Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game ►►► This had to be the Game for Tolkien Day! (March 25th)
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Transcript
hey everybody today R runs through the Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring trick-taking game but before we begin please turn on your subtitles to the klling on channel so that when I have an oops moment you'll know about it hey everybody Kimberly here and I'm really excited to run through a couple chapters yes a couple chapters of The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring trick taking game what a mouthful but boy does this box have a lot packed in here so yes this is a Ka operative Quest through Middle Earth and happy tolking day to those of you who know that this is a special day to celebrate tolking and the lore and the wonderful stories and characters that are in The Lord of the Rings so this is your game for this special day now if you want to hear my final thoughts about this trick- taking game then you can just jump ahead in the chapter system to the end to my final thoughts you can find that uh time stamp in the description below as well let's jump into it so the very first thing you're going to do is you are simply going to grab the cards that are available in the box that do not have a secret compartment let me show you the box itself this is really really well organized this is where I took out all the cards that you see on the table right here you've got this great little ribbon to pull it up with then you've got part one here says no admittance except on party business proceed here after chapter one which we are going to take a look at chapter 1 right now as an entry game and then I'm going to jump ahead to one of the yes maybe some small
spoilers a later chapter that kind of shows you the way the game grows part two keep it secret keep it safe proceed here after chapter 12 so there are 12 chapters total in the base game and then yes the game continues all the way through to 18 and you keep getting characters and missions and really cool items to use so let's just see what's in here so the first step you do is you're going to get that chapter card and you're going to read the chapter card so let's read it chapter 1 when Mr Bilbo baggin of bagend announced that he would shortly be celebrating his 111st birthday with a party of special magnificence since there was much talk and excitement in hobbiton I'm doing my best let's flip it over and then it says here chapter one a long expected party now you'll see here the characters that are going on this journey there are only certain characters that take part in every chapter and this does follow the story of The Lord of the Rings as it goes with the characters so we start with froto and Bilbo who have an asterisk next to them because they are required for every game whether it's a solo a two-player a three- player or a four player Gandalf and Pippen can be selected as well and in a four-player game you're going to have all four of those characters in that particular chapter now the other thing to note here is the victory conditions short mean means that it will take one round of
playing where you deal out all of the cards to players and you will try to complete every single character's goal finish all chosen characters so once we do that then we win the chapter and move on to the next chapter if it says long it's going to take more than one round of dealing cards to successfully complete many characters that you cannot accomplish in just one round so this is going to be our our chapter one card and we're going to keep it right there and you're going to put these little discoms these are going to be um the the ones that you have to pick you'll put one of these on there and you'll keep the amount of these for the amount of players you have and once you have accomplished your character's goal in the middle of the game you'll place your marker on them to show that you have completed their goal to let everyone else know okay now we can really focus on maybe somebody else so that's why I've got three of these discs out here um but this is froto that's Bilbo they're required to be taken so what we're going to do is we're just going to shuffle up the cards but before I shuffle and deal out 12 cards to every player and one lost card I just want to show you what the cards look like so this is going to be the mountain uh suit and you have a mountain icon and they are labeled one to8 this is the forest card just so happens to be another two but it says Forest down here and it has has a little leaf and then it's a two so again one to eight in this
suit here is a hill card the hill card is the trickiest cuz it actually just has this wooden Shield to me it looks like a wooden Shield um but it doesn't look like a hill so Hill cards are these kind of golden ones and then lastly we've got aha Shadow cards Shadow cards have a little eye of Sauron I believe and it says Shadow and again one to eight and then there is one final suit which is the ring suit the ring suit only goes one to five and it says ring you've got the ring here and you'll have your number in the corner that's all that's in here so let's Shuffle it up and we're going to deal out those cards now I have uh set up here a two-player game and a two-player game requires that you have three hands of cards played and one is going to be in a pyramid style uh face up and so well some of it's going to be face up some of it's going to be face down and one of the two active players is going to control that particular uh player so I'm just going to get these guys oh whoops I'm going to take this back actually I do this every single time the very first card you are going to deal out is going to be the lost card so let's do this our lost card is here we're going to stick it under there just like that we'll scos it over here that's going to be a shadow six is a lost card and the lost card can be taken in some uh instan with particular characters but it also is a card that might stay out there and
