Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game Review
Transcript
Hey everybody, welcome to Drive-Through 88. Today we're going to talk about Lord of the Rings uh Fellowship of the Ring. This is a one to four player solo trick- takingaking game which has gotten a lot of buzz over the last uh couple of months and uh as well as in my my own group. Um so I will show you this. It's basically the first of a trilogy. Uh so there's going to be three games based on the three different books or movies and this is obviously covering the first book/mov. And it is very akin to something like the crew which I had a brain fart and forgot the name of the game which I have sitting right behind me. Um it's like that. So you'll have you know hand of cards and you have different rules for winning the trick.
So it's not just like you know collect sets and score points. It's you know so and so has to go out at certain orders or get certain cards or get certain number of tricks. So it's cooperative or solo in the case of this game. and you're kind of playing through the journey of I should stop saying movie because it's more like the book because it's got more stuff in here that's not in the movie. So, it's really based on the book and I think the artwork and everything in here uh which is fantastic by the way. Really, really good artwork and just overall graphic design is it's astonishing. It's really good, but it's more bookish. It doesn't feel like movie. Obviously, there's no movie stills or anything, but it feels more like it's kind of more based on the book. And uh and I bet you if I looked at the license or something, it would probably say based on the book and not on the movie. Uh but yeah, let's go down to the table. I'll talk about the solo mode. I'll talk about, you know, playing with other players and that kind of stuff. And then I'll come back and tell you what I think. Okay, so here's the box. Just want to show you the box a little bit. Nice cool flashy cover. And then you've got these sort of compartments um which you have. So you have some basic stuff in here. Once you kind of do the first game which is outlined in here how to play then you're going to move through uh different chapters and there is 18 chapters uh in the game and it has this nice little thing so you can kind of have like a working sort of deck of cards as you get more unlocks and stuff like that but it's pretty easy to kind of set back up and there is a game mode which I have not yet played kind of once you finish all 12 chapters or even beforehand if you want you can just kind of have like a never- ending mode that you could just
keep playing. Although, the reason I haven't played it is because I think I would go back through the game again in chapters. And I've played this solo. I've played it with people and, you know, different groups and uh I I like just kind of starting over. We played it uh I don't know, it was probably two weeks ago now, but we just like ah let's just set up from the beginning. And I played it with everybody else had not played it except for me. And it was great. I loved it. They had they loved it because it was their first time and I was like this is really cool and I will say the difficulty does go up u as you go through the chapters. I would say there's not anything that has been like some of the scenarios in the crew are just like wantingly hard. Um nothing in here I don't think has really seemed that hard, but there's been ones that have been difficult and we've lost and stuff um a bunch of times. So let me just grab some random cards here. Hang on a sec here. Here, I'll grab one sort of at the beginning here. This is chapter 7. So, it's a little ways in. I don't there's nothing really to spoil, but you know, I don't want to spoil all the mechanics and stuff. So, this tells you some characters to use. Let's take a look here. So, you have some characters there. You have a threat, and then victory is short, which is just finish all chosen characters. Now, there's a few ways to do this, and there's like a little bit of a story thing here on the backs of these, which is cool. So, the writers are There we go. So this is an interesting deck of cards here which will come out and these will be used in various different ways. So it's it's
just you know 1 2 3 4. So this will kind of randomize some of the goals of the scenario. And then you've also got here different characters that you can use like so. And then some at the bottom here that you know you've gone through the story's kind of moved past them. And these will all have different wind conditions here. you. Now, you're always going to have usually, not always, Frodo here. So, Froto's win condition is win two or more ring cards. The player dealt the one ring becomes Frodo. And so, your first several games will be like that where you'll have these characters out. And then you'll get dealt your hand of cards. So, we'll have a hand of cards here. And then you have these different suits here.
and you're going to have the one ring card in here somewhere. Uh, of course I had to shuffle in with some alternate cards. Um, so you're going to do that and then the players will have a draft of characters. Now, the C chapter rules will sometimes tell you who you must pick. So you can see they have the little asterisk next to them. So you must pick at least Mr. Underh Hill and Barlaman Butterbear, but then you get a choice here of Sam, Mary, or Pippen for the others. These will be available in a display here to choose. And then you've basically got to satisfy each of the conditions and you win the game. Now, sometimes the chapter will say go back through and then replay it and then some of the characters that weren't chosen, you've now got to win it with them. So, you got to win it multiple times to get through. And I think honestly you having played this enough, I would kind of be in the mode of like let's just do that anyway. even for the beginning scenarios where it's like, "Oh, let's do everything." So, we make sure we win with all the characters just to add some, you know, some playability to the game. Uh, just for fun, you know, and so what happens is players will be dealt these hand of cards. Um, then you will lead and then you'll collect tricks like you would a normal trick taking game.
