One Trick to Rule Them All: A Review of The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game

Welcome to this week’s review! This week I’m taking a look at arguably the best looking, cooperative trick-taking game. So without further ado, let’s jump into my thoughts.

Disclosure: A review copy of this game was provided to The Meeple Digest in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.

I got the chance to demo The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game at PAX Unplugged last year. The game was one of the hottest releases at the convention, selling out each day almost immediately after the expo hall opened. After the demo, I felt the game shared a lot of core elements of The Crew, except with a Lord of the Rings (LOTR) theme. As someone who prides himself on having watched the extended edition of the original trilogy many times, I was eager to see if combining my favorite trick-taking game with one of my favorite themes would make a perfect match.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game is a cooperative, trick-taking game consisting of 18 chapters that take players through the events of the The Fellowship of the Ring novel. At the beginning of each chapter, players will take turns choosing one of the available characters in that chapter (some of them will be mandatory), with each character having a certain objective that needs to be met. All characters’ objectives must be completed in order to successfully finish the chapter. A few examples of objectives are to win the fewest tricks or to win a certain card suit and value. As a disclosure, I have finished 12 of the 18 chapters; however, even after finishing all 18, each of the chapters can be replayed or you can choose to mix and match characters from across chapters to build your own missions.

Whereas many of the missions in The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine share a lot of similarities (i.e. someone has to win a trick containing a certain numbered card), I found that each of the chapters tended to shake up the objectives quite a bit. One particularly challenging highlight was that one character had to win a card of each number value (1-8). Other examples included being unable to lead a certain suit or winning all of one suit. In addition, even at the full four players, most missions will usually have more than four characters available, so there is some nice variety and strategy around choosing not only which character might mesh well with the cards in your hand, but also with the other players’ characters. Also, many of the characters allow you to exchange cards with other players during setup, which also adds a nice element of strategy and planning.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the game’s gorgeous artwork. Nothing against The Crew’s artwork and components, but this game is certainly a step up in production quality. In particular, the hand-drawn style artwork of each of the characters are stunning. Since there are a number of the characters from the novel that didn’t show up in the movies, I can imagine that for fans of the novel, it’s cool to see some of those characters realized in this game.

Speaking of the LOTR theme, personally, this was a bit of a miss. I’ll be honest, I have not read the books, so I wasn’t able to connect with a fair number of characters and story elements. And though at the beginning of each chapter, there is a short, one to two sentence introduction to set the stage, I found it to be a tad underwhelming even as a big LOTR fan. If you’ve read the novel, then I’m sure you’ll find it easier to follow, but if you’re someone who hasn’t read the novel or has only a slight recollection of the movies, I imagine the theming here might be a bit lost on you.

The game does support solo and two-player modes, and admittedly I haven’t tried either, but I found the game played excellently at the full four players. As with most trick-taking games, this is likely the ideal player count given that more characters will be picked, while also providing a nice level of both challenge and strategy.

If had to only pick one trick-taking game to own, I’d still likely lean The Crew: Mission Deep Sea because of the seemingly infinite amount of variety and replayability from the dynamic mission deck. However, I’d likely choose The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game over the original version of The Crew. Overall, if you’re someone who enjoys cooperative trick-taking games like The Crew or are a fan of the LOTR, then I’d definitely recommend giving this game a look.

With that, I’ll wrap up this week’s review! If you’ve played The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the game, and what are your favorite trick-taking games? I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the games I’ve mentioned or future content suggestions in the comments below. Happy gaming!

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