no player is going to essentially have that so yeah everyone's going to get 12 and let's just say I'm playing with uh LS and uh again it's just the two of us so we are going to each get all of these cards so let's say I'm over here usually I play on the right usually LS plays on the left and we're going to make this middle deck our two-player setup so I'm going to move these cards let's move them over here for now those are my reference cards really helpful nice to have and I'm going to do this this is going to be my setup for two players so we are going to have a character each we're going to draft them but this is going to be the layout so I am going to play a card face up face down face up then I'm going to put four face down cards on top of those then I'm going to put five face up cards and that is going to be the hand of our third player so again we've got let's do their let's do them right here in the middle face up face down face up and I'm going to SC my cards over here fantastic cuz we're going to take these characters and put them in our player area here in a second then we're going to go face down face down face down face down and then lastly here we go face up face up and yes and yes and yes okay wow maybe they oo that is a lot of high value cards there all right so again this is our second player
here's LS here's me now I'm going to pretend you know that I don't know what either of my two players has me and and Lewis over here um but we are going to attempt to succeed in our goals so after we have now dealt out the cars we are going to determine who has the one which is the ring of one Whoever has the One Ring gets Frozen let's look at their card right here this is ring bearer froto the player dealt the one ring is froto you cannot exchange the One Ring card and Frodo Begins the first trick and Frodo must win four or more Rings cards and you know there are five so froto is going to have to win four of the five in a three-layer game when you are playing in a uh bigger game this is a four-player game you'll see he's got another side Wing two or more ring cards so it's a little bit easier there with more players but there are more player goals out there so it makes it a little tougher I don't see the One Ring here but it could still be hidden so I'm going to peek through my deck I've got some uh greens I've got some forests I've got some mountains boy I've got some Forest I got some mountains so I've got that shadow I've got that oh it looks like I do not have the ring so I've got four forests three mountains two Hills two shadows and a ring so that's good not again that's the three of rings so that's my hand now I don't remember I'm going to try not to oh he's
got this guy let's see here the two the four the seven okay gosh it looks like I'm going to try to separate these cuz the colors look a little much they look pretty similar to me I don't want to get the the beiges and the golds mixed together all right so some Shadows some hills some of these guys and notice no ring so that means oh boy boy looks like our looks like our third player here has the One Ring somewhere so they get froto and the player to that player's right would be Lewis is going to essentially go uh control them so froto is going to start and then it's going to go clockwise around the table so we are now going to select inter turn order and in this case that means the player to froto left so it's going to be me I'm going to look at my cards and I'm going to say do I want to take Bilbo do I want to take Gandalf do I want to take Pippen now if I take Gandalf or Pippen I am forcing uh Lewis over here to take Bilbo because Bilbo is required to play in this chapter and Bilbo needs to win three or more tricks would have been fantastic for this player to win three or more tricks with an eight of forest an eight of Hills a seven of Shadows a five of rings a six I mean like this player is just loaded so
someone's going to have a really hard time winning three or more tricks unless we play cleverly and maybe um gosh I I have nothing higher than a six and most of my cards are pretty low I'm actually going to force ls's hand to take Bilbo because I feel like I am much better at getting Pippen or Gandalf now let me show you um why so Gandalf the gry wizard it says right here win one or more tricks I can win one trick I can probably win one trick and the lot add the loss card to your hand and then I get to exchange with froo and I'll be able to exchange with any of the face up cards in this case if froto were a person then I'd be able to exchange any card I give one to them they give one to me so and it could be the one that I just gave them they could just pass right back to me but this gives me the six Shadow card and I get to exchange with Frodo Gandalf is a really really strong uh bet for me but Pippen says I win the fewest tricks and if I have nothing higher than a six maybe I'll just like Slough off and make sure that froto gets the Rings and that Lewis is going to get as Bilbo gets three or more tricks and I get to exchange with froto Sam or Mary and so I could exchange with froto still maybe I should take Pippen now if you play with someone like Pippen you have to play to the very end of the round with all of your tricks but if you accomplish all of your goals and there's
