematic inconsistencies mentioned earlier, in a game where the theme is well integrated into the mechanics, the rules of the game are still consistent as far as we’ve experienced. The concepts and how they function in the game are clear, so that the players can learn how to use them and what the potential outcomes of their choices are. This allows them to survive in a game in which there are multiple ways to lose. The goal is to survive. The theme can only go so far in terms of how it is integrated into the mechanics of the game and we think that it’s ok in this type of game; the thematic inconsistencies don’t take anything away from the excellent gameplay.

Our Final Thoughts

The heatwave is over in Germany as of this writing. We lost multiple times before we won the first time. Sadly, our first win wasn’t legitimate. We thought at first that if a citizen becomes a victim of a murder and dies, we could also decrease the number of sick citizens. Our reasoning was that maybe the killer was some psycho who kills sick people because they think they’re useless (coincidently at that time there was a news in Germany about a doctor who was found guilty of killing sick people). The game does not allow that.

We were able to have a real win. There’s a high level of satisfaction knowing that we survived all the scenarios despite having to deal with the heat and intensity of the game while consistently trying to keep the children safe. We wanted to be more critical about the game, but the annoying part is that the things that we didn’t like in the early scenarios were resolved in the advanced scenarios as if the designer, Adam Kwapiński, already knew what we wouldn’t like and also what we would like because some of the things that we did like were changed. We think that it’s a way to challenge the players’ playstyle and maybe their belief system.

We are looking forward to playing this game again in the dark cold winter of Germany and see how immersive it’s going to be.

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

Combined rating: 4.5/5

Title: Frostpunk: The Board Game (2022)
Game Design: Adam Kwapiński
Artist: Agnieszka Dabrowiecka
Rulebook: Paul Grogan
Story: Jakub Wiśniewski
Publisher: Glass Cannon Unplugged

Photos by Kaysee

The post Frostpunk: The Boardgame (2-player review) appeared first on Schmeeples.

By Kaysee and Max

August – the month when Obon and summer festivals usually happen in Japan, which means more fireworks, or hanabi as it’s called in Japanese, in Japan. We’re not in Japan this August, but it’s also summer here in Germany, which means it’s still very much the travel season now. This also means it’s the time for long train trips (at least for both of us) and so we’ve been looking for a small game to play during our travels. We already have some games that are travel friendly, but we wanted to test whether the cooperative card game Hanabi, which also happens to have won the 2013 Spiel des Jahres award, is the ultimate travel game for us.

It’s a very accessible game in terms of how easy to get a copy of it and in terms of the price. In terms of the rules, it is also very accessible. At its core, Hanabi is a set collection game. The rules for two players are the same for any number of players. Players have to assemble five stacks of five cards with five different colors in ascending order from one to five. There is, however, a big twist. The game doesn’t allow players to see their own hand, only the hand of the other player. They have to choose one of three options on each turn; they can give a hint to another player, discard a card, or play a card. Giving a hint requires turning over an unused clue token and allows the player to chose one color or one number and tell the other player which of their cards are of that color or number. We tried to use the clue tokens as efficiently as possible, as there’s only limited number of them and using them all removes the option of giving a hint for the next turn.

Discarding a card, conversely, requires turning over a used clue token and as such is the main way of gaining the ability to give more hints. The player then has to draw another card to replace the discarded one. Playing a card means selecting it and then turning it over to see whether it fits one of the existing stacks or start a new one, if it’s a one of a new color. If the card doesn’t fit, one of the three error tokens has to be turned over. If all three of them are turned over, the players lose the game. Whether the play was successful or not, the player has to draw a new card to replace the one they played.

The twist means that memory and deduction are crucial to succeed. Players need to remember the hints they were given. They can reorder their hand to help their memory, but this can backfire if the order of the cards changes frequently. Combining the limited knowledge of their own hand, that of their partners hand and the information provided by the cards that have already been played and discarded, hopefully allows the player to know which of their cards they can safely play or discard. In our experience there are plenty of times where we had to act based on incomplete information and hope that we made the right choice. In those instances, it is safer to discard than to play a card. Three mistakes while playing cards result in a gameover, mistakes while discarding just have a possibility of limiting the number of points you can achieve.

