Legendary board game designer says his upcoming Lord of the Rings project is "definitely the most thematically and mechanically rich game I’ve worked on"

One of the very many pleasures of attending Britain’s biggest board games convention, the UK Games Expo, is the chance of bumping into some of your favourite designers. But there was a special, unexpected treat this year: the arrival of superstar creative Matt Leacock all the way from the USA. He’s the mind behind Pandemic, the title that launched the best board games into mainstream stores and launched a wave of imitators that’s still washing up fresh new titles today.

The success of Pandemic has made him the closest thing the board games hobby has to a household name. But he’s characteristically modest about his success, saying in a quiet, considered tone that he was "famous to about 15 people. There was one convention where someone ran across a ballroom to say hi, but generally speaking, I can merge into the crowd without too much trouble. I can only say I feel very lucky, and it's very satisfying. I am blessed that I now have the opportunity to pick the projects I want to work on, and I don't take that lightly.”

Of course, it became a doubly noteworthy game when we were all unexpectedly confined to quarters during an actual pandemic. Leacock is relieved he chose to present the challenge from humanity’s point of view, saying, "if I’d designed a game about the pandemic where you're the disease, trying to wipe out humanity, I would have very different feelings. I am relieved. A lot of the health care providers played the game and they're shown as heroes. Plus, it’s cooperative and it shows how working together is bigger than the individual."

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"A different story every time"

His latest twist on the Pandemic formula is his biggest yet, in every sense. Fate of the Fellowship uses the same cooperative, card-draw system as the original board game but buries it under layers of Tolkienian theme to retell the story of Lord of the Rings.

"It really puts you in the shoes of the Fellowship of the Ring," he enthuses. "You need to help guide Frodo to Mount Doom to destroy the ring."

If the game unfolded along the same lines every play, it’d likely get old fast, but Leacock has made sure you can retell your own version of the plot in each game. "It’s like a story generator," he explains. "You have to complete a total of four objectives, or more at higher difficulty levels, while lots of other things are going down. The shadow troops might march on different havens and strongholds of the free peoples. And the various routes that you can take with Frodo will influence the way the story unfolds."

Long-time fans of the source material will be relieved to hear that you can also stick to the original plot line if desired. "You can play the canonical story, of course," Leacock says. "The introductory game uses four objectives. One of them is obtaining the blessing of the elves, so you go to Rivendell and discard some friendship cards to bring the elves on board. The next is to capture Isengard and the third is challenging Sauron with a show of force outside the gates of Mordor. Then you have to have Frodo throw the ring into the fire to win."

Once you’ve managed that - and it’s no easy feat, the game feels tougher than its predecessor - you can start to vary things.

"You can mix up any one of the 24 objectives," Leacock explains. "Some of those are events from the book, like confronting the Balrog, or Shelob, but others might have you going down to Umbar, or making peace with the Dunlendings. You can also see what might have happened if the dwarves got more involved, or the Shire was captured early. So you get a different story every time you play."

"...a struggle between hope and despair"

Carrying all that narrative weight required some very significant changes to the Pandemic system, yet "it still undergirds it," says Leacock. "You actually play two characters instead of one, and you take four actions with one, and one with the other. But more similar to the original you then draw two player cards and then draw a threat card. In this case, though, these are shadow cards and instead of adding random armies to the board they gradually accumulate troops into armies and have those armies march out on different battle lines and threaten the different havens."

Naturally, while you can win by defending these important map points as Frodo makes his way to Mount Doom, there are also lots of ways you can lose.

"The whole game is a struggle between hope and despair," Leacock says. "If you can destroy the ring before Frodo succumbs to despair and loses all hope then you win."

Hope is reduced through various means, including losing havens to enemy armies, and drawing certain cards while the Eye of Sauron token is in Frodo’s region. But there’s a third, more nefarious means of losing hope that’s staring at us from the demo board of the game next to where we talk: Ringwraith miniatures on flying stands.

"Ringwraiths inhabit an entire region and they're always looking for Frodo and the ring," Leacock continues. "The Nazgul are always sent toward where the Eye of Sauron marker is, but you can distract the Eye by battling the shadow troops in other regions of the world. So you can manage Sauron's attention to keep him off the ring bearer." If Frodo moves inside a region where there are Ringwraiths, the players must roll dice to see if he’s spotted, potentially losing more hope.

With the release of his game pencilled in for late June, Leacock is starting to look at other projects.

"I’ve got Animal Rescue Team coming out this fall, and the dexterity game Flickering Stars should be out some time this year," he says. "Plus I’m working on a couple of legacy games right now that are unannounced, and they’re keeping me very busy."

But he’s very satisfied with what he’s achieved with his time in Middle-Earth. "It's definitely the most thematically and mechanically rich game I’ve worked on," he continues. And given the popularity of his output so far, that’s quite a promise for the quality of the game.

Want something new to play while you wait for Fate of the Fellowship? Check out the best adult board games or the best 2-player board games.