no way for them to essentially be undone like getting one or more tricks three or more tricks or getting four of the Five Rings then you can just stop in the middle of the round once you've accomplished it and move on which is actually really cool I think I want to get pipping though I don't have that much going on so I'm going to be pipping here's my hand right here and that means that Gandalf is not in the round we're going to put Gandalf over to the side and we're going to give Lewis this we're going to put this ring over here by Frodo because you can't lead with the ring card until it's broken the suit is broken into and that means someone essentially plays a ring um as a card in a particular hand all right so here's mine there's yours there's yours we're going to put those off to the side for now and now that we've got everything set up everybody has a character card we are now going to execute um the little Hammer action which is part of setup so we start with the player to the left of froto which is me and it says I exchange with froto Sam or Mary so if I want to win the fewest tricks and I want um this player to win the Rings at least four of the Rings I know there's a one in here the five is much later in the game perhaps I will start them with the well the three of rings we have to essentially play into it maybe I want to Slough off this into a hand that works with them so if I do
this then I give them maybe one of my um yeah I give them one of my shadow cards or I give them one of my Hill cards so that I have fewer cards in that suit and then I can maybe Slough it off when they start playing more of those yes let's do that um I think we'll do this guy so I'm going to give the shadow here and that's going to be the exchange and then I'm going to take this hill card back into my hand okay there we go not bad seems like a reasonable choice and that's going to be the end of Pippen's actions we're going to go to the left Bilbo says None there's no setup action and then froto just says the player with the one ring is froto you cannot exchange the One Ring card lead the first trick so if you've played trick taking games you understand that the lead player is going to play a card of a suit into the central play area and then players to the left are going to then play a card now the rules here are that you have to follow suit if you can and you follow suit let's say all three players follow in suit it's the highest number card that's going to win that hand so that's going to be winning uh essentially those tricks or winning particular or specific cards in Frodo's case so let's have Frodo Begin by playing one of these cards out and once this is revealed meaning there's nothing
covering up a card it then flips face up so let's have here's our Shadow Card let's play this card out that's going to be our player who's going to lead froto froto is here in the middle and again we're kind of going in a circle this way so froto is then going to move uh to Pippen and that was essentially Lewis's choice to do that because he is the controller of this particular character that third character again it went to the right of the first the the One Ring which is going to be froto so Louis leads out there saw perhaps picked up on the fact that I was getting rid of the Reds the shadow cards to then sift over things to Frodo decided I should probably play some of those Shadow cards which I was grateful for so I look in my hand and I have the one so I have to play this one I can't choose to play any other card because I have to follow suit so I'm going to put this down here and then I'm going to play my card out here now I'm just going to put it kind of like diagonal like this so that we can tell initial card this is going to be my card and then that's going to be Louis's card over here so he's going to pick up his deck and he's going to say I want to win tricks he sees this as an opportunity he can play the eight and win it um he could
also Slough off the two or the five and lose it to Frodo but Frodo wants the Rings there are no rings in here and again Bilbo needs to win three or more tricks and there are a lot of high value cards out here and this is one opportunity for LS as Bilbo to get one of those tricks so he's going to do this I'm going to turn my cards sideways and move him down a titch so that I can put this card sideways like this okay so maybe I'll do the same thing for me this is a hand we are going to evaluate okay the lead suit is the only suit that can win this and then 718 LS has the highest he's going to take this and put this into his player area let's put a little stack here so that we can keep track of how many once he gets to three or more he gets to put his token on there and say I've accomplished my goal I did what I wanted to do so now he is going to be the start player for the next hand he looks at these cards and he thinks I think there's a chance that we can play with this card um and he leads with this thinking okay perhaps apps this is what we were doing this seems like higher and Kim was trying to give me information but I think we're going to try this we'll see how it goes he plays with the two this player has to follow in red can't play Hill can't play Forest because there are two Shadow
cards here so let's have Shadow either a three or a four they're they're both very likely both very reasonable um okay so we're going to do this is going to be now the four this is going to be that middle character Frodo he picks it again either one of those was fine and then I look in my hand and I think yes I have successfully communicated my intent now in this game you are not allowed to talk to each other you can't say hey don't do that you can't say I've got three Hill cards you can't say I have one ring card you can say nothing this is the way you communicate in these trick-taking games is by the way that you play the way you exchange the way you lead a trick and then of course through other um other hopefully uh subtle messages and maybe card counting so now I don't have a shadow this is the perfect chance to give my ring card to Frodo so I had no I could play any of my cards but I want to play that down as my hand which means now the Rings have been broken you you can now lead with a ring if you want which is great for the froto uh character especially if they have the five meaning they lead with rings then they suck up everybody else's rings and the five wins which is cool now I haven't talked to you about any kind of trump card the Rings are not Trump cards
