by Bryan Bornmueller

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers™ Trick-Taking Game is a co-operative trick-taking game based on the second novel of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

It is a standalone sequel to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring™ Trick-Taking Game. Players continue their adventure through Middle-earth over eighteen new chapters.

“The Road Goes Ever On”

Based on positive early feedback for The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game, the team and I were lucky enough to embark upon a sequel as soon as the files got handed off to the printer.

We wanted to follow the framework we had established in our adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring: the basic trick-taking rules, use of characters cards as the main goals, chapter cards, the shape of the box, and the game following the story of the novel as closely as possible.

A key choice (and an easy one) was to closely mirror the structure of Tolkien’s original story rather than that of the film adaptations. Tolkien splits The Two Towers into two distinct sections. The first follows Aragon, Legolas, Gimli, Merry, and Pippin and introduces Treebeard and the kingdom of Rohan, while covering the battle of Helm’s Deep. The second, about two hundred pages later, goes back and tells the concurrent story of Frodo and Sam’s odyssey with Gollum.

I realized that it wouldn’t make sense to include the five Rings cards in the part of the game where Frodo (and The Ring) are off on the other side of the Anduin. This left a five-card hole in the deck that needed to be filled.

“Still dark and tall, unbroken by the storm, the tower of Orthanc stood.”

A game called “The Two Towers: Trick-Taking Game” obviously needed two towers, but where did they fit? Without The One Ring to provide a trump card (to allow the player to win the trick they are played in), I decided that the two towers could each work as trump. Tolkien was famously vague about which towers the title referred, so I decided to call the cards the White Tower and Black Tower. These simple names served the chapters well as I could have these same two cards thematically represent different things at different times in the story.

Having two equal trump cards led to situations in which a tiebreaker was needed. After trying many options and failing to find a thematically satisfying tiebreaker mechanism, I decided that the towers should cancel each other out when played in the same trick. Although this tiebreaker method would be unspeakably annoying in a competitive trick-taking game, it turned out to be a satisfying tool that allowed players to get out of tight spots and work together in a co-operative game.

Having two towers in the game also allowed us to include two chunky wooden tower tokens (based on Elaine Ryan‘s wonderful illustration) to help players remember who had each of these key cards.

“I am called Strider”, answered Aragorn. “I came out of the North. I am hunting Orcs.”

One of the key obstacles in the first book of The Two Towers is the Orcs. They are a constant threat and a major presence in the world of Middle-earth. As the cards in the players’ hands represent that world, I realized the Orcs could fill in the remaining three open card slots.

The Orcs cards are effectively dead cards in a player’s hand and pose a threat that can cause a loss if they are not handled with care. They don’t have a suit of their own, so they can be played only if the player cannot otherwise follow suit. Orcs cannot be lead, which means a player with an Orcs card in hand will need to give up the lead in order to dispatch their Orcs.

Forth the Three Hunters!

With these five new cards (two Towers and three Orcs) along with the suits from the original game, showcasing gorgeous new artwork from Elaine that reflects the changing environments of the story, the main deck was set and the design process for the chapters and characters could begin.

The shape and tone of The Two Towers‘ story is quite different than that of The Fellowship of the Ring. The Fellowship of the Ring starts as a small stream in the shire that meanders and grows, slowly revealing a wider world filled with fantastic characters, dangers, and lore primarily from Frodo’s point of view. The Two Towers plunks the reader down in the middle of the action, changes perspective frequently, and takes ever larger leaps across Tolkien’s extraordinary literary landscape.

These differences formed an excellent canvas on which to try to accomplish key goals for the sequel. First, I wanted folks who had played through The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game to find chapter nineteen (the first chapter of The Two Towers: Trick-Taking Game) familiar to the previous game’s chapters, but also fresh and exciting. If it were too similar, the game would be stale, but if it were too different, fans of the first game would be disappointed.

The second major goal was to have more variety from chapter to chapter than in Fellowship. After more than a year of work on the system, I had a good sense of how many new characters and rules players could handle in a chapter and wanted to use that knowledge to introduce more new ideas per chapter. Luckily, the perspective switches and exciting character introductions in The Two Towers fit this perfectly.

