Fate of the Fellowship is an amazing cooperative game, with possibly the best integration of theme and gameplay I’ve played. In multiplayer, the game has understandably much more discussion and is great fun; however, there can sometimes be a bit of fighting over everyone having to work with whoever is playing as Frodo/Sam (Frodo from now on for simplicity).
With just a few tweaks, the solo mode balances the game and (to me) feels like the way the game was intended to be played.
So, what is different in solo? Most cooperative games are easy to play solo; the system just tells you to pick one (or maybe two) characters and play as normal. In Fate of the Fellowship, there are a few simple but fundamental tweaks to the rules that allow you to still oversee the entire map without needing to run multiple players.
Go back, Sam. I'm going to Mordor alone.
The main difference is how characters are chosen and used.
In the standard game, each player chooses two characters each (with someone having to choose Frodo). Each player takes their turn, picking one of their characters to have 4 Actions this turn while their other character gets 1. Each player has their own hand of cards.
Solo, you always include Frodo/Sam and then add any four others. Each turn you cycle to the next of the four non-Frodo characters; that character gets 4 Actions and Frodo gets 1. You have one hand of cards that is used on every turn.
Keep track of which character is the active one of the four with this handy token
There are only two other tweaks to the rules for solo mode, one is a balance tweak and one is for obvious reasons:
1. The Prepare action can now only be done with cards that are from the region the acting character is in. This makes it slightly harder to generate tokens to balance how everyone has access to the same tokens and cards.
2. The Fellowship action is not available, because… well, it’s not an action to shuffle your cards.
Travel light. Let’s hunt some orc!
This small tweak makes a massive change to the gameplay, and it honestly feels like the characters can more easily cooperate with each other.
Frodo only gets 1 Action, but gets that Action every turn. This means that everyone gets a total of 4 Actions over the course of cycling through the character loop. It also means that Frodo is able to react to every other character’s turn and the associated Shadow Cards so he doesn’t get swamped so easily.
The tactical update on this is that the pacing of the game is so much smoother. You’re playing as the four companions, running around the map while Frodo gradually makes his way through Middle Earth. He’s slow-moving but others can take him with them; however, most of the time there are too many fires to put out to spend much time babysitting him.
It creates a natural-feeling build-up of the game as you hold back the armies and complete the other objectives, all while Frodo gets closer and closer to completing the final objective. Fights help maintain Hope and move Sauron’s attention away; the single hand of cards means that you can more reliably give Frodo the Stealth he needs to keep safe. If Frodo keeps to the borders you can more easily minimise the risk of an unlucky set of Shadow Cards ambushing you.
It's my task! Mine, my own!
I really do enjoy playing Fate of the Fellowship as a group. It’s great to discuss tactics and to share in the drama. That said, it can suffer from a common issue of Pandemic-style games, where the more players there are, the more things happen before you can react to it. Being able to carry others with you as you travel helps, but you can still lose just because there were too many turns before a player can take their turn to fix things. It also can very much become a case of “Okay, who wants to play Frodo this time?” that can mean one player has a specific role to play and everyone else gets to do what they want.
When you’re playing solo, the balance seems better and the flow of the game does seem a little smoother. Is it more fun than multiplayer? I’m not so sure, maybe it’s just a different type of fun. But it does seem better designed and better balanced.
Even if you have a gaming group that plays this regularly, give the solo mode a try.
