What I've been playing lately

Reflecting on The Lord of the Rings in board game form, Eternal Decks, Fromage and Twinkle Twinkle

Well, hello! This week in Don’t Eat the Meeples, I’ll be talking about some games I’ve been playing recently. This is one of those features I like to write every now and again, not because I don’t have other ideas, but because I think there’s something interesting about these games, and I don’t feel quite ready to write about them on their own, and they don’t quite fit into a broad sort of list.

So, here we are. I’ll be talking about several games that have taken my attention recently. We’ll start with two games based on The Lord of the Rings and one game about reviving Eternals before we turn our attention to things a bit more mundane (but certainly not boring): cheese and the stars.

There’s not much need for a length preamble, so here we are — let’s just jump right into it.

I’ve talked about The Lord of the Rings — The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game already, but I’m still playing it with Ginny and having such a great time with it. The two-player game includes a straw-man third player, which one of the two players will control. We’re maybe a third of the way through the campaign, and I’m very much looking forward to the rest. In each chapter of the game, players assume the role of a character, each of which has a goal to accomplish through the game. That becomes a portion of the difficulty curve, with newly emerging characters providing more difficult goals, and the combinations of goals becoming more intricate and involved. I don’t know how to talk about this one more without revealing the campaign, and I think there’s so much value in going through the campaign that I don’t want to deprive you of it. Suffice to say, this game’s great. Designed by Bryan Bornmueller, developed by Taylor Reiner, illustrated by Elaine Ryan and Samuel R. Shimota, and published by Office Dog Games.

While we’re thinking about Middle Earth — the first tabletop role playing game I ever had any time with was the Middle Earth Role-Playing (MERP), a licensed game based on the iconic universe. I died pretty quickly (it turns out, fourth graders — at least in the 1990s — were generally not great at role-playing games, nor were they great at running them. Who knew!), but the game’s very much stuck with me. Not the mechanics; I’ve completely forgotten those. But the way the game felt, the way I wanted to play more — I think part of my love of modern board games stems from that occasion.

At any rate, I was talking with a friend recently about the great games in the Lord of the Rings canon, because the list is quite extensive. The trick-taking game, of course, is the latest. There’s one of the first big cooperative games, Lord of the Rings. There’s Hunt for the Ring, War of the Ring, Journeys in Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, The Confrontation — the list goes on. What is it, I wonder, about this universe and its fans that has done so well to attract great designers to these tie-in properties? It’s not a new phenomenon, either.

At any rate, the reason that came up was because I had The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth on the table, and I was telling him about how it’s a great take on a great game, 7 Wonders Duel. There’s something really remarkable happening here, though. It’s not just a re-theming of the original. The feeling of the game is different, but mechanically, it’s changed only in a few key ways. In 7 Wonders Duel, you’re aiming to achieve either military victory, scientific victory or a pure points victory, with the first two leading to immediate victory. In Duel for Middle Earth, the three victory conditions are immediate. You can either destroy the One Ring or catch the Hobbits (depending on if you’re playing as The Fellowship or Sauron), which is roughly analogous to the military victory track, but with some key differences in execution; you can gather support of the denizens of Middle Earth by having six different race symbols on your cards, which is roughly the scientific victory; or you can earn your victory by being present in every region on the map.

The changing victory conditions are one thing, but a simple shift there wouldn’t make the game feel so different as to be worth picking up on its own. Small but important things change — resources are now skills, and they’re no longer split into two types of card. Blue cards are no longer just victory points; they’re now ring cards, which advance the Fellowship or the Nazgul along a track. And the map — the map! — is a fantastic addition, giving military cards an entirely new dimension as you place units and fortresses across Middle Earth.

While there was something nice about a points-based victory in 7 Wonders Duel, it would be a thematic mismatch in Duel for Middle-Earth. In the event of none of the three victory conditions being met, the game opts to find a winner via the player who has presence in more of the map. I’m really pleasantly surprised by this one. I don’t think it replaces 7 Wonders Duel outright, but you also don’t really need both unless you love the game — but it is a really good game. I don’t know — you be the judge.

