Pandemic: Fall of Rome
A while ago, I introduced a friend of mine with a history degree to Pandemic: Fall of Rome, where you defend Rome from its enemies.
Pandemic, in this case, is just the brand name for the game engine, based on that of the Pandemic series of co-operative board games that were a lot more interesting to play before global civilization suffered an actual pandemic.
My friend liked Fall of Rome more than Pandemic, but he didn’t love it. I found this a shame, as it is my favorite of the Pandemic games, though I’ve not played it as much as the original. You’re a leader traveling across the Roman Empire, recruiting and commanding legions to push back the invaders. I find the game thematic and fascinating.
The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship
The next night I taught that same friend Fate of the Fellowship, which is a reimplementation of Pandemic: Fall of Rome with the theme of The Lord of the Rings.
He loved how thematic the gameplay is. In our game, Galadriel used her Mirror to help everyone behind the scenes, while leading her elves to cleanse Mirkwood. Eowyn led a warband to conquer Isengard and slay a Nazgûl. Eomer rose to greatness, ridding the Mark of orcs, then fighting abroad, then answering Gondor’s call for aid! And, finally, as always required, Frodo and Sam destroyed the One Ring.
Normally you randomly choose the three objectives first then the characters needed for them. We had five players, so I’d bent the rules. Each player picked their characters (picking one character, then a snake draft before picking the next), with me picking last and taking Frodo and Sam (one character card), plus Legolas.
I then chose mission objectives so that each player got an objective. We played you needed to accomplish three of the four player objectives before Frodo and Sam could destroy the Ring. That made the game a touch easier, though a player had reshuffled the player deck so that most of the Skies Darken event cards came out earlier, which made the game harder.
Skies Darken events cause the discarded location cards to be reshuffled and placed back on the deck, so that bad things happen in the same places on the map over time, as in Pandemic.
My friend and another player each loved Fate of the Fellowship so much they immediately bought themselves copies! (An advantage—and disadvantage!—of playing at your Friendly Local Game Store.)
Other Plays
You lose the game by Frodo losing all Hope (which starts at 6 Hope and can go up to 8). Hope goes down as Frodo encounters Nazgul and orcs, but it also goes down when the player deck runs out or when you need to place more new orcs than are left in supply (how we lost our second game; we’d ignored the massing orc armies).
This was my seventh play of the game. We’d lost not just the second but our third game as well. Embarrassingly, in our third game, we lost in two turns, after a disastrous Search of Frodo by the Nazgul caused him to lose most of his Hope, and then the Eye found him. We lost in 30 minutes.
Every play so far has been very thematic while differing from the books: The Ents saving Lorien, Gimli capturing Moria and establishing a dwarf kingdom there, Eowyn slaying 5 Nazguls (!) and Frodo flying by the Eagles to Mt. Doom.
If you enjoy cooperative games and you enjoy The Lord of the Rings, you’ll love Fate of the Fellowship.
Promotional photos copyright by MEE. Board-state photos by J. Alan Henning and released to the public domain.
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