the only card that is a trump card in a trick taking terminology is the one of rings which is very special so when it's revealed I'll tell you more about it so that means this is the lead suit this beats it four is above two three is a Slough card and so now this trick goes here to Frodo and I'm going to keep it face up because froto needs to count the amount of ring cards so froto is going to essentially receive that as a three and now they get to start and so one of the four necessary one trick of the three tricks and I still have the fewest tricks out there which is great so now Frodo leads Frodo is going to go out there and try to I mean Frodo could possibly because it's Lewis Lewis is um oh actually Lewis can do some math Lewis looks at his has two four we know the one is here the five is out there I played my three he knows that the Rings are here here somewhere in here and there so he knows I have no more rings to Slough off and so perhaps he wants to control one of these so he can win the hand ooh cuz he wants to win three tricks he's going to try to exhaust that shadow and take advantage of it because he controls himself and he controls froto but in that case let me put his card back he doesn't lead but he is going to follow so froto leads there we
go froto is going to put their card out here again he controls it so now he's setting himself up for Success so now I am going to play next we don't reveal these cards until the end of the trick so we know that we're going to but we have to finish our trick now I know I can't play anything that's going to necessarily help I don't want to win tricks so I'm thinking it would be great to play maybe one of these cards I have two sixes I have a mountain six and I have a hill six they're my highest cards I'm just going to Slough one of these guys off and say the higher the cards that I have I don't want and I definitely don't want to start leading if I lead in green I have half of them and uh essentially I would I would be putting my team in a pickle if I had to start leading with green so hopefully I don't ever get the lead so I play and then of course now we get Louis he's going to play his his five there we go so lead suit highest number this is again a Slough card I have no more Shadows he is going to take this as another uh trick so congratulations that's two he needs one more he gets to start but first we get to take a look at these new cards let's find out there's the one there's another seven these are great Forest High cards I'm looking at thinking wow if they could just do those then they can essentially win all of those and I'm not going to win those cuz I have so many
forests wow that's really really good so now Louis is looking out there what does he want to do how can he set set up his fellow player for Success which is going to be Frodo now the ring one functions really really weird it's kind of like the only Trump and okay let me let me just tell you cuz I think I'm going to actually play it this turn I think LS is going to lead with a ring and I think he wants to lead with the four and I'll tell you why so he's going to lead with the four and he can because the rings have been broken right my player over here I played that three which opened them up so now we can play otherwise he wouldn't have been able to lead with a ring card so he leads with the the ring and then here's where it's really cool Frodo plays this card this card is the one it's got a black Banner it's different it's even like you know visually different you may choose to win this trick what this card says is when you play it down you say immediately I win this trick no matter what or I I want to play it as a one ring which may not win the trick because the four is higher than the one and normally it would just essentially go under it but it has the power of winning the whole hand so he says froto with Bilbo's
control says I want to win the hand and so I think I want to get rid of this Forest card I'm getting really scared that I might for some weird reason like become in charge and I don't want to so this means that Frodo won this trick and not only did Frodo win the trick Frodo won two more ring cards so I'm going to spay them out this way and now he's got three one away he's got one Lewis has the other I don't know that he has I think maybe possibly the two could be out here Lewis knows I don't know okay so he won that he is going to lead and he starts with what does Lewis want him to play he can play a seven and eight or an eight of the forest the hill or the forest those are the only cards that uh he can respond to and Lewis needs to win one more trick none of these are going to get him a win not a single one gosh darn it well if he knows that he's not going to win the trick let's have him lead with the one Hill that for forces this card to be played to win that forces this card to flip over and possibly give Lewis an opportunity to win with the seven uh mountains or a a seven of uh Hills which is kind of his his only option at this point well maybe not the only option oh he doesn't have a four oh oh wait let's have him play a mountain yeah let's just have him play a mountain okay
