Latest / Operation Game Night / The Lord of the Rings: Fate Of The Fellowship by Z-Man Games

Transcript

The Lord of the Rings: Fate Of The Fellowship by Z-Man Games · Operation Game Night

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And as we begin every podcast, it began with the forging of the games of power.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Nine were given to the Eurogamers, loved lovers of wooden cubes and elegant efficiency and victory by three points.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Seven to the Ameritrash Lords, Masters of Dice, Plastic Miniatures, and Rules Forgotten by Round Two.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Three were gifted to the war gamers, patient, grim, and willing to spend six hours resolving a single flank attack.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: One was bestowed upon the party gamers who laugh loudly, accuse freely, and never track score correctly.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: But they were all of them deceived, for another game was made.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: In the lands of Kickstarter, in the fires of crowdfunding, the dark publisher forged a master game, and into his box was poured all excess.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Miniatures without number, stretch goals beyond reason, a solo mode, a legacy mode, metal coins sold separately.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: One game to rule them all, one game to bring them, to find them, one game to bring them all, and to the table, bind to them.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I botched the dismount.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, we're here talking.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're here talking about the fellowship.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I maybe I'll maybe I'll edit that one out.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um edit it out.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was beautiful.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was terrible.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh joining me, as always, is the Kella Brimboer of the podcast, Clayton Gable.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing, Clay?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing great.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: A little weary from the long journey to Mordor.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but we will get into that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I do want to applaud you on the intro.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, we're a one-take podcast, and sometimes you nail it, and sometimes you get 95% of it, and that was a good 97%.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you get to the very last two lines and then you boof it like an idiot.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Clay, uh, are you familiar with Kella Brimboer?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know who that is?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god, then I if I saw the picture of him, I would remember.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can't the name sounds familiar.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he is a uh Elvin craftsman.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh oh, from Rings of Power.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Help, yep, that helps create the one ring of power.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I remember.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I watched season one, but season two kind of lost me a little bit.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I tried to jump back in and I could not remember everything that was going on.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: What a world.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I see this debate on Reddit all the time about like what world is better, like Harry Potter or Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like give it to JRR Tolkien for just creating languages and then creating a world for his languages to live in.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like he was a linguist at heart, not a like fiction writer.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, all that to say, let's talk about fate of the fellowship, which is why we really gather here today.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oof.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Travis.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Fate of the fellowship.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hit me.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm stressed, man.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, last week we talked about being in a board game slump.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, one of our suggestions to get out of that slump wasn't to play one of the more complicated and challenging games that you've you've played in a long time to get out of that.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so I did play Fate of the Fellowship.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: I have not this is a this is over three, guys.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Over 3.0 weight wise on the old uh BGG scale.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: It is few and far between that this guy plays a 3.0 or higher anymore.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll have to bear with me through this.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: I am going to try to stay out of the weeds and kind of give you the high-level thoughts on Fate of the Fellowship.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I've played this twice now.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: I played it once at two players and once at four players.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's quite frankly enough.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think I can give you a good impression of it after those two plays.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, to be fair, this I okay, so backing it up.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is a pandemic system game.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So pandemic, the original, the designed by Matt Leacock.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the killer co-op that started it all.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I played that early on, maybe nine, eight years ago when I first got into board gaming.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it was good.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this is a sufficient game, but it didn't do much for me after that.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: I got rid of it shortly after.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I have not been up on the 700 variations of pandemic that have existed since the original.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think I did play the Star Wars version of Pandemic with you once, Travis.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: That Clone Wars one.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I enjoyed that again.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's few and far between the games that I actually don't like, so it was good.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so I'm trying to dig back into my pandemic memory to connect the dots of what is the DNA that survived into this monstrosity that is Fate of the Fellowship, um, a Lord of the Rings pandemic system game.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, from what I can tell, the key elements that are you know in your base pandemic that still exist here are there is a player deck of cards, right?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And they have different regions of the map on them.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have a, I think in pandemic it's called the epidemic deck, or yeah, something like that.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like the bad cards you draw every round that kind of tell you where new diseases are popping up.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you still have that same kind of deck, two-deck system in Fate of the Fellowship.