All of this means that even just selecting which action to take on your turn is an important and consequential choice. In the beginning, it’s a good idea to give some hints to the other player first, but the clue tokens run out quickly. After that, players have to choose whether to play or discard, even if they don’t have all the information they might want. We don’t think meta gaming, such as making a plan before starting, is necessary if playing with the same person. And since we are boring law abiding citizens, we do not think that house rules are necessary as long as you play with the same person and observe how frequently they use the same tactics.

Our Final Thoughts:
While we haven’t had a perfect run yet, we’ve been enjoying every game session. Hanabi really requires a lot of attention to remember all the hints you are given and to correctly make deductions. The rules might be straightforward and simple, but that doesn’t make the game easy to beat. While it doesn’t have the strongest theme much like many other filler games and it doesn’t have that much let’s-try-again-one-more-time aspect right after finishing the game session (at least for us), it is a really good co-op filler game for two players. Both of us can imagine playing this game when we get old (and hopefully not grumpy) to keep our cognitive skills intact. And given that it doesn’t require much space, we will be bringing it on future long travels.

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

Combined rating: 4/5

Title: Hanabi German Edition
Game Design: Antoine Bauza
Illustration: Antoine Bauza, Gérald Guerlais, Laura Michaud
Publisher: Cocktail Games

Photos by Kaysee

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By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: completed all the missions

The Crew (in both currently available versions) is one of those games that we kept seeing again and again at bookstores in Germany. Even though they are very reasonably priced and The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine won Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2020, we weren’t able to bring ourselves to purchase it, because at the back it says (on the German version at least) that it’s for 3-5 players with a variant for two players. The risk of not enjoying the game and wasting 11 € felt too high for us. But after we finished and enjoyed playing both The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers trick-taking games and learned that they were inspired by both versions of The Crew, we decided to take the plunge and try the second one: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, just like its predecessor The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, is a cooperative trick-taking game. Except instead of going to space, in MDS players get to be a diving team on a mission to find the mysterious continent of Mu. We have to say right off the bat that we didn’t feel like we are on a deep-sea mission. MDS is not an immersive game. Unlike the LotR trick-taking games, there is barely any connection between the mechanics and the theme.

Just like other trick-taking games, its main rules are simple. MDS has the typical four suits, just referred to by their colors, and four submarine cards that function as trumps. The first player chooses the lead card and the next player must match the suit of the lead card. If they don’t have a matching card, they can play a card of any other suit or a trump card. The player who has the highest matching card or the highest trump card wins the trick. Since MDS is a cooperative game, simply winning a trick doesn’t mean that the players have won the game. All players should work together and fulfill all the tasks and mission objectives, which might include that one player’s task is to not win any tricks.

The game has a communication limit. Once per round, before or after a trick, each player can reveal one card and place a sonar token on it to convey one of three possible facts. Those are whether that card is the highest, lowest or only card of its suit in their hand. Submarine cards cannot be revealed in this way. Later missions sometimes further restrict communication or forbid it completely.

Most missions in the 32-mission campaign simply have a difficulty number, which determines the total difficulty of the task cards drawn for this mission. While in early missions this means that often only one player will actually have a task, in later missions players regularly have two or more tasks each. In addition to the difficulty number some missions have modifiers, such as the stricter communications limit mentioned before or an optional timer. Some missions don’t have a difficulty number and simply introduce a special rule that has to be followed instead of completing tasks. In theory the difficulty steadily increases throughout the campaign, however the random drawing of the task cards can lead to combinations that are significantly harder or easier than expected. Some combinations are even impossible, which means one or more task cards have to be redrawn.

Whoever gets the four of submarines (the highest trump card) gets to play as the captain, a woman named Meg Diver. In the two player variant, we had to play as if there were three players. The “third player”, an AI called Tonoja, is controlled by the captain. Tonoja gets 14 cards, where seven of them are open and placed on top of the other seven facedown cards. Then the four of submarines is shuffled in and each of us then gets 13 cards. Being Meg Diver wasn’t easy for either of us most of the time. Much like controlling the third player in the LotR trick-taking games, being the captain and controlling Tonoja really inreases the mental load of the player in question, and it can get even more taxing for the captain as the difficulty increases. Depending on the combination of tasks drawn, this mechanic can also impact the difficulty. Still, there’s also a tension sometimes when one of us flips Tonoja’s cards which adds to the enjoyment of the game.

