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Forbidden Jungle (2-player review)

06. Oktober 2026 um 20:51

By Kaysee and Max

Forbidden Jungle front
“It soon becomes clear why the post was abandoned as whole sections of the station begin dropping into sinkholes!” – Forbidden Jungle Rulebook

Disclosure: bought the game, tried the highest difficulty

We hadn’t really considered playing any board game of the Forbidden Games series, a series of cooperative board games by Matt Leacock, which are supposed to be similar to Pandemic but lighter in terms of complexity and more budget friendly. Our hesitation lasted until one day, its most latest game Forbidden Jungle was on big sale. We thought it could be a good light filler game while searching for a new heavy weight game after successfully finishing one of the most difficult scenarios of Frostpunk: The Board Game. We thought we are so great for beating the scenario of what we consider as one of the most complex co-op board games that there’s no way we could lose in a game like Forbidden Jungle. No way. Until the game brought us back to Earth to face the reality (not really, it was an alien planet).

We lost our first game. And quite a few of the later ones. Almost every time we lost, it felt as if we were thiiiiiis close to winning. While it’s necessary to develop a strategy to beat the game, there is a significant degree of randomness. This sets in right at the beginning, as it’s not possible to choose the character with the special power you want, they are randomly assigned. The randomness can make it difficult to plan ahead. There were many times where we were playing mostly reactively. This is not exactly our favorite style of play, but it can lead to many very suspenseful moments.

The setting/theme

The basic premise seems simple enough. You play as adventurers who have crash landed in an alien jungle. To get home, you have to find a portal. Simple, right? Wrong. It isn’t enough to find the Portal, it also needs to be surrounded by four active Crystals to power it. Discovering these is one thing, getting them into position another. Luckily, there are some discoverable alien machines that can help. Unfortunately for our intrepid crew there is further danger from the local wildlife, which probably wiped out whoever built the machines. These lifeforms occur in three distinct shapes in different stages of their lifecycle. In addition to the fully grown adults, there are also hatchlings and eggs. These do different things, but they are all have a adorably icky design. Eggs are simple, they just lie around until they hatch. Hatchlings start moving around without doing anything else or posing any danger until they grow up. Adults show more varied behavior. They also move, they lay eggs, they spin nets that impede the adventurer’s movement, and they try to eat the face of any human they come across.

Eggs on a nest
Eggos waiting next to the Portal

Escaping the Jungle

So, how does the game work? On each players turn they take up to four actions, choosing from four possible options. You can use an action to move from one tile to the next or from one tunnel tile to another. Another option is to remove one adult, hatchling, egg, or a net from your tile. If you are on an undiscovered tile that is free of any aliens or nets, you can discover what’s hidden in the jungle by flipping it. Finally, if you have already discovered one the machines left behind by the civilization that existed in this place before having their faces eaten, you can use an action to use it. What, then, are those machines? There’s the configurator, which allows you to slide a tile in a straight line, as long as it ends up next to another tile. There’s the destruct switch, which you can use to blow up a tile and everything on it. There’s the compeller, which you can use to move adults and hatchlings from one tile to the next. Finally, there’s the portal, which you can use to go home. If you managed to surround it with four glowing crystals and free it from the aliens and their nets, that is.

Adult aliens
Adult Aliens

The Jungle has eyes and… agency?

After a player acts it’s the Jungle’s turn. The player has to draw between two and five Threat cards, based on the current threat level. Most of these either cause the aliens to do their various things or more of them to appear in various places. However, there are three different cards. One simply increases the threat level. A second one increases the threat level and makes you shuffle the discard pile and put it at the bottom of the draw deck. The third is the most interesting one. It causes the tile with the lowest number to collapse along with everything on it, although adventurers can escape to an adjacent tile. The first place to go is always the starting tile, Fool’s Landing. Later on, it’s generally the useful machine tiles that tend to go first. One of the many ways to lose is if all four portals or one of the four glowing Crystals are gone. There have been numerous times where we were almost ready to leave, only for the Portal tile to collapse.

