The Lord of the Rings is at this moment, probably the hottest popular IP in tabletop game industry. In 2025, they released 3 games, Fate of the Fellowship with the Pandemic Game system, then the roll and write game about the Hobbit and then this one with trick-taking mechanism.
Trick-taking gameplay itself is probably the most popular gameplay genre in tabletop industry ever since The Crew. While there are a lot more competitive trick taking games, the cooperative ones are still rare. So, the combination of the popular IP and genre make this one an easy sell.
At this point of time, the publisher already released the 2nd box following the story in the 2nd book.
Title: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings – Trick-Taking Game
Year Released: 2025
Designer: Bryan Bornmueller
Publisher: Office Dog
Artist: Elaine Ryan, Samuel R. Shimota
Genre: Cooperative, The Lord of the Rings, Trick-Taking Game, Optional Campaign Mode, Scenario Based Game, Official Solo Variant, Stained Glass Art style
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Overview
In this cooperative trick-taking game, players will work together in order to accomplish all of the chosen characters’ goal. For example, Frodo’s player has to win 2 cards with Ring suit. The one playing Bilbo has to win 3 or more tricks. While the one with Gandalf has to win one or more. And there are many other characters from The Lord of the Rings story. The game introduces them as players go through various chapters.
Each chapter will tell you the one or more character that must be chosen. Based on the hand of cards they got at the start, players can choose which character they can or should pick to accomplish that character’s goal.
If every chosen characters’ goal is accomplished, they win that chapter and can proceed to the next one. Maybe even play the next stand-alone box based on the second book of the source material.
Like in general trick-taking game, this one has cards with 4 suits, each with a value between 1 to 8 plus the Ring suit. The Ring suit is not necessarily a trump suit but it is special in how you play.
This suit only has 5 cards, value 1 to 5 and cannot lead the trick. One player has to lead with any of the 4 regular suits first. Maybe if another player cannot follow the suit, they can instead choose to play the Ring card. Only after that, the Ring suit is activated and now can be played as the lead suit.
The one playing Frodo character has to be the one with a Ring Card value 1. When they play this card, they can choose to instantly win the trick of the round as if it is a trump card. That is the only moment this special suit has trump feature. And the Frodo player can still choose not to win.
Other than that Ring suit, it is pretty standard trick-taking. You lead after you win the previous trick. You keep playing until you run out of cards in hand or you have completed all of the goals at the end of a round.
The game can support up to 4 players. There is a specific variant to play with just 2 players and another for solo play.
Session Reports
August 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr.
My first play of this game and I went straight with the solo mode, controlling the first 4 characters, Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf and Pippin.
That session took only about 10 minutes or so. Considering that you play with all 4 hands face up, the game becomes more like a puzzle. The twist with the solo rule is that you don’t deal all cards right from the start. Instead, at the end of the round, each player will draw one random card and add them to their hand and this goes on until the deck runs out of cards. This creates the unpredictability and becomes the main challenge.
Who knows? Maybe Pippin who is supposed to win the least, suddenly gets a strong card. So, you then have to change your plan in order to mitigate that and may affect the dynamic of other players. Maybe you still let that Pippin wins more but he has to be the lowest or tied for the lowest so the next character has to win more than.
Like a lot of trick-taking game, sometimes, the choice is obvious and you definitely will play certain cards and the game just flows like that. This randomness every round more often than not change that. Maybe now that card you don’t really care, might be important for you to win next and take the lead, allowing you to play a different card.
So, I played 2nd game right away with the next chapter. In Chapter 2, they introduce Samwise and Merry, plus a set of threat cards. Threat cards are not new suit but some kind of randomizer for Sam. Whoever plays the Samwise character has to win a Hill card with a specific value matching the randomly drawn threat card at the start of the game.
For this chapter, the 2 new Hobbits plus Frodo have to be played but I get to choose the 4th one between Gandalf and Pippin. So, I played with all Hobbits.
Apparently, I made a mistake with the suit and color. I thought the Hill was the white suit. But no, the white one was the Mountain and the rather yellow one is the Hill with the green being Forest.
Merry himself can only win specifically, either 1 or 2 tricks. That means, Pippin cannot win at all or have to match that number. Chances are Frodo and Sam would have won a couple more.
So, even with these new 2, the game already becomes trickier to win. You may let Merry win something early in the game. But what if he suddenly gets the stronger card? And there is no other real trump suit that can overwrite the other suit, other than the one Frodo has. Like you want to play that card a bit later to make sure Merry doesn’t win more than he should.
I guess that means more reason for other players to pay attention to Frodo’s player like whether Frodo has played the Ring card or not.
This play with Chapter 2 took about 15 minutes, a bit longer than the previous chapter.
Overall, as my initial impression, I like my experience with these 2 sessions. It still doesn’t change my view on Trick-Taking game in general. But I think I like it more than For Northwood for solo trick-takers.
Maybe I need to try the multiplayer variants before I can really compare it to The Crew. Also it seems like the subsequent chapters introduces more interesting element to the game so it may change my view after I get to that point. We’ll see.
More unboxing pictures of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game on my IG.