Our Final Thoughts:
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea may seem easy initially. But as we progressed into the missions, it became more and more difficult. Some combinations of tasks can be very difficult for two players, but the game allowed us to try a different set of tasks whenever we couldn’t win the current set of tasks, which we think makes it less frustrating. The gameplay was a lot of fun and some combination of tasks led to really intense and brain tickling moments.

We like playing games with strong themes and The MDS doesn’t have that. But it’s the type of game that we can imagine playing to kill the time or to see the highest difficulty we can beat together. It’s not the best trick-taking game for two players, but it’s also not bad. It definitely has a high replay value and considering that it was only 11 € when we bought it, we can also definitely say that it was worth it.

Kaysee’s rating: 3.5/5
Max’s rating: 3.0/5

Combined rating: 3.5/5

Title: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea (2021)
Game Design: Thomas Sing
Illustration: Marco Armbruster
Publisher: KOSMOS

Photos by Kaysee

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By Kaysee and Max

It’s our first time to attend an online conference about analog games. And we definitely learned a lot from it. The conference lasted for two days from July 15-16th 2026. The theme of Generation Analog Games 2026 is Green. We both love green. We both associate the color green with the environment and nature. The word “Green” is also associated with social progressiveness in Germany. But the color green in analog games, as Gen Analog says, could also signify toxin or poison and greed. Many of the topics in the conference discuss environmental themes and their history in board games and how materials and environmental themes affect players’ experience.

We weren’t able to attend all of the presentations and sessions, but here’s the list of ones that we did:

• How Green is Green Play? Gamewashing in Analog Board Games by Jérome Legrix-Pagès
• Green Narratives in Climate Change Board Games: Green Reformist, Green Radical, or Greenwashing by Lynda Dunlop and Prasad Sandbhor
• Plastic Dystopia: Ideas Towards More Sustainable Miniaturing Practices by Aasa Timonen
• Between Cozy and Cutthroat: Finding Nature in Analog Games by Alenda Y. Chang
• Play that Matters: The Role of Board Games’ Materiality in Shaping Environmental Messages by Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin
• Acid Green Games: Psychedelic Solarpunk Tripping Toward Ecological Attunement by Kathleen Morrissey and Samin Shahriar Tokey
• The Greening of the Tabletop: The Evolution of Environmental Board Games by William P Jennings and Katelyn E Jennings
• From Green Player to Model Reader: Re-Greening the Experienced Player in Pax Pamir by Corey Wesley
• Red and Green: Climate Change Games During the Cold War by Samuel Pizelo
• Daybreak: A Possitopian Game to Imagine Post-Capitalist Futures by Matteo Menapace

Some of the topics on the list stood out more than others for each of us. You’ll find our individual thoughts below.

Kaysee:
What I really like about the conference is it’s free and online, which makes it accessible to many. I also like this year’s conference theme “Green” as Max and I have just finished playing Daybreak and Earthborne Rangers this year. Both games used sustainable materials for their components and have environmental themes except that they are mechanically different and the former is more realistic and accessible than the latter. We both enjoyed playing them, so it’s really good to have not just a deeper understanding of such games, but also of board games in general.

I’ve always been fascinated by different theories of action (i.e. agency) and meaning, so Corey Wesley’s presentation stood out to me the most. The concept of Re-greening from the presentation by Corey Wesley made me think a lot. I’ve read about Pax Pamir a couple of times on some board game forums before but never really got the chance to play it. Corey Wesley used it to demonstrate how a board game can epistemically affect an actual player. He borrows the concept of a Model Reader from Umberto Eco and applies it to what he calls a Model Player. A Model Player, as opposed to an Actual Player, is a hypothetical player of a game where the hypothetical player is expected to have some level of competency and capability to infer some meaning from the game.

