About the Starting Scenario

This Board Game Arena version of The Lord of the Rings™: Fate of the Fellowship is available for a limited time and features 10 playable characters and the 4 objective cards suggested for players' first game. The full physical game includes 13 playable characters and 24 objective cards.

Character Selection: Each player controls 2 characters (or 5 characters if playing a solo game). The "Preselected" character selection option assigns players the characters suggested for a first game. "All at random" assigns each player random characters.

Difficulty: The available introductory and standard difficulty levels change the number of Skies Darken cards in the player deck. The full physical game includes additional rules for Heroic, Epic, and Legendary difficulties that further increase the number of Skies Darken cards to include as well as the number of objective cards to complete.

Interface Help

Character Information: To see your character cards, click on the character figures in the top right box under your BGA username. Hovering your mouse over these figures will also pulse your characters on the board to more easily locate them.

Reference Information: Click the circular buttons on the bottom left of the screen to see reference information on actions (?), symbols, search dice, and battle dice.

Objective Cards: Click the 4 objective cards above the game board to see what the players will need to accomplish to win the game.

Player hands and tokens: Players' hands of cards are displayed below the game board. The boxes on the top right with players' BGA usernames show how many cards and tokens of each symbol type each player has.

Help on locations: Click the help on locations button on the top right of the game board and then a location to see detailed information about the location and the troops and characters present there.

Show/Hide tokens: Toggle the show/hide tokens button on the top right of the game board to more easily see locations and regions on the map.

Rules

For more information on how to play the game, see the rulebook files available on BoardGameGeek.

Turn Structure

Players take turns in clockwise order, following these 3 steps each turn:

1. Do Actions
2. Draw 2 Player Cards
3. Draw Shadow Cards

1. DO ACTIONS

On your turn, you may do up to 4 actions with 1 of your characters and up to 1 action with the other. You can do actions with either character first, but you must complete all of the actions with 1 character before doing any actions with the other character.

Click the circular ? button on the bottom left of the screen to see a list of actions. Some objective cards have special actions required to complete them, and some characters have special actions only they can perform included on their character cards.

2. DRAW 2 PLAYER CARDS

After doing actions with your characters, draw the top 2 cards together from the player deck.

If the player deck runs out of cards, lose 1 hope for each player card you cannot draw.

If your card draw includes any Skies Darken cards, resolve them.

If you ever have more than 7 cards in hand (after first resolving any Skies Darken cards you may have drawn), discard cards and/or play events until you have 7 cards in hand.

3. DRAW SHADOW CARDS

Flip over the top card of the shadow deck and place it face-up next to the shadow deck. Only half of the flipped card will be resolved.

If a red flag is now showing on top of the shadow deck, resolve the top section of the flipped card. This section advances shadow troops towards havens along the colored battle lines on the map. After advancing shadow troops, roll a battle in each location on the battle line containing both shadow troops and friendly troops. If shadow troops now occupy a haven and no friendly troops are present, it becomes a shadow stronghold: Cover the haven with a shadow stronghold token and lose 3 hope.

If a black banner is now showing on the top of the shadow deck, resolve the bottom section of the flipped card. This section reinforces a shadow location with 1 additional shadow troop and resolves a special order that can shift the Eye of Sauron or move Nazgûl to other regions.

Do this a number of times equal to the current threat rate listed on the threat rate track.

Special Shadow Cards: The Drums of War and the Wheels of Saruman operate differently from the other shadow cards. If either of these cards is drawn, follow the instructions on the card instead of advancing or reinforcing.

Winning and Losing

The players win the game when Frodo successfully completes the Destroy The One Ring objective. You all lose the game if Frodo loses all hope (i.e., the hope marker reaches the 0 space on the hope track).

COMPLETING OBJECTIVES

The requirements for completing each objective are listed on each card. When these are met, follow the When Completed rules on the card.

You may complete the Destroy The One Ring objective only after you have completed all the other objective cards.

LOSING HOPE

These are the main ways to lose hope:

• If you roll a search and get despair results (lose 1 each).
• If you draw a Skies Darken card when the Eye of Sauron is in Frodo's region (lose 2).
• If shadow troops take over a haven (lose 3).
• If you need to add a shadow troop when there aren't any in the supply (lose 1 per missing troop).
• If you need to draw a player card when there aren't any in the deck (lose 1 per missing card).

GAINING HOPE

If you capture a shadow stronghold, gain 2 hope. Many objectives and some abilities also let you gain hope. If the hope marker is at the top of the track, you cannot gain any more hope.