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: You got your player cards with your different regions of Middle Earth, and then you have your shadow cards that kind of dictate where the bad stuff's happening.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: The shadow cards are gonna, you know, drive orc armies to different regions and move the Nazgul about the map, trying to search out Frodo.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And those are the kind of things you're contending with every round.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So on your table.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So in lieu of a virus that's spreading, you are fighting the dark armies of Mordor that are repopulating as you defeat them and continuing to spread to neighboring uh areas on the map, like the zones, the regions, the states, whatever you call them.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so different than the original pandemic, it's not there was that what's it called, like an outbreak that could happen when you have more than three cubes in one area, it would spread and go wild.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing like that per se in uh this version of the game, but your orcs on the shadow cards, there's like these marching paths that show, okay, all the orcs on the path from Dunland to Isengard will all move like one marching spot.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if they ever get to what would be uh a haven for the fellowship, so there's these havens, these are these good spots for the fellowship.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: If they get to a haven and there's no troops there to defend the haven, they take out the haven and turn it into a shadow stronghold.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a really good way to lose a lot of despair or to lose a lot of hope in the game, which is one of the ways as the fellowship you can lose.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: You start with, you know, six or seven hope.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're inspired.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: You want to get rid of this stinking ring.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: And as the game goes on, you know, and the Nazgul start searching for Frodo and the orcs are taking over your havens, you start losing this hope.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And ideally, you hold on to just enough hope to get your Frodo and Samwise character to Mount Doom and dispel the ring.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: So very thematic version of the pandemic system.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was big into that.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, just like in pandemic, you have four actions you can take on your turn.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can travel, which is moving to an adjacent location, you can fellowship, which is giving a card to another player matching the location or the region that you're in.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: You can prepare, which I don't know if this is in the original one.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it is.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it is, but you can discard a card when you're at a haven, you can discard a card that matches your region to take the symbol of the card as a token instead of a card.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a good way to, you know, you have a hand limit of seven cards.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of keeping that card just for its symbol, you can just discard the card, get the token, and it works just like the card.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: So there's the preparing, there is attacking.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're if you're in a spot and you have friendly troops, so in this game, you have your elvish troops, you've got your row gondol troops, you have your dwarf troops.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you're moving around and you have a little posse of those troops and you go to a spot with orcs, you can attack.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: When you attack, you roll some dice, some of your troops go, some of their troops go.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a whole thing.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get into that.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last thing you can do is to overtake a stronghold and turn it into a haven.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a really good way to get hope back.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can get to a shadow stronghold, take out all the orcs that are there, and there's just friendly troops, you can spend three sword symbols and turn that into a haven for the fellowship and get a bunch of hope.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there was something I meant to say.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, so how you win?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: I talked about the final thing you need to do, which is the thematic, hey, the Frodo and Samwise character, which are in every game, they have to get all the way across the board, which is pretty darn far, to Mount Doom, and they have to have five ring cards or five ring symbols to discard when they get to Mount Doom.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a lot to try and acquire over the course of the game.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, your main card suits are going to be rings.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: You have these cloak cards which are stealth.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: You have these friendship cards which have hearts on them, and you have the attack cards with the swords.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: The daggers, yeah.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the daggers.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that those are the type of cards that are in the deck.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, before you can do the Mount Doom mission, you do have three other objectives that you have to complete.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: And these are all like thematic story beats from the Lord of the Rings books and movies.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So one of them is like gain the favor of the elves.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to have you and another character have to be in Rivendell, and you have to discard three heart cards, like friendship.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, we've we're now friends with the elves, and that's like one of the objectives.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Boom.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then you get to add three more elfish troops to the supply, and you gain a hope.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Another one was like, Oh, you uh what was like Faramir did something, there was like a mad king, right?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to like unseat them.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one of them was that you have to get Faramir Steward of Gondor.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you you have things like that, which I've only played with, you know, like eight of them now, but a lot of them are just you and another character have to be somewhere with some combination of resources and troops to complete the objective.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, there's three of those, and then the the ring object objectives is how you win.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's like one of my favorite parts of this game.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And granted, I've I've I I own it, have not played it in person.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've played it plenty on board game arena.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they do have like the solo mode on there and everything, yeah.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the thematic beats to this are my favorite part.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um because they are optional, but they give you the best chance at victory.