So, the highest, you know, value of whatever the lead card was, whatever that suit was is going to be the winner. There is no trump. You' think, "Oh, the ring cards are trump." They're not trump. The twist with that is is you have these tokens actually. So you have these tokens, which I'll explain, plus this ring token. So you give this to the Froto player or whoever. And it's by default it's off. So which means you can't play ring cards. The only way you can play ring cards is if somebody does not have the suit that was led. So, if somebody doesn't have a hill, then they can slough off a ring card. Once that happens, then the ring cards are activated. Now, players may lead with a ring card. And there's only rings going up to five. The rest of these, I believe, go up to eight. And uh yeah, so that's the little wrinkle there. Very simple wrinkle. Uh these tokens here are used to kind of mark a player's character. So if we know that they fulfilled that condition and um you know there's nothing that will happen later in the hand that will break that you can mark that. So it's kind of a nice little visual indicator that like we don't have to worry about satisfying Billy's character's condition like that. And then also I'm going shuffle these in but these like sometimes they'll add new like a whole new suit.
These are forest cards. These will get added in. There's new uh threat decks that will come in like there's spiders. There's a river suit. You'll get items and stuff like that which will kind of work like character cards. You'll get updated versions of character cards which you can kind of see there. Uh and then it'll kind of just sort of tell the story um as it moves along. Now, the solo mode, which I have also played, is actually pretty cool because what you do is you'll have your four characters. Let's just do like this here randomly like that. You still have the abilities that you have to satisfy for the conditions. And then you'll deal out, just do this a little bit randomly, four cards to each player like that. It's very simple and it's actually very easy compared to playing with players just because obviously you can see you can't see everybody's whole hand. As you can see, you don't have a full hand, but after everybody's played a card, you've assigned the trick to, you know, one of the characters, let's say, then you deal out more cards and so on. And so, you can see not the full hand right away, you know, it's kind of like in progress. So, you you still have some randomization with stuff coming out the deck, but it it works pretty well.
And I will say, don't get discouraged cuz the first several scenarios are pretty easy. And it's also a little less interesting because well, let's talk about it in the review, but I like it generally, but we'll come back to it. There's a couple other mechanics where you will like bury a card um in uh in the lost pile there, and then that may go to a particular character cuz there'll be an uneven number of cards dealt. One will go there. Then you can also exchange cards. Um, and that will be dictated on these different characters like, oh, you know, Sam and Pippen can trade cards or Froto and Gandalf can trade cards. And so that's a little exchange action that can happen between those characters. And that's kind of driven by whatever their win condition is. And it'll be like, you know, win the last three tricks, win the first two tricks, or, you know, win exactly one trick or win collect all the ring cards or five of the ring cards and all those different things. So, the exchange options will kind of vary based on that. And like I said, the characters will get updated as the quest kind of moves along there. But that's the general uh sort of rules of the game.
Okay. So, that was the Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring tricktaking game. That's the actual title. Um, let's just jump into my uh review pillars here. Uh, what does the box say for the time? I don't know what that is. Hang on. Oh, says 20 minutes. I think that's probably right. I was going to say half hour. Um, but yeah, you can definitely have some tricks that you are playing and you're like, we are going to lose, so let's reshuffle. And that could probably take 15 minutes. Um, and that happens with any trick- taking game, especially our our crew has played a lot of the crew. And we play a lot of trick- taking games in general, competitive and co-op. And, uh, trick- taking is like right up our alley. We play them quite a bit. And, yeah, so we will know. I'm just saying like we're a little seasoned and we'll be like, that's not working.
And I'm just going to say I won't say his I attempted to say his real name, but I'm just guess just going to call him Billy. Let's say because we know Billy's at the table and uh sorry for that inside joke thing, but uh yeah. So anyway, when we're playing with Billy, chances are we're going to lose. All right. So anyway, you know, so 20 minutes, half an hour. That's a good good take on it. Uh player count. I Okay, I prefer it with players. Let's make sure that's clear. But I really do like the solo game of this. It is a nice sort of uh how do I how do I couch the experience? It's like playing solitaire. And you're like, "What do you mean, Joel? You just said you played solo. You're playing a solitire." No, I mean solitaire the card game. The Klondike Solitaire card game you play on your computer all the time. Or at least you used to like in the '9s. I don't know if people do that anymore, but um you know, well, I used to play it in person. I remember my grandpa teaching me solitire when I was like probably eight or something. And this gives that same sort of vibe cuz you got those like little rows of cards and you're kind of taking the tricks and putting them at the top, you know, in solitire when you have the different little piles and then you do the, you know, the runs up top, ace through king. And so you're kind of putting the tricks up there and and you're kind of at the whim a little bit of the deck and it's like it's baked in when you play solitire. I don't know. I haven't studied the game, but I think basically you've baked in your win or loss unless
you miss something, you know. And so this is kind of like that, but not quite. There's some probabilistic stuff that's going on because you don't you don't like baked in your selection of cards. Although the order of the deck anyway, it's a little bit baked in, which is where it kind of softens the edge where I'm like, there's not a way a lot of ways to kind of mitigate stuff, but you can because if you you're doing it, you're playing tricks in a way that you should be playing them. Think about how you would play them in a multiplayer game about who takes what, and you have a very sort of limited selection of information. Not perfect information because it would just win every time probably. Although I could I think I'd be curious. There probably a way if you deal trick- taking games that you're like, "Okay, we lost." If you somehow go down, there's probably some situations like that, but there's the at least the illusion of mitigation based on how you play the cards, which is all I need.