The other ways to lose are if someone has their face eaten by the aliens, if someone is on a collapsing tile without a way to escape, or if you have to place more adults, hatchlings, eggs, or nets than you can. Luckily, during you exploration you can find various pieces of gear to help you avoid these predicaments, such as a jetpack or a time machine.

Our Final Thoughts

Forbidden Jungle is a surprisingly challenging game that combines exploration, crisis (alien) management, and a sliding tile puzzle. But one important thing that we realized after playing it was just because a game is not complex, doesn’t mean that it would be easy to beat. Complexity doesn’t equate difficulty. We’ve tried the highest difficulty of Forbidden Jungle three times, but we never got to escape the jungle. With the highest difficulty of Frostpunk: The Board Game, we won in our third attempt.

While we both like games that aren’t completely deterministic, the randomness in this game is at the higher end of the scale for our taste. And, unlike Frostpunk, we felt we had less agency in Forbidden Jungle, which can be less motivating in terms of trying it out again. Using the destruct switch and blowing up parts of the playing field feels very satisfying and slightly anarchic though.

Tile Destroyer
The tile destroyer

What we both like:

  • map reduction mechanic
  • sliding of tiles
  • colorful and icky alien figures

What we do not like:

  • high degree of randomness
  • the type of randomness
  • not being able to choose your character

What Max also likes:

  • the biologist character
  • colorful tiles

Kaysee’s rating: 2.5/5
Max’s rating: 3.5/5

Combined rating: 3/5
3

Title: Forbidden Jungle (2023)
Game Design: Matt Leacock
Artist: C. B. Canga
Edition: German
Publishers: Gamewright, Schmidt Spiele

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The Ultimate Filler Game… Thus Far

15. August 2026 um 16:52

By Kaysee and Max

Hanabi
“Astistic impression is determined by the Artisan League of Fireworks” – Hanabi Rulebook

August – the month when Obon and summer festivals usually happen in Japan, which means more fireworks, or hanabi as it’s called in Japanese, in Japan. We’re not in Japan this August, but it’s also summer here in Germany, which means it’s still very much the travel season now. This also means it’s the time for long train trips (at least for both of us) and so we’ve been looking for a small game to play during our travels. We already have some games that are travel friendly, but we wanted to test whether the cooperative card game Hanabi, which also happens to have won the 2013 Spiel des Jahres award, is the ultimate travel game for us.

It’s a very accessible game in terms of how easy to get a copy of it and in terms of the price. In terms of the rules, it is also very accessible. At its core, Hanabi is a set collection game. The rules for two players are the same for any number of players. Players have to assemble five stacks of five cards with five different colors in ascending order from one to five. There is, however, a big twist. The game doesn’t allow players to see their own hand, only the hand of the other player. They have to choose one of three options on each turn; they can give a hint to another player, discard a card, or play a card. Giving a hint requires turning over an unused clue token and allows the player to chose one color or one number and tell the other player which of their cards are of that color or number. We tried to use the clue tokens as efficiently as possible, as there’s only limited number of them and using them all removes the option of giving a hint for the next turn.

Discarding a card, conversely, requires turning over a used clue token and as such is the main way of gaining the ability to give more hints. The player then has to draw another card to replace the discarded one. Playing a card means selecting it and then turning it over to see whether it fits one of the existing stacks or start a new one, if it’s a one of a new color. If the card doesn’t fit, one of the three error tokens has to be turned over. If all three of them are turned over, the players lose the game. Whether the play was successful or not, the player has to draw a new card to replace the one they played.

Hanabi cards
white cards in ascending order

The twist means that memory and deduction are crucial to succeed. Players need to remember the hints they were given. They can reorder their hand to help their memory, but this can backfire if the order of the cards changes frequently. Combining the limited knowledge of their own hand, that of their partners hand and the information provided by the cards that have already been played and discarded, hopefully allows the player to know which of their cards they can safely play or discard. In our experience there are plenty of times where we had to act based on incomplete information and hope that we made the right choice. In those instances, it is safer to discard than to play a card. Three mistakes while playing cards result in a gameover, mistakes while discarding just have a possibility of limiting the number of points you can achieve.