I also find Jérome Legrix-Pagès’ presentation very interesting. He claims that a game can be a part of a “transformative event”. An event, or a play, is dependent on the player as the player infers some meaning to the rules or mechanics. In games with an environmental theme where the mechanics are very much in line with the theme, a player in the event of playing may play in such a way to preserve the environment. However, the question still remains whether the player’s action in the play would extend in Praxis or what Legrix-Pagès calls the Praxis Gap.

The papers from Legrix-Pagès and Wesley haven’t been published as of this writing, but I’m looking forward to reading them. I’m really grateful for Gen Analog Games for making it possible for me to discover such theories about game design.

Max:
The main aspects that I appreciate about the conference are the diversity of approaches to studying games and the historical information provided by some of the presenters. Some of the approaches focused mainly on empirical research, both quantitative as well as qualitative. Others took more philosophical or historical viewpoints. As someone who has an academic background and a big fan of games, I certainly enjoyed my time attending. I also think that the choice of theme is an excellent one.

Among the more theoretical talks, I particularly liked the keynote by Alenda Chang discussing the cozy/cutthroat dichotomy in depictions of nature in games. While she spent more time on the cozy side of things, one observation about the cutthroat side stuck with me. It was that in games which are meant to educate about nature or the environment in general and especially the climate crisis, it might be appropriate to highlight the cutthroat aspects of nature. Another interesting observation – this time on the cozy side – was that cozy games set in nature settings are unusual, insofar as one of the most frequent themes in those games is domesticity. In a way, domesticity can be seen as diametrically opposed to the wildness of nature.

The most interesting historical presentation was the one about climate change games during the cold war by Samuel Pizelo. It was another reminder that the fact of climate change – if not all the details of its’ progression – has been established scientifically for a long time. However, the reason I liked this talk is that it shone a light on a type of game that’s different from the commercial board games discussed by most of the other speakers. This being serious games that were designed explicitly as research tools as opposed to being educational or fun. It was quite fascinating to learn how (partially) analog games were used to help simulate potential future developments at a time where computational resources were still quite limited compared to today.

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By Kaysee and Max

We bought Daybreak, which is called e-Mission in German (the copy that we used for this review), a few days after Earth day. We wanted to have a game that we could play on Earth day every year. On top of it being a Kennerspiel des Jahres (a Kennerspiel is in the middle of a family game and an expert game in terms of complexity) in 2024, we learned that it has information about some real life projects and initiatives for addressing the climate crisis. And the game is not just about managing the climate crisis thematically, but mechanically it’s also a crisis management cooperative board game with some survival elements.

The setup is not too complicated. Each player chooses and represents one of the World Powers (Europe, China, the US, and the Majority World). They get the corresponding player board, put some markers on the main and player boards, and shuffle the three decks of cards. For our first session, one of us chose China and the other the US. This combination is considered the standard mode for two players. The most involved bit of setup is adding the correct Emissions markers and Energy type to the player boards, as each World Power has its own specific starting configuration. Increasing the difficulty by adding individual or global challenges shouldn’t affect the speed of setup that much. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes even for beginners.

The game has a maximum of six rounds, which means the playing time is always going to be similar. Each round consists of five stages. The first is the Global stage, where players draw the Crisis cards for the round and two Global Project cards. To begin with the number of Crises is three. As the temperature increases over the course of the game, so does that number. One Crisis starts face-up each round. This allowed us to prepare for or potentially mitigate its effects. After drawing two Global Project cards, players get to choose which one they would potentially activate. Global Projects benefit all World Powers, so our choice was dependent on what starting Local Projects we both have. One of the things that we like about the Global Projects is they encourage interaction between players as some Global Projects allow players to trade with each other and help each other in some other ways.

We find the next stage, the Local Project stage, to be the most exciting stage, during which players draw and use Local Project cards. Each player starts with five Local Projects depending on their chosen World Power. But in subsequent rounds all the World Powers draw from the same Local Project deck. There’s plenty of different Local Project cards in the deck which makes it possible to construct different sets of Local Project cards each session. This where we prepare for the possible crises to come and the Forecast Crisis (the Crisis card faced up).

