The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship

Welcome to The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, a cooperative game where players work together as members of the Fellowship and their allies to protect Frodo, evade the Eye of Sauron and the Nazgûl, defeat invading enemy troops, and ultimately cast the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom (p. 3).

Here is how to set up, play, and win or lose the game:

Setup

1. Place the game board in the center of the table (p. 6). Place the threat rate marker and the hope marker on the spaces containing a dot on their respective tracks (p. 6).
2. Create the shadow deck by placing the 2 special shadow cards into the shadow discard pile, then shuffling the remaining shadow cards and stacking them facedown on the board (p. 6).
3. Place starting troops, the Eye of Sauron, and the Nazgûl on the board according to the starting positions and icons indicated (p. 6).
4. Select objective cards by putting the Destroy the One Ring objective (marked with a red star) and 3 other randomly selected objectives faceup by the board (p. 8).
5. Hand out character and reference cards by ensuring each player gets a total of 2 character cards, placing their figures in the starting locations shown on their character cards (p. 8).
6. Build the player deck by dividing the remaining player cards into stacks based on your chosen difficulty, shuffling 1 Skies Darken card into each stack, and piling them up on the draw space (p. 24).

How a Turn Works

Players take turns in clockwise order, following these 3 steps on each turn (p. 10):

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 (p. 10). You must complete all actions with one character before doing any actions with the other character (p. 10). You can select any combination of available actions (such as Travel, Attack, Capture, Prepare, Muster, and Fellowship), and your characters share your hand of player cards and tokens (p. 9, 28).
2. Draw 2 Player Cards: After doing actions with your characters, draw the top 2 cards together from the player deck (p. 15). If your card draw includes any Skies Darken cards, resolve them immediately (p. 15).
3. Draw Shadow Cards: Flip over the top card of the shadow deck, resolve only half of the card based on whether a red flag or black banner is showing on top of the deck, and do this a number of times equal to the current threat rate (p. 16).

How the Game Ends

The players win the game when Frodo successfully completes the Destroy the One Ring objective (p. 19). You all lose the game if Frodo loses all hope—meaning the hope marker reaches the 0 space on the hope track (p. 19).

(Note: The provided rules excerpt does not specify exact details on how victory points or full scoring systems are calculated beyond completing the objectives and managing hope.)