Hanabi tokens
tokens

All of this means that even just selecting which action to take on your turn is an important and consequential choice. In the beginning, it’s a good idea to give some hints to the other player first, but the clue tokens run out quickly. After that, players have to choose whether to play or discard, even if they don’t have all the information they might want. We don’t think meta gaming, such as making a plan before starting, is necessary if playing with the same person. And since we are boring law abiding citizens, we do not think that house rules are necessary as long as you play with the same person and observe how frequently they use the same tactics.

Our Final Thoughts:
While we haven’t had a perfect run yet, we’ve been enjoying every game session. Hanabi really requires a lot of attention to remember all the hints you are given and to correctly make deductions. The rules might be straightforward and simple, but that doesn’t make the game easy to beat. While it doesn’t have the strongest theme much like many other filler games and it doesn’t have that much let’s-try-again-one-more-time aspect right after finishing the game session (at least for us), it is a really good co-op filler game for two players. Both of us can imagine playing this game when we get old (and hopefully not grumpy) to keep our cognitive skills intact. And given that it doesn’t require much space, we will be bringing it on future long travels.

What we both like:

  • very reasonably priced
  • accessibility
  • very good time killer
  • keeps the mind healthy
  • travel friendly

What we do not like:

  • could get too predictable if played with the same player

What Max also doesn’t like:

  • running out of active clue tokens so quickly

Kaysee’s rating: 4/5
Max’s rating: 4/5

Combined rating: 4/5
4

Title: Hanabi German Edition
Game Design: Antoine Bauza
Illustration: Antoine Bauza, Gérald Guerlais, Laura Michaud
Publisher: Cocktail Games

Photos by Kaysee

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The Crew: Mission Deep Sea (2-player review)

29. Juli 2026 um 00:49

By Kaysee and Max

The Crew Mission Deep Sea
“So you see that you have to weigh the opportunities and risks, and assess the feasibility of the mission when assigning the tasks!” -The Crew: Mission Deep Sea Rulebook

Disclosure: completed all the missions

The Crew (in both currently available versions) is one of those games that we kept seeing again and again at bookstores in Germany. Even though they are very reasonably priced and The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine won Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2020, we weren’t able to bring ourselves to purchase it, because at the back it says (on the German version at least) that it’s for 3-5 players with a variant for two players. The risk of not enjoying the game and wasting 11 € felt too high for us. But after we finished and enjoyed playing both The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers trick-taking games and learned that they were inspired by both versions of The Crew, we decided to take the plunge and try the second one: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.

The Components of The Crew
The components

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, just like its predecessor The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, is a cooperative trick-taking game. Except instead of going to space, in MDS players get to be a diving team on a mission to find the mysterious continent of Mu. We have to say right off the bat that we didn’t feel like we are on a deep-sea mission. MDS is not an immersive game. Unlike the LotR trick-taking games, there is barely any connection between the mechanics and the theme.

Just like other trick-taking games, its main rules are simple. MDS has the typical four suits, just referred to by their colors, and four submarine cards that function as trumps. The first player chooses the lead card and the next player must match the suit of the lead card. If they don’t have a matching card, they can play a card of any other suit or a trump card. The player who has the highest matching card or the highest trump card wins the trick. Since MDS is a cooperative game, simply winning a trick doesn’t mean that the players have won the game. All players should work together and fulfill all the tasks and mission objectives, which might include that one player’s task is to not win any tricks.

Submarine cards
The Submarine Cards

The game has a communication limit. Once per round, before or after a trick, each player can reveal one card and place a sonar token on it to convey one of three possible facts. Those are whether that card is the highest, lowest or only card of its suit in their hand. Submarine cards cannot be revealed in this way. Later missions sometimes further restrict communication or forbid it completely.

Most missions in the 32-mission campaign simply have a difficulty number, which determines the total difficulty of the task cards drawn for this mission. While in early missions this means that often only one player will actually have a task, in later missions players regularly have two or more tasks each. In addition to the difficulty number some missions have modifiers, such as the stricter communications limit mentioned before or an optional timer. Some missions don’t have a difficulty number and simply introduce a special rule that has to be followed instead of completing tasks. In theory the difficulty steadily increases throughout the campaign, however the random drawing of the task cards can lead to combinations that are significantly harder or easier than expected. Some combinations are even impossible, which means one or more task cards have to be redrawn.

