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

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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.