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I really enjoy that that you can like you can pick and choose to do them, yes.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, you have to do I maybe in the solo mode you have can pick and choose them, but in the the game as it's played that I played, you have three objectives you must complete, and then the final objective is always the Frodo and the Rings in Mount June.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, and there is a whole like fistful of these.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like it this game comes with like I don't know, maybe like 20 of these objectives that make each game different.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And speaking of making each game different, there's also like 13 characters you can play.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll just get into this because this is something that is divisive.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe just in my mind, I haven't really been up on the popular opinion of this game.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: But you get two characters you have to play.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if you're uh playing with four players, six players, whatever, everybody has two characters they're in charge of.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And on your turn, you're meant to take four actions with one character and then one action with another character, which depending on the level of brain power you have, can be an exciting prospect or not.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because each of your characters, you know, have you know maybe four or five different special abilities that you have to keep track of?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: So now you know I've got Frodo and Samwise that have these four things, I've got Legolas that can do these four things, and now it's my turn.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, there's this huge map.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: I have these two characters with all these different special things, and I'm like, okay, do who do I take my four actions with this one and my one action with this one?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: What's the best way to puzzle this out, to put me in the best scenario?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And quite frankly, my biggest beef with this game is the fact that I have two characters, and I I think it's plenty complicated, and there's plenty to think about with just one character.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I know it, you know, it adds a lot of like dynamics to the board, having this, all those characters moving about, and you probably need them to be able to do all the things that you have to do in this game and like cover the scope of things that could crop up with the different objectives.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, that was the most frustrating part of the game was trying to keep track of my two characters' abilities.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: And inevitably, you know, it's best if I have an idea of what everybody else's characters can do, because you know, in these games, you're working together and you're like, oh, coming up with plans.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, yes, Travis, you got the the freaking dwarf that'll give me the extra action symbol if I go here, and my second character does this other thing that, oh boy, yeah, oh boy, it's just a lot to keep track of for me.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't imagine playing this at the five-player mark where people have all those characters on the board and like trying to decipher who does what and when and how you synergize actions like that.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I I mean, I've admittedly, we have said many times on this podcast that board game arena is not the correct way to learn games, and that's probably not the preferred way to play any game.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, it's it's tough on board game arena.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot imagine sitting around this giant board and the amount of just like in between turns, like fiddliness of moving all these troops around and making sure that the armies of Mordor are moving where they're supposed to, and what you know, what activates when.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I I find this game really interesting because pandemic to me always felt like a war game that was themed after like medical research, right?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like public health.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and this is like the undoing of that where you're turning this like now public health game that's based on a war game back into a war game.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it seems weird that he did it in that old in that order.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like his Matt Leacock um has a pedigree of co-op games between pandemic, that's one of them.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: But he also did a bunch of the like Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Island games, which I find I I love those games.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Those are some of my like dark horse mass market games that you can buy at Target.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Are those like Forbidden Desert Island Sky Jungle was the last one?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Those are like sleeper hits for me.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it seems odd that he's going back to like war gaming after all these different iterations of co-op.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: But um talk to me about the Nazgul for a second, because the Nazguls follow a predictable path, but if they end up over the top of the ring bearer, right?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's completely wrong.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, you're right.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's that that is boy, that got away from us when we played this last night.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so when you flip those shadow cards over, they can either march the troops along the line or they can move the Nazgul to where the ring bearer is.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: And essentially, whenever Frodo moves, and again, kudos on the thematics.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yes, the Nazgul are flocking towards Frodo, trying to find the one ring.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And every time Frodo wants to move, which he has to get really far in this game, he has to go do Mount Doom, yeah, it's a long ways away.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Every time he moves, if there are Nazgul in his region or his destination region, you have to roll these search die for every number of Nazgul that are there.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if you if they're quickly, these Nazguls flock, like it goes from two to four to six really fast.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to roll six of these, and you get the symbol that makes you lose hope.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like each each of those you could lose.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we lost on the first turn of the game last time.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like each of us had taken one turn, we were down to two hope just because of the way the NASGOL had gone to Frodo.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have the the resources that allow um Frodo and Sam Wise are like a combined character, and they have a special ability where Sam can give aid and he can discard heart cards to ignore those bad symbols.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's right.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that we didn't have that, and you know, it just so happened the shadow cards came up, the Nazgul moved, another shadow card came up that said you had to roll a search, and so we had to roll six die, and we just ate it and took like four hope lost right off the bat.