Designed by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala, illustrated by Vincent Dutrait, and published by Repos Production.

Eternal Decks

Eternal Decks is an interesting cooperative card game without communication — which, on its own, is not that unusual these days. There are plenty of great cooperative games that limit your communication, and by and large, I’m here for it. Eternal Decks combines that low-communication cooperative idea with a novel take on ramping difficulty. The game pits you against 9 ‘Eternals’, which are sort of like mini-bosses and which are revived according to their location on the board. When an Eternal is revived, the player who does so earns their deck of cards, which will strengthen their hand — but at the same time, the Eternal releases a curse that will make the game more difficult for all players. It’s one of those games that you have to play (or at least see played) to really understand the appeal, but there’s a lot here. It’s a cooperative game that is a real test; it grows in difficulty, but it starts pretty approachable; it forces you to think tactically and strategically. Plus, the art’s absolutely gorgeous. Designed by Hiroken, illustrated by MUJUNSHA, and published by Tricktakers Games in Japan and Portland Games Collective in the United States, who will soon be selling the game online.

Fromage

Fromage is a worker placement game in which you’re making cheese. If that’s not enough to sway you over, perhaps I should go into a little more depth. I could just shout “rondel!” but honestly, that’s an entirely boring answer for you all. (A rondel is a mechanism by which you are restricted to certain actions each turn by virtue of their position in a round selection area. In Fromage, you are essentially making cheese in one of four areas by placing one of your three workers, each of which corresponds to a different kind of cheese. You might place in the Fromagerie, where you’ll earn points for placing in different sections. Or it might be the Villes, where you earn points for controlling regions of France. There are eight different sections of that rondel, four of which will be used each game. (Those eight sections are made of four double-sided sections — presumably both for balance and for cost. Just to be clear.)

Each section of the cheese wheel (is that the design impetus behind this game? I sure hope so!) also features a space where you can gain resources, which will allow you to make cheese with fruit inclusions, build structures to help you through the game, gain cows for making cheese as a separate action, or gain goal cards to give you extra points for the cheese you make. If you’d like to gain more resources, you can commit your workers for longer periods of time, too.

One of the game’s novelties is the fact that you take actions simultaneously around the table, with the only break coming when you’re waiting to rotate the rondel once each player has completed their worker placement. There is still plenty of blocking going on, as the cheese you make and 2the resources you gather will inevitably disrupt somebody’s plans.

I’ll admit to being a little bit skeptical of this game when it first emerged. I shouldn’t have been. Designers Ben Rosset and Matthew O’Malley hit this one out of the park. If any of my cheesemonger friends read this and want to play on Board Game Arena, drop me a line. That’s where I’ve been playing this, and it’s been a really interesting time. And the adaptation works quite well asynchronously — in a two-player game, you almost always get to take two turns in a row.

Designed by Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rosset, illustrated by Pavel Zhoba, and published by R2i Games.

Twinkle Twinkle

I haven’t played the physical version of Twinkle Twinkle, but the Board Game Arena adaptation is quite good, and the game itself isn’t out yet, so this is what you’ll get. The game itself is a pretty simple tile-placement game: You’re placing constellations, satellites, comets, asteroids, planets and black holes, each of which has a different scoring condition. We could talk about the details of that, but the rules are pretty simple, and the BGA implementation is actually pretty slick, so you won’t have to work hard to learn them.

But that’s the interesting thing, for me. This is the second time that Twinkle Twinkle’s publisher, Allplay, has released a game of this weight on BGA before releasing it physically. It’s a marketing tool that builds something more than hype in the game, and that’s the best part: A great adaptation on the popular website can help build sustained interest. They did it for River Valley Glassworks, and they did it again here. It’s a strategy I can get behind. (I’m also a web programmer by trade, so if you’re a publisher looking for an adaptation — well, I’m right here.)

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Thanks for reading Don’t Eat the Meeples again this week. If it’s your first time here, then thanks for reading for the first time! It’s just awfully strange sometimes that you folks are here reading what I’m writing, and I feel both a certain surreal quality and a lot of gratitude.

Next week: Great trick-taking games published in 2024.