That is neat illusion. Um, but yeah, so my point with that is is that I really do like single player game. Um, I prefer it with players just for the banter, the talking, you know, talking through things sematically. It just and the trick- taking aspect, it really works. But I would I recommend it. So, if you just were to play it solo, 100% I would. I think it's a lot a lot of fun. And this will lead me into my sort of last pillar. What is this game like? Obviously, it's a lot like The Crew and, you know, any other kind of trick- taking game that you can imagine. Mostly The Crew because of the co-op nature of it. And there's another solo trick taking game which I've not played. It's not Fox in the Forest. I think that's a two-player game. Oh, there's I need to go look it up. I'll put it maybe I'll do a little subtitle thing um once I remember what it is. That one looks cool. It's a different mechanic that one uh that I that's going to be at the bottom of the screen here than this one.
So, I'm interested to try that one to see which one I kind of like better. Um, but because of the campaign of this, I think I would much rather play this than the crew. And I've got both crews, the undersea one and the outer space one. And I really like those. I'm not going to get rid of it. I've got them both in one box combined. It's not taking up a lot of space, you know, and I think there'll still be opportunity to play the crew, you know, further down the road in life. And uh this though because of the campaign and because we played a lot of the crew. I don't want to say we've played every possible scenario in the crew, but well some people in my group probably have but I've played quite a bit of them. Um, but the thing about this is is arguably there are I don't know there's more variety in the crew cuz there's just more overall scenarios and a lot of things but a lot of them get really kind of kerogginly mechanical or something but be and without really much benefit to like the overall experience benefit to like the brain cells being fired. and lost never to be re regained again. Cuz some of the crew ones, like I said, are just super tricky. A handful of them. Um, but this one, I don't know. Somehow it tells a story. Somehow it works. And there's enough sort of fun trying to figure out
the puzzle of putting the trick together so everybody can fulfill their goals that it works on the right amount of weight and depth and and and mental taxation and all that stuff. And because you are playing a story like you can play a lot of crew games back to back to back, but then it becomes very like matrixy numbers flying through the air which is great. Cool. But this one is like you still get that bit of it, but then you're traveling along. You're like, "Oh, what?" You open the box and then the next these characters come out. Oh, I remember this guy from the story and that and so and it somehow kind of works a little bit very lightly kind of kicks you like a little story sort of very briefly and then kicks you into the game. And just having that game experience kind of punctuated with that little sort of thematic awesome looking artwork. The artwork in this is fantastic. It just makes the journey through all of these different scenarios way cooler and more pleasant. And that's really neat. And I'm like, God, this is how is this as good as it is. And it's not really, it's basically The Crew, you know, or that style. I know there's been other games like The Crew, but because of the presentation, because of how it rolls out the scenarios, because of the artwork, because of the little different and the characters like change, you know, and you splash in little other elements, which which is not like The Crew really because you have some of these extra decks of cards and threats and different suits and stuff that come into play. Um, and again that it's a
it's a very visually expressive varied thing. So it pulls you into the game that way with the with the graphics, you know what I mean? With the artwork and uh yeah, so it's great. I recommend this for just about anybody. And it will kind of slowboat you in there. So if you're not really big on the trick taking games, the uh earlier scenarios are definitely easier and so that'll kind of slow roll you in. Now, if you lose the first scenario, don't feel bad because I've lost the first scenario a couple of times. And it's just going to happen. Like I said, sometimes it's just kind of baked into how the cards are dealt and the decisions players make, Billy, that make you lose the scenario. And so, yeah, but and then they do they do definitely get progressively harder. And I talked a little about some of the variants you could kind of play with.
And there's some more variants in the book I didn't talk about, but um I talked through some of those in the walkthrough. So, it gives you, you know, it's a toolkit kind of thing, even though it's like a, you know, quest set of missions. When you're done, I've not played the like whatever the never- ending scenario, whatever that is, because when I'm done, like I'll just play through it again. It's things great. And you can play through like on the hard mode like I was talking about, and that would be really cool. So, there's a lot of bang for your buck in this little little box here. So, take a look. Thanks, everybody.