Unlike Global Projects, active Local Projects only affect the World Power that has them. Players don’t need to take turns to use a Local Project card; they can do it simultaneously and each player’s hand and board are open. They can use the effects of those projects, which generally either have a limited number of uses per round or require another Local Project card in hand to be discarded per use. They can also be used to modify active Local Projects in two ways: they can be played on top to change the effect or under an existing project to add their symbols to it. Later Local Projects often require a specific number of symbols to be used or to gain additional uses. We also made full use of Daybreak’s lack of communication limit at this stage and talked about our strategies extensively. Depending on which Global Project is active, a player can give some of their cards to another player during this stage, so we think that talking about which card to use is crucial.

We tried to ensure that our societies meet their energy demands before we reach the next stage – the Emissions stage. At the Emissions stage, players first check whether they are generating enough energy for their societies’ needs. If they don’t, they will gain some Communities in Crisis markers, which can reduce the number of cards drawn in the project phase or even lead to a game over, if they accumulate too many.

All the Carbon (Emissions and Dirty Energy combined) caused by the World Powers is then added up. Luckily, Trees and Oceans (and potentially Direct Air Capture) absorb as much of the carbon as they can. The more Trees, Oceans and DAC you have, the more Carbon is absorbed. We find that increasing Carbon absorption is quite difficult to do. But being able to sequester all the Carbon, which is called Drawdown, is necessary to win the game.

Any leftover Carbon is then added to the Thermometer. If a number of spaces equal to the number of players, two in our case, on that track is filled, a Temperature Band is added to show that the global temperature has increased by 0.1 degrees Celsius. If the global temperature increases by 2.0 degrees Celsius, the game is lost.

The number of Temperature Bands on the board influences the next stage, which is the Crisis stage. Now, a player has to roll the Planetary Effects die a number of times determined by the temperature level. Based on the results, various markers advance along their respective tracks, causing negative effects when they reach a tipping point. E.g. the acidification of the oceans can limit their ability to absorb Carbon, while melting permafrost can cause increased Carbon. We are not huge fans of this mechanic. We think that if there’s a die roll, there should be significantly different outcomes. In Daybreak, five of the six outcomes are just very similar as they all slightly accelerate the increase of global temperature.

After applying these effects, it’s time to resolve the Crisis cards drawn at the beginning of the round. These can either affect all players or just one player. Most of them have instant effects, but some stick around and cause continuous problems until dealt with. There are ways to flip and reveal a Crisis card during the Local Project stage, but this is dependent on which Local Project card a player gets and it is very rare. We really like this stage, as it’s the most suspenseful stage. Many things may happen during this stage that are beyond our control. It is, for instance, still possible to lose during this stage even if you have achieved a Drawdown, since the effects caused by some Crisis cards can increase the number of Communities in Crisis markers. But it doesn’t mean that our choices didn’t matter. The chances of losing at this stage can be reduced by dealing with emissions or adding initiatives during the Local Project stage.

The final stage, the quickest stage of the round, is the Growth stage. Players simply check whether they have won and, if they haven’t, advance the round marker and increase their societies energy needs. There’s only six rounds, so not winning before or in the 6th round means you lose the game. This stage shows that there is an element of survivability in this game; even if all Carbon is successfully absorbed and Drawdown reached, all World Powers still need to survive the Crises. We really like that there are different ways to achieve that by reducing the Emissions and Dirty Energy, by adding more Carbon absorbers if possible, or by doing both.

After winning in our first playthrough, we realized that Daybreak isn’t as easy as we initially thought. We chose Europe and the Majority World in our second playthrough and added a challenge card to increase the difficulty. We lost. It required more careful planning, making sure that we get to reduce as much Carbon as possible and not get screwed by at least the Forecast Crisis. We tried again and won the second time and it was a rewarding win. The different ways that things could end up makes it more exciting. It would have been nice though if there were more World Powers to choose from and not have all the countries that are not China, the US, and in Europe all grouped as the Majority World.

Our Final Thoughts:
Daybreak gives us the opportunity to play as World Powers and consider what actions we could do to mitigate climate change while also thinking of different ways to survive. The different possible ways to solve the issue and different unpredictable ways things may end up make the game more realistic and also more replayable. Although the excitement and motivation to start playing it again aren’t always there (we have plenty of board games so it’s competing against the others in terms of attention), the excitement has so far never failed to exist during each game session, where the thrill that we get from things beyond our control is in balance with the excitement of performing an action, knowing that our choices still do matter in the game each time. We both agree and think that this game is definitely worthy of the Kennerspiel des Jahres award. And we think it plays well for two players.