Whoever gets the four of submarines (the highest trump card) gets to play as the captain, a woman named Meg Diver. In the two player variant, we had to play as if there were three players. The “third player”, an AI called Tonoja, is controlled by the captain. Tonoja gets 14 cards, where seven of them are open and placed on top of the other seven facedown cards. Then the four of submarines is shuffled in and each of us then gets 13 cards. Being Meg Diver wasn’t easy for either of us most of the time. Much like controlling the third player in the LotR trick-taking games, being the captain and controlling Tonoja really inreases the mental load of the player in question, and it can get even more taxing for the captain as the difficulty increases. Depending on the combination of tasks drawn, this mechanic can also impact the difficulty. Still, there’s also a tension sometimes when one of us flips Tonoja’s cards which adds to the enjoyment of the game.

Our Final Thoughts:
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea may seem easy initially. But as we progressed into the missions, it became more and more difficult. Some combinations of tasks can be very difficult for two players, but the game allowed us to try a different set of tasks whenever we couldn’t win the current set of tasks, which we think makes it less frustrating. The gameplay was a lot of fun and some combination of tasks led to really intense and brain tickling moments.

We like playing games with strong themes and The MDS doesn’t have that. But it’s the type of game that we can imagine playing to kill the time or to see the highest difficulty we can beat together. It’s not the best trick-taking game for two players, but it’s also not bad. It definitely has a high replay value and considering that it was only 11 € when we bought it, we can also definitely say that it was worth it.

What we both like:

  • very reasonably priced
  • interesting combinations of tasks
  • challenging missions
  • replay value

What we do not like:

  • unequal mental load for two players
  • almost no connection between theme and mechanics

What Max also doesn’t like:

  • the writing
  • high randomness in difficulty

Kaysee’s rating: 3.5/5
Max’s rating: 3.0/5

Combined rating: 3.5/5
3.5

Title: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea (2021)
Game Design: Thomas Sing
Illustration: Marco Armbruster
Publisher: KOSMOS

Photos by Kaysee

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The Two Towers – Trick-Taking Game (2-player review)

22. Mai 2026 um 23:25

By Kaysee and Max

For the German review please visit Der Herr der Ringe: Die zwei Türme – Das Stichspiel (2-Spieler-Rezension).

Two Towers Trick Taking Game (2-player review)
“Don’t go where I can’t follow.” – Samwise Gamgee, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

Disclosure: completed all the chapters

We had fun playing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game despite it not being optimized for two players, so we were excited to play The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game to see if there were any interesting mechanical changes (also we‘re LotR fans so there’s that).


The art style is very similar to the first one, but the cards are much more vivid. We also like that they used paper instead of plastic wrapper for the packaging of the tokens and the decks which makes it easier to open and better for the environment (we have a copy from the 1st printing).

packaging
paper, not plastic

The initial setup for two players is still very similar; each of us plays one character, but one of us should play an additional character whose cards are open but in a pyramid form where five of the cards are faceup and the rest are facedown. The One Ring token and the ring cards are not yet part of the setup. Instead, two new tokens and five cards are added: the titular Two Towers, as both tokens and cards and the three Orc cards. All of theses cards don’t belong to any particular suit. As such they can only be played if a player doesn’t have follow the leading suit. The towers are similar to the One Ring, they win any trick that they are played into. Unlike the One Ring the player cannot choose to lose the trick, instead if both towers are played into the same trick, they both lose. The Orc cards are the opposite of the towers and always lose. We like these new cards as they add challenge to the game since they cannot be used to lead a trick. If a player is forced to lead a trick with an Orc (e.g. because it’s their only card left), the group loses the whole chapter. If a trick contains both tower cards and an Orc card, no one wins the trick and it is set aside.


As with the first game, each chapter features a different set of characters with their own goals and rules. These tend to be slightly more complex and interesting this time around. Likewise, many chapters still feature event cards that further change the rules. Unlike the first game, there is a big change after the first ten chapters, which correspond to book three of LotR. Without spoiling too much, the deck changes to become more similar to the deck in the first game, with some significant changes. This of course makes perfect sense thematically, as the later chapters are the ones featuring Frodo, Sam and the One Ring.