this is brilliant what am I doing LS is is he's great let's have him play that mountain because then we look out here this is not going to count these cards are not higher than the mountain because you have to play in suit so let's have him do the same thing he's going to take this eight he's going to play that which does nothing and then I look in my hand and I'm forced to play one of these cards and I say yes please I will totally uh give you this card so I put that six out there Pippen says I want to win the fewest tricks and now LS takes this as a win and he puts his little Jimmy on there and says I just got my third trick I am happy I don't have to win anymore and Pippen has none to my three and then U Frodo has two tricks so one more ring for that puppy and uh we are essentially golden end of the trick we flip this over it's an eight which would have definitely taken that seven if uh that been available so this is going to continue this is a essentially that very first game where you have Frodo Bilbo both required Pippen and then the choice of Gandalf trying to accomplish your goals um in hands and when you win a hand that is a trick and the one of rings we got to see how that worked and then this is going to be a short finish when we do successfully complete all of our goals which does require to go to the very end
we would play every single one of our cards then that's going to to get us on to chapter 2 so what I'm going to do right now is I'm just going to clean up the space and I'm going to pull out a later chapter and kind of show you the Nuance of those uh later chapters and characters so give me just a minute I'll be right back okay so here we are now I will say this has some slight spoilers but I do want to give you a taste of what's to come and just how cool the chapters are and how they really change the game and add new characters so I have jumped all the way to chapter 15 this has some really cool features so let's take a look at the card as you always read the chapter card first the night wind blew chill up the valley to meet them before them a wide gray Shadow loomed and they heard an endless rustle of leaves like poppers in the breeze lloran cried Legolas lloran we have come to the eaves of the golden wood alas that it is winter okay so this is the leaves of Lo laan we need to play with gimle Hower Ora Fin and rill now that's the same card which means legol loss unfortunately is not going to be played in a three-player game which is what I'm going to demonstrate here without the two-player variant so we're not going to have the pyramid I'm going to have three separate player character cards and you're not going to get to see one of the character cards so we need
threats which is a new feature are cards numbered one to 7 that are threats this is a short Victory finish all chosen characters and we have to give the blindfold card to gimle oh boy so here's the blindfold card this says as was agreed I shall he blindfold the eyes of gimy the dwarf The Others May walk free for a while until we come nearer to our dwellings down in idil in the angle between the waters the blindfold gimly place his cards face down into the tricks he must State the suit of his card but not the rank reveal gim's card after all characters have played cards into the trick and determine the winner of the trick normally which means that he can of course win tricks but players do not necessarily know what he is doing so we're going to give this blindfold over here to gimy and poor legal Los let's just look at this merkwood elf we don't get to play with him this turn um win a specific Forest card based on the the value of the threat card drawn and then draw a threat card exchange with gim or Aragorn so in other chapters you might have Aragorn playing and so you can essentially exchange so we're going to put legol looss over here in the pile of no people but notice that we don't have Frodo froto always is going to be the start player if froto is in the game now the person who's going to start is going to be the one Rings um except for when it says down here or a fin and rill it says lead the first trick so the player
who has the one Rings is going to start the draft but then the first trick played the first hand is going to be started by Orin and rill okay so these are the threat cards these are numbered 1 to S right we just shuffle them up everyone's going to be grabbing one this turn so we're going to set them down here and then I'm just going to give these a quick little Shuffle again want to get those guys going and we are going to deal out our three hands uh of cards to every player everyone's going to get 12 and we're going to have that one that is our lost card the five ring oh okay well hopefully it doesn't actually come into play we don't need to give the Rings to any particular player in this game froto doesn't need to earn them so losing a five ring may not be too devastating okay so here is going to be the hand um I'm going to essentially say is our unknowable hand no you're never going to see these cards I'm not going to show you these cards I'm going to keep them secret which might play into if they're gimly then you'll never you'll never really know what's going on with with their cards this is going to be lwis and then I'm going to be here on this side right here okay this is going to be fun we're going to try again I'm going to pretend like I don't know what's in everybody else's hands let's look for that one ring though okay so I've got the two I'm going to organize my cards together so I can see them a little bit
