The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship Components Overview and Impressions
I’m a massive Lord of the Rings fan, and the past 12 months have been great for Lord of the Rings board game fans. Lord of the Rings Duel (a reimagining of 7 Wonders Duel), The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring Trick Taking Game, and now The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship. All of the games have been fantastic in their own way, but Fate of the Fellowship is one of the best looking games of the bunch!
I was able to check out and get a quick look at the game at Canada Plays 2025 – yes, Rodney Smith is a great teacher in person, I can confirm! – and ever since that event, I’ve been longing to have my own copy of the game. The board, while very busy with arrows going all over, still looks fantastic, and once you understand how it works, the business fades away and instead you can enjoy the board for what it is, a broken down look at Middle Earth!
The board itself is nice to look at, and that extends over to the cards as well. These are not cards full of art, though, as they need to show off a ton of information in a small space. I think Z-MAN has done a great job balancing iconography with creating something that still looks good. Kudos to them. Card quality here is pretty good. I wouldn’t sleeve these personally, but if you plan to play this over a dozen times per year, you might want them sleeved because of how much you will shuffle these items.
This game comes with a ton of wooden components, and I’m actually a big fan of all of them with a slight exception – those units are really small! All the units look the same, but come in a variety of different colours to denote the Men of Gondor, the Elves, the Uruk-Hai, and so on. Every play a Tiny Epic game? You’ll think these units are straight out of a Tiny Epic title. That said, there will be a lot of these on the board at one time, so I do understand how small they are.
The character pawns are gorgeously detailed. I love the art style used, and the use of colors easily helps identify which character is which when out on the board.
The game also comes with a bunch of dice, and I’m happy to report that these dice are etched, not printed. I absolutely hate printed dice, because over time those prints are going to wear off. With etched dice, you can expect your dice to last a whole lot longer, so once again, kudos to Z-MAN!
Ok, I’m not sure if you’ve seen images of this game prior to reading this article, but this game comes with a cardboard dice tower! Putting together the tower took a bit of work, and it didn’t feel that sturdy until I put on the last piece, but now that it’s assembled, I’m really impressed. This is 100% an unnecessary add-on from Z-MAN, but I love it none-the-less. Tell me you wouldn’t want a dice tower of Barad-dûr in your Lord of the Rings game! I love that this was included, and will definitely make people stop and look if this is out on the table.
Overall, I’m impressed with this production. I think Z-MAN often makes solid looking games, although it’s been a while since we reviewed one. Either way, this is phenomenal, and I love this so much!
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Article By Adam Roffel
