By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: finished the campaign

Earthborne Rangers was one of the games that had been on our radar for quite a while. Many campaign games are also legacy games, which are often not replayable and happen to have many components that aren’t compostable. The components of EBR are compostable, but it’s also a replayable campaign game. For some time we’d wanted to play GMless RPGs with just the two of us; we tried, but it was difficult and we felt we needed more guidance. It seemed that EBR could scratch that itch, giving us some structure without being so restrictive that we couldn’t create our own narrative. Additionally, the art style is beautiful and captures the ecopunk vibe that we like (and we both love green). So we were very excited when we were able to get our hands on it.

Earthborne Rangers is a deck-building/construction game that relies on cards for the world building. Most of the game consists of cards. While there is a map that shows the location, there’s no board to place your character, and having minis isn’t necessary. It is quite similar to a tabletop RPG. But unlike many TTRPGs, players don’t have to rely on the GM to decide whether an action is permissible. The rules are all set up in the game. While TTRPGs offer more flexibility in terms of what a player can do, in EBR, players get to choose the personality and the aspects or the stats of their character and don’t have to rely on dice to randomly generate the stats.

The prologue got us hooked very quickly. During the prologue each player first chooses a number of personality cards, followed by cards representing their ranger’s background and specialty. One of us chose a Forager-Shaper and the other chose an Artisan-Artificer. While we weren’t able to update them regularly during the game, you can check our character sheets here and here. The resulting ranger deck slowly changes over the course of the campaign, as there are opportunities to engage in some further deck building.

The prologue also walks players through the setup process that repeats at the beginning of each day/session. First, players set up their individual areas and draw a starting hand of six cards. This is followed by shuffling the challenge deck, the function of which we’ll explain later. Next come the location, weather and mission cards. We really like these cards as they really help with the immersion (we’d recommend checking out the soundtrack if you want your game session to be more immersive). These are determined by the current state of the campaign, which is noted down on a campaign tracker. If you’re curious, check out our campaign tracker, but be warned: it contains plenty of spoilers.

Then comes the potentially most consequential part, building the path deck, which contains the flora and fauna, the beings, the people, and some structures/ruins. This will include cards based on the path that was used to arrive at the current location, specific or general cards based on that location and sometimes additional cards related to a mission or the weather. What we like about the path deck is that it makes the world come alive and it gives more variety to the game as who/whatever you encounter when you draw a path card is random even though its construction is determined by the factors mentioned earlier. Finally, there are arrival setup instructions on the back of the location card, which shape the initial conditions the rangers find themselves in.

After setup, rangers take turns until everyone has decided to rest for the round. On their turn, each ranger can either play a card from their hand, perform a test or decide to rest. The test or the card that a ranger can perform or play is dependent on the available energy, the type and the amount of which is determined by the aspect, in their energy pool and the path card that they want to interact with. In the first few sessions we were trying to use all the energy in the energy pool effectively, but it gets tricky as the campaign and the days progress; we asked ourselves (and each other) whether we should use them all before we rest or just rest even if there are some left in the pool. We really like this mechanism since while at the beginning it seems that being efficient with your resources means using most of them before resting, eventually we would have to consider whether not using them all and drawing a ranger card during the refresh stage (the stage after resting) might be the better option. But this also means having to draw another path card, which could bring more risks and might have to be dealt with.

When a ranger performs a test, they have to draw a challenge card, which contains a challenge icon (mountain, crest, or sun). Some path cards, weather cards, mission cards, and location cards contain challenge effects, which are triggered if the challenge card drawn has the corresponding challenge icon. The challenge card also determines if the effort used is deducted, added, or stays the same. We feel that the challenge cards are the ones that create the tension as you don’t know whether it’s going to trigger some negative or postive effects. Depending on the location, weather, path card and the mission cards in play, drawing a challenge card may speed up fatigue. Fatigue is when a ranger sets aside a card facedown from the ranger deck without using it. If the ranger is forced to fatigue a card but they don’t have any cards left in the ranger deck, they need to end the day. We haven’t played all the specialties and backgrounds yet, but we think that Shapers have a huge advantage when it comes to decreasing randomness and mitigating fatigue since they have more options not to perform tests during their turn; they could, instead, play a card, which doesn’t require drawing a challenge card to clear or help clear a path.