better goodness wow okay so it looks like I got Hills got tons of Shadows I've got two mountains a ring three of those forests if I draw um I don't want gimy I mean I don't think I want gimy gim's win a specific mountains card and uh I would rather win a forest card so I might be hell deer or Orin and rill so I don't have the one let's see if if LS has the one boom there we go Louis is going to start and uh let's see here let's do this now I know I said I'm not going to show you one hand but if you see two hands you essentially can do the maths on what the other hand is but boy do I I find it really pleasing I think it's really fun um to kind of play that way let's put these guys over here again I like to separate my heels from my rings they kind of it looks similar One Forest one one H Shadow card so let's have L start L is going to pick first and say does he want to win a specific mountains card based on that uh value drone on the threat card 1 to S um and then exchange with Leger Aragorn who is not in the game and he would be playing blindfold he'd be playing without telling anybody what he is essentially doing I think he wants to he's got the 876 of
mountains so let's have him be gimly he says I can totally do this I'm going to be blindfolded let's put it right there and these are his cards this is going to be his button and uh he's he's definitely pleased with that um so we're just going to do the same thing where we go around the circle this way so it's going to go to the uh left right we're going to go clockwise that's me uh and I'm going to pick so I want to pick either the forest or the forest lead the first trick or exchange with any character except gimle which means I could exchange with this person over here what do I want to do I want yeah let's do let's do this guy we'll do I want to lead the first trick do I do I want to lead the first trick nah let's do how dear all right so I'm going to be H dear March Warden right here it says win a specific Forest card based on the value of the threat card drawn draw a threat card exchange with any character except gimly this ISS me yay and then of course over here this character is going to be our Orin and rumil you can't see their cards I'm going to lean back really far ha get their cards organized you don't remember what the other cards are do you I don't think you do okay here we go Fantastic look organized they're going to start but first after we get everyone's cards we
then have to essentially follow our setup so here's our setup um we are going to start with of course the first Rings person draw threat card so this is going to be the threat is going to be a value two what this means is that gimly must win a specific mountains card based on the value two so he wants to win in a hand the two mountains then we come here draw a threat card and exchange with any character except gimle so I want to win the one mountains I don't have a one mountain or not a one mountains a one Forest if I look in my hand here I've got lots of forests and they should hopefully win the value that I want which is one and now it says I can exchange with anybody that I want and I know that this person needs to win a a specific Forest card and I have enough to win my hand so I think what I'm going to do is siphon or or kind of put over here I'm going to say just in case you don't have the eight I want to give you this card so that you can at least win the value of your threat card drawn but it's a pretty big gamble because it might actually be the six or the seven who knows so I'm going to put this card in there that this person is going to exchange with me and essentially give me one back
so let's give this BR how about this one so they're going to give me a card and they gave me the three ring now I'm curious but it goes to them they're not going to draw their card here's their threat their threat is a four we're going to put the threat card off to the side and now we have essentially all of our threats drawn we have everything set up and ready to go gimle is blindfolded which is fascinating and then we don't look at this hand so essentially you're going to be looking at my hand from here on and then watching uh these two characters play but it says here how dear Le not exchange with how dear um oh sorry orail Orin and rill also when they drew their threat card could exchange with deer specifically um and then they lead the first trick so is there something else that this person wants to give me I don't think they want well I mean let's just have them exchange here we will have this person exchange this it's the two of forests and then um I give back let's just give back this I don't think we care too much about these shadow cards so now this card's going to go here I gave them the one of Shadow they're going to start they want the four of forests so let's say they
play they play the eight Forest they're like please please either of you two have the four so we're going to go around it's going to go to lwis and Lewis is going to look at his hand and he's blindfolded he is going to Simply say he placs his card face down because that's what the blindfold says and he says I'm playing a forest card we don't know exactly what the forest value is and then I look at my hand and I say hey guess what I've got this I've got the four so I throw my card out there we look at the cards and now we reveal this LS played the three forest was led yep it says here the threat card he wanted to win was the four Forest so this is good that's the trick and we put the little button on him I already had it on him but it shouldn't have been there but now Orin and rill won their their thing they were successful they get to start the next round though and they're going to try to feed the two of mountains and then the one over here to our other players so let's do playing risky haha leads with that and then we have Lewis playing face down Lewis says