We were hoping that Two Towers would be much better for two players. We found the first few chapters to be both fun and mechanically challenging even though the 2-player friendliness is just the same as the previous game, and we were ok with it (we got used to it and we accepted it) but as we stepped in to Chapter 25, that’s when we realized that the game just became worse for two players. We could imagine this chapter being a bit easier for three or four players, but with two, it wasn’t. How the pyramid works in that chapter made us feel very frustrated. We’re still trying to figure out why they made the decision for the set up of the pyramid for this chapter to be the way that it is. With many challenging games, we get that feeling of great satisfaction after beating them, but not with this one. Even though we were able to finish the chapter after a few tries, it didn’t feel satisfying or rewarding. The relief that we felt is more of us not having to be in a very frustrating situation anymore (we could’ve just stopped playing it, but it’s the completionist in us that deterred us from just moving on) than being able to succeed. While it is not as frustrating and has a regular pyramid setup, Chapter 30 also proved difficult for us, due to the specific combination of character goals and the limitations introduced by the event card for that chapter.


We still decided to finish all the chapters. Some of the mechanical changes in part 2 were a noticable improvement and made the game more fun. We also liked how the theme and the mechanisms in part 2 felt very familiar, but were still different and interesting. We also liked the last chapter a lot and how the mechanism matches the theme. It was a good ending.

Our Final Thoughts:
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Trick-Taking Game was still enjoyable for us in most parts, but there were times where we thought that we could’ve enjoyed it more if there were more of us playing it, something that also crossed our minds while playing FotR, but it did occur more frequently and strongly while playing this game. It’s unfortunate because the interactions between the mechanisms and the theme here are much more interesting than in FotR. We were hoping for it to be at least as good for two players as the previous one if not better, but it wasn’t. Still, we’re looking forward to playing The Return of the King if it comes out in the future and hoping that it will have better mechanics for two players.

What we like:

  • production quality
  • mechanical changes in each chapter
  • art style
  • better packaging
  • interaction between mechanisms and theme

What we do not like:

  • the pyramid can be frustrating
  • less optimized for two players than FotR

Kaysee’s rating: 3.5/5
Max’s rating: 3.5/5

Combined rating: 3.5/5
3.5

Reference:
Tolkien, J. R. R.(1999). The Two Towers. HarperCollins.

Title: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Trick-Taking Game
Game Design: Bryan Bornmueller
Illustration: Elain Ryan, Samuel R. Shimota
Publisher: Office Dog

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The Road to a Clear Path

07. Mai 2026 um 10:00

By Kaysee and Max

The Fox in the Forest Duet
“They don’t all have to be if enough of them are.” -Mother Fox, The Musician and the Fairies, A. J. Abbott

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.

components of the Fox in the Forest
The components

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.

The board with red gems
The board with red gems

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.

What we like:

  • it’s compact
  • the abilities of some cards
  • the mind-reading aspect

What we do not like:

  • production quality
  • not exciting
  • lack of strong theme

What Kaysee also likes:

  • removing tokens

What Max also doesn’t like:

  • too abstract

Kaysee’s rating: 3/5
Max’s rating: 3/5

Combined rating: 3/5
3

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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A 2-Player Trick-Taking Journey to Middle-earth

24. April 2026 um 21:10

By Kaysee and Max

The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game
“But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word.” -Meriadoc Brandybuck, The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

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 components of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game
The Components

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.

pyramid character
The Pyramid for two players

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.

Schmeeples in Shire

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.

What we like:

  • art style
  • campaign progression
  • connection between theme and mechanics
  • production quality

What we do not like:

  • extra cognitive load for one player
  • more optimized for more than two players

What Kaysee also doesn’t like:

  • less exciting in later chapters

What Max also doesn’t like:

  • the pyramid can sometimes make victory impossible

Kaysee’s rating: 4/5
Max’s rating: 4/5

Combined rating: 4/5
4

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

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