Clearing a path card is one of the most important things to do in the game because it unlocks and helps progress some missions. But a ranger doesn’t have to clear every path card in play. How to clear a path card depends on the type of path card and the conditions written on the card to clear it. If the card is a being, a flora, or a fauna, it can either be cleared by harm or progress. We would always try our best to clear using progress if it’s a being. We were talking about the choice of using the term “harm” and what it means in the game. This is the part of the narrative that we wanted to be very much our own. We sometimes just define “harm” as disturbance. Sometimes we say that the fruits were harvested and the plants were disturbed, which what harm means in the context of flora. Sometimes when a companion causes a harm to the prey, it just means that they “shooed” it. We interpret the term depending on which context it was done. The narrative and the system are not too restrictive so that there is some space for us to add our own spin on things.

The results of our choices also didn’t feel punishing mechanically and let us freely choose based on what we think is the right thing to do. Without going into too much detail, there was a mission where we needed some prey. One of the preys happened to be not a living prey. When we read the entry after clearing the mission, we were so relieved that we got it. When we finally cleared the mission, the reward wasn’t something we found valuable, but we enjoyed curating the narrative based on which preys we got. We’re being vague here, but you’ll know once you’ve chosen and completed that mission. What we also find very interesting and really love is that clearing a being with harm may seem to require less resources than clearing it with progress, but every ranger has some Spirit (the aspect that provides energy needed to clear with progress) and is capable of compassion, but not every ranger has the means (cards) to cause harm.

Our Final Thoughts:
Earthborne Rangers is the type of game that we were looking for when we were looking for a more structured GMless RPG. It’s not a TTRPG, but it is also not a typical card game. There were times during the campaign where we hoped to not encounter Quisi (one of the characters of the Valley who is endearingly fatiguing) anymore, but we still enjoyed the journey a lot. The art style, the interaction between the mechanics and the theme, the balance between randomness and choice, and most especially having the space to create a world that is uniquely our own, are the things that make EBR one of the best games we’ve played together.

Kaysee’s rating: 4.5/5
Max’s rating: 4/5

Combined rating: 4.5/5

Reference:
Earthborne Rangers[Rulebook].(2023). Earthborne Games.

Title: Earthborne Rangers (2023)
Game Design: Andrew Fischer, Brooks Flugaur-Leavitt, Andrew Navaro, Adam Sadler, Brady Sadler
Illustration: Joe Banner (II), Evan Simonet
Publisher: Earthborne Games

Photos by Kaysee

The post Traversing the Valley Together (2-player review) appeared first on Schmeeples.

By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: played 6 time, beat the game in legendary

We’re both The Lord of the Rings fans (the extent of which we’ve mentioned in this other LotR game review). When we were looking for games to get at Spiel Essen ‘25 on the Spiel app, we saw that a game called The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship was going to be available there. We found out that it’s co-op and by Matt Leacock, so we decided to add it to our list of potential buys. Unfortunately, it was already out of stock when we arrived at the publisher’s area, but the world made us feel better by allowing us to say “Hi” to Matt Leacock and get a signed poster from him.

We finally got ourselves a copy from a friendly local game store earlier this year. We were very excited. The box isn’t too big, but it has plenty of components inside. The first thing we did was to assemble the dice tower. We were thinking about how well-made the cut-outs were. It was beautiful, but when we tested it with three dice, a die got stuck inside. We followed the instructions to a T and made sure that all the parts were in place*. We checked everything, nothing wrong with the assembly, there just happened to be a shelf inside that dice could get stuck on, especially when throwing in more than two dice.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We also liked the other components, especially the wooden troops; they were so cute. We also liked the wooden standees and the other wooden tokens. After checking out the components, we set up the board and assembled the Nazgûl miniatures. It was a bit frustrating because some of them didn’t fit the stands well. We were thinking about adding glue just so they wouldn’t fall off the stands (but we haven’t yet, so we just have to deal with it occasionally when we play). The game board is big and some of the cards are bigger than regular-sized cards. As such, setting it up needs a lot of space (at least 100 x 125 cm for two players).