um Louis says Hills right he doesn't have a forest essentially by saying some other suit he would be forced to play in Forest if he had it and then uh I look at my hand and I think yep I'm glad I had all those forests I could play the two and win it uh or I could play the seven just because I've got it big old slam Jama super cool card we flip this over the lead suit is Forest this is the higher value and the one is the threat Forest that I wanted to win so now I am successful and I will start the next round hopefully getting Lewis or gimle his uh number two mountain card I don't have a number two mountain card but maybe if I lead low I can set up my other players to do exactly that so let's go around clockwise we don't know what uh Orin and rill have we imagine with the amount of cards let me just say this person now this is risky anytime you lead before someone can positively show you that they can take that particular card then it's risky but players can play risky it's really fun uh it can be exciting in a trick-taking game to say okay you need the two mountain this was a one that's a two please tell me you have at least one
mountain card and then LS is going to play his cards and he's going to play face down and say Mountain which then by default means yes he was definitely able to win that he won his threat two with his Mountain this was his trick he won and in three hands all successful wins so that's going to be an example of like ending the round early with success with some really cool features like the blindfold not playing with Frodo and then introducing all of these threat cards that give you a randomized goal with a particular focus on a suit so if you want to hear my final thoughts on the Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring trick-taking game stay tune cuz it's coming up right now hey everybody Kimberly here with my final thoughts on this Ka Cooperative Quest through Middle Earth this game plays 1 to 4 and every single chapter or game takes about 20 minutes sometimes less maybe sometimes a little bit longer because there are two different types of chapters that you can have you can have short chapters or long chapters and in a short chapter the victory condition requires that you play through just one round of dealing cards playing hands and winning tricks now if you have a long Victory you do that in as many times as it takes to accomplish
every single goal that is stated on your chapter card so this box is really really cool because what you do when you get the the game you've got all your Basics over here in addition to this really nice cool ring um which tells you uh whether the ring suit has been broken into or not and then you have these four little discoms that tell you whether you have accomplished your goal with your character or not and then all your cards and there's part one and part two and they're secret CU they have a little box over them and they tell you don't look in here only proceed after you've done certain things so in this game there are essentially 12 chapters that walk you through the story in The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring and you will add characters to your story you will add special items restrictions and really really cool threats and things like that but the base part of the game is you've got four different suits you've got the hill suit and there are values one to eight in all of the basic four suits but Hills is one of them Shadows is another then you've got mountains cool and then you've got forests which is again 1 through eight Rank and then of of course these are your suits then you've got these things called Rings cards and there are five of them and there is the One Ring which is the value number one and that has the only Trump quality that you'll you're
used to in a trick-taking game and so what that says is when a player plays that they can say they win it or they don't it plays as just a one ring as opposed to winning it automatically no matter what and there's also a really cool thing I mentioned earlier about breaking into the Rings suit you can't lead with they Rings card until someone essentially sloughs off a ring in a previous hand meaning they don't lead with it they play second into it and your trick-taking game is going to follow very similar rules of if someone leads with a particular suit let's say you've got Forest this is a trick that one of my characters won they lead with the forest you have to play a forest card into the area in turn order after the lead player starts if you have a for Forest card if you don't you can play a Rings card breaking into the Rings from you can't lead with rings to you can or you could play another card which is a Hills a mountains or a Shadows so you play yes you match and then you look at who has the highest value of the lead card again the one tricky thing about this game is that there's not a trump suit there is a one trump card of the Rings one and I think that's what changes up this trick ticking game in such a delightful way because you have to really plan how you're playing and the other thing too