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but when Frodo moves, if he has a cloak, he can spend a cloak resource to move in stealth, and you can avoid that search roll.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: So anytime Frodo's moving, you have to be cognizant of where these Nazgul are and where the eye of Sauron is, because when the skies darken cards, which are like the outbreak cards or whatever that are in the player deck come up, if the eye of Sauron's on the spot with Frodo, you'll lose hope.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And wherever the eye is, is where the Nazgul goes to.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you're you're contending with this, you're contending with the orcs moving, you're trying to accomplish your objectives.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot to think about, and there's a lot to puzzle out.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And there's certainly a fair amount more luck than there is in probably any of the other pandemic games.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I've played any but the original, but with the die rolling and all that stuff.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it does add to the thematic feel of it having those moments, and I prefer that, honestly, than like a perfect puzzle that you can just figure out.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it can get away from you, and it can be, it can not feel good.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that's a complaint, um, and I noticed this the first time I played, was there with all the things going on, somehow it still feels like there are turns where you're like, there's really nothing I can do.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like some of the actions like fellowship and attacking require you have certain action cards.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if you just don't have, and or like be in certain regions with certain people, and if you just don't have that, really a lot of times travel is like your only action.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if you like don't really have anywhere you need to go, or can you know it's like okay, I gotta spend four actions.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of where I need to be.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm not at a haven, so I can't discard a card to get a token.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's a lot of times where it felt like I'm just wasting actions.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and Mary felt the same way last night when she was playing as Frodo, like she got pinned down in the in the Shire, like right off the bat with all these Nazgul.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And she didn't have any of the cloaks to move.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: So one of her characters, like, if she had moved and had to roll a search, we'd probably be done.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: So Frodo was essentially just sitting there waiting.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the other character, she was trying to figure out what to do every time for four actions with that.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I did find that there was a good amount of times that me or somebody else was like, uh, you know, I don't really know how to spend all four of these actions a Effectively, and we're probably just bad players at the end of the day, but I think it's worth noting if you go pick this up and you're like, Oh, I love Lord of the Rings, it it can be a lot.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how I feel about this.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've got a lot of complaints.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I also like it.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I like it's a beautiful production.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love the art.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: That dice tower looks so the pieces are incredible.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the the wooden uh figures for all the different characters look great.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: All the tiny little troops moving about the map look great.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the big the Nazgul are on these stands that are awesome.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: So like all in different poses and everything.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the production is top-notch.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I yeah, I love the the Matic integration, and it really does feel like you're like setting out on this, you know, really tumultuous journey, and it's gonna be tough, and you don't know if you're gonna make it.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: But it's hard, and it's a it's a bear to set up, it's kind of a bear to teach somebody and you know get them on board with their their actions, and it certainly can fall into the same traps of normal co-op games where somebody's just like, Yes, you go here, you go here, and we'll do this.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people just be like, Okay, yeah, that makes sense because I don't feel like thinking about the 75 different things I could do with my two characters.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, there's a lot to like if you're a Lord of the Rings fan.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you like big thematic games.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but if that's not for you, maybe stick with you know, regular pandemic, some more streamlined engagement for sure.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: See, that it's it's interesting because like this is something that I wanted when they did the Clone Wars.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I wanted something different that just felt like more thematic.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they put a couple of like big bad characters in there that you're trying to fight against, like uh The Ventress, and um I I don't know.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: They had a couple of other like bigger enemies besides just like the droids that were coming out, but it just it felt like more pandemic, and there wasn't like a whole lot of theme baked in.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is like the completely opposite side of that spectrum.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is so thematic to a T.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Everything the production is beautiful.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: They made it like this.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is a special production of like that pandemic system, and it's really I I think this one's gonna stick around for a while because I I love uh Lord of the Rings, and I yeah, I I got rid of that uh Star Wars version, the Clone Wars version, like very quickly there after we played it.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this one's gonna stick around for a while because it's it's worth it just to keep that like that dice tower looks good, the minions look good, like everything about this is put so much love and care into that Lord of the Rings IP, and it's cool to see it so heavily integrated into a system that is approachable.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I mean, you could you could get people to look at this on a table and say, like, yes, I want to play that, that once you try that at least.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's built on a strong foundation.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's good technique.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and it's and it's core gameplay is not a lot to wrap your head around.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, like it the on your turn, it's pretty simple for actions, but just to actually play it well and to know what's going on, it's a bit complex.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's over three.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you listened to decision space this week, where they're talking about like weight versus depth and how people conflate the two.