During setup, there are two markers that players need to put on the board: the Hope marker and the Threat Rate marker. The Hope marker goes to the Hope track; this determines how much hope the characters have left. If the marker goes down to zero, the game is lost. It’s really nice that they use the term “hope”. If the characters lose hope, the world falls apart. This is a great mechanical representation of the importance of hope in LotR. The Threat marker, on the othre hand, goes to the Threat track, which tells the player how many Shadow cards from the Shadow deck need to be drawn. The more cards you draw, the higher the likelihood that a troop will spawn, a troop will move to conquer havens, and the Nazgûl will search Frodo. Higher Threat speeds up the loss of Hope. We like how the Shadow deck works. Most Shadow cards have two different sections. The section to resolve is determined by whether the top of the deck has a banner or a flag, which we think give more variety to the game and makes it less predictable than the original Pandemic.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

For the intro level, each of us must play two characters. Frodo and Sam (considered to be one character, just like Merry and Pippin) should be played in all games. For the first game, the set of characters is assigned to each player, but for subsequent games, the other three characters are determined by the randomly chosen objectives or are chosen randomly. We’ve never really been fans of not being able to choose a character freely, but we understand that it’s that way to make it more unpredictable for players to know what’s going to happen in a game session, which does increase replayability.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The number of objectives that need to be completed is based on the level of difficulty chosen. Regardless of difficulty, the ‘Destroy the One Ring’ objective is always the final objective. The other objectives, which must be fulfilled before finishing the final one, are chosen randomly. We really liked the objectives, how thematic they are and how tied the characters are to them. The objective cards made each of our games very different. LotR nerds can easily see how much they want to be loyal to the books (Legolas has brown hair in this game!) while also keeping the game’s mechanisms interesting and balanced.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

On our turn, each of us can only perform five actions in total. One action must be performed by one character and four actions are performed by the other character. We liked this mechanism since it allows us to think more carefully in terms of the allocation of actions. This game doesn’t have a communication limit, so we were able to talk about strategies and help each other decide how to use our actions. There are six standard actions that almost any character can take, and characters can have additional abilities and actions on their character card. After performing their actions for the turn, the player draws two player cards.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The player card deck contains randomly selected event cards, Skies Darken cards, and region cards. The event cards allow the player to do an event any time in the game, even on another player’s turn. They serve as free actions. The Skies Darken cards increase the Threat level and can, in the wrong circumstances, even decrease the Hope level. The region cards contain symbols, which are required to perform some actions, to re-roll dice, or to remove extra troops after a battle. One interesting symbol is called Resistance, which is represented by a ring symbol. We assume it symbolizes resisting the power of the One Ring.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We won the introductory game, but lost the standard game the first time. We won again and won the other difficulty levels as well. The first game was quite difficult, but it got a bit easier as we played more, even when we increased the level of difficulty. But in a way we felt that we were just lucky whenever we won because of the dice-rolling mechanism that happens (which is dependent on how low Hope is and how many Nazgûl there are in Mordor, which means that if the Hope meter is full and there are no Nazgûl in Mordor, then no roll is required) once Frodo and Sam reach Mount Doom and Frodo tries to destroy the Ring using five Resistances.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Our Final Thoughts:
Fate of the Fellowship is a really good game. One can see the amount of effort that was put into it. Despite the slightly underwhelming fulfillment we felt whenever we won, all the games that we had were fun. The different possible sets of objectives and events, and the way the Shadow cards work, made us more engaged and excited. Sometimes we would smile, thinking about how different the paths and choices our characters took were from how it happened in the books. It’s like the characters are in alternate worlds but the only thing that is necessary and can never change is the destruction of The One Ring. Even if the final objective is always the same, the variety from the objectives and the choices we made made for a very fun game each time. As they say, it’s sometimes about the journey, not the goal.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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

Combined rating: 4/5

*It’s not. We flipped one of the pieces, and now it’s fixed. Please see boardgamegeek.com/thread/3542211/anyone-with-problem… for more info in case you experienced something similar for more info in case you experienced something similar.

Reference:
Tolkien, J. R. R.(1991). The Fellowship of the Ring. HarperCollins.

Title: The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship
Game Design: Matt Leacock
Illustration: Jared Blando, Cory Godbey
Publisher: Z-Man Games

Photos and non-board game illustrations by Kaysee

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