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

Combined rating: 4/5

Title: e-Mission
Game Design: Matt Leacock & Matteo Menapace
Illustration: Mads Berg
Publisher: CMYK, Schmidt Spiele

Photos by Kaysee

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By Kaysee

Conflict in analog games such as board and card games is very common, as these games are mostly competitive. Conflict in competitive games is something that is expected and accepted as long as it happens within the game. In Netrunner (a competitive asymmetric deck-buildung game), for instance, one player, the corp, may try to outwit their opponent, the runner, by making them believe that they’re vulnerable while placing a trap to achieve their win condition. There’s a conflict between the runner and the corp, yet this conflict is part of the theme and the mechanic. It is part of the game, and it is expected that all players have agreed to it as part of a contract, generally unspoken, upon entering the game world.

But there’s another type of conflict that sometimes happens in competitive games. Although players know that conflict is part of the game, some players don’t like competing against each other since losing does not give as much pleasure as winning. Even in competitive analog games that are less confrontational and where the winner is only decided after everyone has achieved a common objective and the victory points are calculated at the end of the game, some people may find that one person winning still makes them feel uncomfortable. The conflict then extends from the game out to the real world, where conflict in this case may be a type of uneasiness within themselves or a reaction caused by expressing this uneasiness to other players. It is understandable if some would prefer to play cooperative games to avoid this.

Cooperative games allow players to win together by achieving a common objective. Conflict between players is neither expected nor encouraged in this world[1]. Even in co-op games where cooperation is deliberately made difficult, i.e., games where communication is forbidden, conflict is still not part of the world. Since a type of conflict may stem from structural conflict in a competitive game, it seems intuitive to think that playing co-op games wouldn’t trigger conflict outside the game world. Yet there have been reports where some co-op games cause undesirable behavior from players [2]. For instance, some players do not enjoy the co-op game Pandemic because its mechanics allow for something called alpha gaming.

Alpha gaming (also called quarterbacking) is when a player makes all the decisions for the other players without their willful consent and where those players who are not the alpha gamer feel irritated due to their autonomy to decide during the game being taken away from them. This frequently happens in games where there is no or very little communication limit. It must be said, however, that the mechanics of such co-op games do not require a player to be the alpha gamer; it just makes it possible. The conflict due to alpha gaming is not a result of a structural conflict that is expected in competitive games, it results from the individual not knowing or complying with what the other players prefer and from the mechanism that makes it possible.

The type of conflict that may arise from a competitive game world and the conflict that is triggered by a cooperative game world may be different from each other due to the difference in mechanics. This shows how much game design can affect how players behave. It also shows that just because a game is cooperative it doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to be conflict free. That said, it shouldn’t be assumed that conflict resulting from a co-op game is purely the game design’s fault as not every group who plays co-op games such as Pandemic has an alpha gamer. I would argue that it’s a combination of design and the individual, especially if it’s their first time playing this type of game, but that’s for another post.

In any case, no matter what type of mechanics a game has, it is ideal to be able to communicate and come to a clear (or as clear as possible) agreement about how everyone wants the game session to be and to be kind and respectful of each other if some unexpected conflicts arise.

[1] When I use the phrase “cooperative games” or “co-op games” in this article, I use it to refer to purely cooperative card and board games, which excludes semi-cooperative card and board games.
[2] These are reports from the subreddit r/boardgames and BoardGameGeek. There’s also a scientific article written by Josh Aaron Miller (2021) about Quarterbacking.

Many thanks to Max for proofreading.

Photos by Kaysee

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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.

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: 4.0/5

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

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By Kaysee

Cooperative card and board games are the kind of card and 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 card and 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 card and 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.

Photos by Kaysee

The post What co-op? Why co-op? appeared first on Schmeeples.

By Kaysee and Max

For the German review please visit Der Herr der Ringe: Die zwei Türme – Das Stichspiel (2-Spieler-Rezension).

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 The Two Towers – Trick-Taking Game (2-player review) 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

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