Asmodee has revealed the first slate of partner companies it has picked to make Lord of the Rings-themed board games and accessories, six months after becoming the steward of the hugely lucrative Middle-earth licence for the tabletop.

Endeavor: Deep Sea co-publisher Grand Gamers Guild, Ascension publisher Stone Blade Entertainment, and Play to Z, the board game publisher created by Z-Man Games founder Zev Schlasinger, have all been selected by Asmodee to produce new Lord of the Rings titles.

They are joined by dice and tabletop accessories maker Sirius Dice, and Game Toppers, which announced separately that it will be creating Lord of the Rings-themed gaming tables, mats and other accessories.

Individual projects from most of those publishers are still under wraps, although last month Stone Blade announced it would be bringing a Lord of the Rings-themed version of its Ascension deckbuilding game to Gamefound.

Asmodee has had an impressive run of success with Lord of the Rings-themed releases in the last couple of years, with games including 7 Wonders Duel-reworking Duel for Middle Earth, The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game, and Matt Leacock’s pandemic-inspired Fate of the Fellowship all picking up both critical acclaim and a string of awards.

The board game giant was previously the sister company of Middle-earth Enterprises when both businesses were owned by video games major Embracer Group, before Asmodee was spun off as an independent operation early last year.

When Asmodee was given power over the tabletop licence by Middle-earth Enterprises last October, the initial reaction from some publishers was that they would struggle to get a look in, with Asmodee likely to reserve the best opportunities for Lord of the Rings releases for itself.

Speaking to BoardGameWire a couple of weeks after Asmodee became manager of the licence for tabletop, however, Luke Peterschmidt – the tabletop veteran tasked with running the Middle-earth operation at the company – was at pains to quash that line of thinking.

He said at the time, “Our job is to make the right number of Middle-earth games at the right pace, so that every game has space to breathe, and there is a Middle-earth game or gaming accessory for every type of game.

“That’s the mission, and no part of that mission says, ‘and Asmodee makes all the games’.”

He added, “It is absolutely fair to have that thought in your head, and it’s our job to prove that thought wrong. And, I mean, literally nothing I say, I think, could convince anybody other than action. So yeah, it’s got to be the action, we’ve got to follow it up.”

In a statement announcing the first slate of partner companies, Peterschmidt said, “There may be The One Ring to rule them all, but it takes many publishers to satisfy the gaming needs of The Lord of the Rings fans and I’m sure each of our partners are going to do their part in that quest.”

Asmodee’s own Lord of the Rings-themed releases this year are currently set to include The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit, which its studio Space Cowboys is developing in partnership with Restoration Games.

That title is a reimagining of turn-of-the-millennium Avalon Hill release Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit, which is based around four battles that take place during the events of Star Wars film The Phantom Menace.

Publishers interested in pitching a Middle-earth game to Asmodee can do so by emailing METTGlicensing@asmodee.com.

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So, in late Jan/Early Feb I heard Dark Pact was coming out soon and asked my FLGS to get a copy. One month later they were sure it was coming into their distributorship “soon” and a month after that it was sold out at the distributorship and they never got a copy. It is things like this that make me wonder if they are money-laundering front for … someone¹. (Despite that they have a pretty good selection of games). So I got it from Amazon.

I don’t like Ascension, the game Dark Pact is closest to (IMO). Looking at my archives², I never really get into it, but there are a few things that jump out at me.

• The random nature of what’s available at any given moment means that often the game is decided by “Oh, he bought a great card, a terrible card showed up. I bought the best thing available … and the next person got a great card.” At least, it feels like that. (Or you can get combat points when you want money points and vice-versa).
• It’s a snowball, but it takes a long time to roll downhill.

OK, two things.

Since Dark Pact is by Tom Lehmann, I naturally assumed he’d address both of those problems and they are … mitigated. (It is probably impossible to eliminate them).

First — each player has a grimoire of a few staple cards that they can buy if they don’t like what’s on the offer.

Second — what counts as a victory point depends on which Dark Pact(s) you purchase. For Player A it may be curse cards, for Player B it may be treasures, Player C might want Insight Points, etc. “One mans trash is another’s treasure” means that you might be fighting over cards, but you might not.

On the other hand, you need a Dark Pact to win³ and it’s possible that the only ones you see are terrible. But in my five games so far that hasn’t been an issue. (I did play with the “everyone starts with a reasonable Dark Pact” variant once).

Dark Pact still has flaws. I’ve seen people complain that they played their turn and then flipped up Gold/Multiplier cards (which are usually good) for the next player (the first flaw above), and that when it’s not your turn sometimes another player is taking a 2-3 minute turn of play a card, draw some cards, play a card, etc and running through their deck and that you have nothing to do.

That’s true, but it’s also common for the genre. Dominion can (depending on the setup) have that in spades. But for Dark Pact, it is usually a sign that the game is about to end … that player’s engine is up and running …. whereas in Ascension/Dominion you have to wait for the supply (of cards or points) to empty. But Dark Pact has sudden death⁴ … when a player draws their entire deck, the game is usually over on their turn (or perhaps a turn or two later if they’ve figured out which card their engine is missing).

It’s not totally flawless … setup and teardown take longer than Ascension (or a game of Dominion with just a set or two) unless you always play with the same # of players, but any other flaws are pretty much built into the game’s DNA (unless you object to the art or the theme, I suppose).

Dark Pact is admittedly tedious if you are playing with someone struggling to build an engine, who takes too long on their turns. But that’s always true. I don’t think that Dark Pact is going to be one of Tom’s games that easily flies to 50+ plays,⁵ but a few dozen plays seem likely.

Rating — Suggest

1. Occam’s Razor suggests I’m overthinking things. ︎
2. Most of the searches for “Ascension” turn up Slay the Spire stuff, since I am referring to Ascension levels there…. ︎
3. Probably ︎
4. Or Sudden Enlightenment ︎
5. I expected Dice Realms to make fifty, and it didn’t, but he’s got more than any other designer (for me). ︎