is you're not allowed to talk to other players about what you have in your hand with many trick-taking games you're essentially giving information by how you play oh if they play this card then that means this or I can assume safely this and so you are playing into the game and the into the into the round every time you play a turn you're essentially giving information to your fellow players now every player is going to draft a character and there are sometimes required characters for each chapter so for chapter one you're playing with froto Bilbo Gandalf and Pippen but Frodo and Bilbo are required and so they have an asterisk next to them and then if you have a three-player game you're going to pick either Gandalf or Pippen as a player if you have a four player you get to play with all of of them so players are going to draft these characters based on who has the uh one ring card and if you have the one ring you get to be Frodo and Frodo is going to essentially start the round whenever the game Begins for that particular chapter uh and froo needs to win Rings there are five rings and in a three-player game you have to win four or more of the Rings cards in any way and once you get that then froto has accomplished their goal so you want to accomplish everyone's goals and they have things like winning particular tricks winning particular ranks of cards in a very specific suit
maybe winning the fewest tricks maybe winning a very specific number of Tricks it's really interesting so players are going to have this Dynamic like approach to how they are like winning the game together but also being successful with your character goal and characters sometimes come with hindrances or assistance um so you might actually have things that are going to be attached to your character that require you to do even more things this is a really really thematic game now the very first thing I thought of was a Cooperative trick-taking game I've played the crew I've played all I need with Cooperative trick-taking that just blew me away and I just had so much fun playing through both of the crews the first one and the second one and then I played this and I I kept playing we played you know a couple games every night uh we played game nights so you can get through a couple chapters pretty easy especially the early ones and you have a little booklet that goes along with that tells you and kind of explains things to you if you have any questions about the chapter and specifically characters to be used and and things like that which I find really helpful but what I found that was so enjoyable about this compared to the crew is that the theme was much much stronger and the cards you're playing with feel more engaging so when you play a character you're not just playing one of your scientist's team that wants to get a goal of a certain number or a certain suit you want to win certain things that
are related to your character and it's always in this comparison too and so it feels so like much better it feels more satisfying and I really really like how each chapter tells you exactly what to do it gives you the certain cards you need to add directly underneath it so if you have new characters they're right there if you have new items you have new cards they're just right there and you go through the box and you just say okay well here's chapter 13 here's chapter 14 here's chapter 15 and you just go through everything now there are 12 chapters in the base game so to speak in which you get so many characters and so much gameplay it's great then you move into the part two box and it's like after chapter 12 you still have six more chapters that add really cool stuff that I didn't necessarily want to reveal to you cuz it's something to enjoy something to experience every single time you play do another couple more chapters and then once you've gotten through the whole thing it becomes essentially this open box game where you can essentially play with any characters any combination and then those characters goals so this has just so much potential to be that fun Cooperative trick-taking game for players who really enjoy the Lord the Rings I I like it I think it's fine I'm not necessarily a DieHard fan but I did find it more engaging because of the theme and because this follows the story with the characters doing the things
that they're doing I I found it more engaging honestly than the crew and I found that the wins were fun the losses were you just play it again and you're like boy I wish we could get this boy I wish I didn't draw the one of rings again to be froto oh no here I go again you know because that happened to me several times where I was like I feel like I was being cursed with Frodo um but it's fun it's really really engaging and I like the way that the the one Rings is the Trump and there is no real Trump suit um in the core game and so it changes things up just enough to make it really really fun it's wellmade I've played through it so much I should have put these in sleeves so that it would let you know uh uh uh um make it through time but um unfortunately not but I I love woren games I I it makes me feel like it's been loved um so really really good stuff here there's a solo there's a two-player variant then the three and the four player um runs essentially the way the game should be run so playing with three to four players is ideal in my opinion the two-player variant works well it's not bad it's actually really interesting it changes the game just enough um with one player controlling a pyramid style player that has some cards revealed some cards not revealed so it does add a very interesting Dynamic to the game but I do like it as that three to four player um and again each game is
20 minutes-ish and you just go through the chapters and I love a campaign Style game this offers just a lot of satisfying play I'm a big trick- taking fan and I love the Cooperative trick- taking genre and sub genre so this does not disappoint at all there are some weird edge cases where sometimes the rules are not always specific or clear or you know like delineated on the cards or in the rule book that you kind of start going H but for the most part you just Glide right through this so again a ton to like here and a ton to consume and to consume in a good way not as in Destroy to just enjoy and play with your friends so that is going to be it for me this time I will see you next time folks bye