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and is this a heavy game in that it takes a heavy lift to learn, or is it an in-depth game where like exploring every little everything that this game has to offer would take you multiple, multiple, multiple plays?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is it can be both, I guess.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: But how would you describe this game in terms of weight and depth?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm this isn't decision space, Travis.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: I can't I know, I know, but I can't contend with these guys.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: I I really liked it because it was thought provoking, right?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was, it was.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: We we use those two interchangeably sometimes, and that's not the right way to do it.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like the way that they described it, kind of in synopsis, is weight is like the lift it takes to learn the game and to know all the rules inside and out, and so like a game can be shallow but have great weight because it's complex and obtuse and hard to learn.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Depth is like I can play a simple game that has a lot of depth, and that like it has a lot to offer, but I have to play it so many times to like understand all the nuances.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like Jared would probably say that um what's the freaking um the game that he like his favorite games all have great depth because he has learned them inside and out, right?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, he knows every little crevice and like the odds of certain cards coming up when he plays Feast for Odin or these other games that he loves, like he has explored the depths of those games.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that this game has great like is there a heavy lift to learn it?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And does it offer enough like replayability is probably the word that we use more often for depth.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think how how does one consider the addition of like just blunt force replayability features into a game, right?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you factor that in?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because yeah, they throw in 25 different objectives that theoretically add to the replayability, but does it add to the depth?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, but does that do those like different you know uh objectives that you have to obtain, do they offer anything different in terms of gameplay?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it like I'm doing the same thing to achieve them?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: They just look slightly different, like I need these these tokens versus these two, or whatever it is.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, are they offering so much difference?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've only played with a few of them, but from what I could tell, they mainly felt like, hey, we just need to be in this spot versus that spot, and we need to have these resources versus those resources.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just like a checklist of things that needed to be accomplished.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I mean that does add to replayability, but does it add to depth?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know that I can write something off as not having a lot of depth after two plays, but I can say weight-wise and complexity, like it is a burden to know the rules relative to my current gaming stature.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it is heavy in that way, and I want to play it more, so maybe it does have depth.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, I I left feeling like I wanted more, even though I disliked some of it.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think that the depth might come from like knowing the odds of those skies darkening uh cards coming up, or the synergies between the different heroes that you can play as.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think that stuff adds a lot of replayability, even if it's not just like changing objectives and stuff like that.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I think when games offer asymmetric abilities between characters like that, I think you can create a lot of depth very quickly with nothing.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: To me, that feels like pseudo-depth.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: You think so?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: I I feel like when you're just like changing up abilities and things, is to me that's like fake depth.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting that's like you know, it's like putting yourself in a float tank.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it depends.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: I we're gonna we we're gonna end up in this like endless spiral, but like yeah, it depends on the nuances of those characters and how good, like, yeah, what is the max like ceiling level skill that you can have with that certain character, like playing as Aragorn or whatever.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: If I play as Aragorn, I know that I'm gonna have a 90% chance of winning this game, versus like what is this the floor to learning that character?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and if I pick this character up for the very first time, how good am I gonna be?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: And like if you if there is a significant difference between me playing a character for the first time and me playing it for the 100th time and the difference odds between me winning and losing, I think that that means that there's depth and there's like some level of mastery there.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, probably.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I will say, this isn't necessarily to your point, but when you bring up the character combinations, it was a cheat code.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they suggest on the intro game that the character playing with Frodo and Sam also play with Legolas.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, old Legolas has an action that you can take every turn that lets you just take a stealth cloak for free.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Which lets, you know, as Frodo and Sam, you need those to move around freely.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not drawing those and you don't have Legolas as a guy that can just grab them for you, your life's gonna be a lot harder.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it can definitely vary widely in the the difficulty based on my limited experience with how those characters interact with each other.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I'd be curious to pick uh Mike's brain about this one because I know that he played this a whole bunch when it when he first got it.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to get his take on it.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, Mike, if you're listening, let us know.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are listening, yeah, if you are listening at home and you have played Lord of the Rings Fate of the Fellowship, let us know what you thought about it.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let us know if you think that it has great weight or depth, and let us know uh what your preferred character combinations are.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Did we do it?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: We did it.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have been talking about Lord of the Rings, Fate of the Fellowship, published in 2025 by Z-Man Games.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: I have been your host, Travis Smith.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: He has been my co-host, Clayton Gable.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Operation Game Night, and we are out.