“We will make such a chase as shall be accounted a marvel among the Three Kindreds”

One of my major goals when designing characters in an adaptation is to make sure their actions and goals line up with the original material and function within the context of the trick-taking language I’ve created. When reading reviews and comments about The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game, I love when folks spot the thematic nods I had in mind.

I won’t go into all of the characters in the game so that you can discover them at your own pace, but I will discuss the characters in “The Departure of Boromir”, the first chapter of The Two Towers: Trick-Taking Game.

First up is, of course, Aragorn. He was designed both to show off his freshly crystalized role as the leader of the company and to highlight the White Tower and Black Tower cards. Without Frodo and The One Ring to assign a starting character, we use the White Tower to lead things off.

Aragon’s goal is inspired by the classic German card game Doppelkopf, a game I played a lot in college. In Doppelkopf, the players dealt the two Queens of Clubs form a hidden partnership. Doppelkopf, like most traditional games, is competitive, but I love the idea of how this sort of partnership might work inside of a co-operative trick-taking game. The two Tower cards take the place of the “Grannies”, so Aragorn needs to win a majority of tricks alongside the other player with a Tower card. No one at the table but the player with the Black Tower will know who they are (including Aragorn), so this classic device can lead to tension at the game table which mirrors the tension in Tolkien’s narrative.

Boromir, the namesake of the chapter, deserved both a fitting farewell and presented a chance to further highlight the fun of the Tower cards and Aragorn’s goal. Boromir needs to win at least two tricks before the Black Tower is played, thereby keeping Aragorn in the dark a bit longer given that Boromir can win no tricks after the Black Tower has been played. Thematically, I like the idea that the Black Tower represents something bad happening in the story such as the death of a great warrior.

Character set-up actions are also a fun place to insert nods to the original story. In this chapter, Boromir is a bit too busy fighting off orcs for any exchanges, but Aragorn (and only Aragorn) could choose to use his set-up action and help Boromir in his final hour.

The last two characters in chapter 19 are Legolas and Gimli. I wanted to stay true to the thematic ties of Elves to Forest cards and Dwarves to Mountain cards established in The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game without simply repeating their original goals. I also wanted to adjust the difficulty between different player counts. Therefore, in a three-player game they need to win six cards of their suit and in a four-player game they need to win four cards of their suit.

Having “mirrored” goals makes it a bit easier to wrap your head around all of the new goals all at once. If you learn one, the other is easy to remember.

“The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.”

Bryan and TaylorI am fortunate to be part of a large organization that allows me to both design games based on stories that I love and to make those games available in over twenty languages worldwide.

There are many people who have done so much to help shape the game, and I am beyond grateful for all of their hard work.

Taylor Reiner once again was indispensable in leading game development. Taylor tested the game countless times with many different groups and contributed a wealth of feedback and insight that honed the game to its sharp and challenging final form. Be sure to check out his developer diary videos (part 1 and part 2) for even more insight into the development of this game.

Elaine Ryan’s amazing illustrations continue to bring Tolkien’s world to life in exciting and beautiful new ways. The theme of the game is much stronger with Elaine’s art breathing life into it, and it is amazing to see her evolution of the character designs from The Fellowship of the Ring into the next arc of the story. Extra thanks also go to Matt Fantastic for art direction and Blaise Sewell for graphics.

And of course, the game would not be possible without all of the amazing folks at Office Dog and asmodee: Bree, Lupe, Jay, Randy, Luke, Krystal, Preston, Ellie, and Mike.

“I do not know the history of Wizards”

The credits page of the rulebook contains a short designer’s note with some of my inspirations for The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game. Here are links and more details:

• Familiar’s Trouble / Trick’n Trouble, The Crew (both The Quest for Planet Nine and Mission Deep Sea), and Hameln Cave / Sail for showing just how much potential the idea of co-operative trick-taking has.

• Doppelkopf: As mentioned above for many of the tower-based goals and hidden partnership.

• Chapter 24: Tichu — [o]There is a Wormtongue event inspired by the Grand Tichu rules of making a big choice before you’ve seen your whole hand.[/o]

• Chapter 25: Skull King — [o]I wanted to use the idea of changing/growing hand sizes and not dealing the whole deck to give a feeling of scope to Helms Deep.[/o]

• Chapter 29: Tichu — [o]The new weariness cards introduced in Part 2 were very much inspired by the Dog card as you need to win the lead, then give it up at the correct time. Somethings this is helpful, sometimes a terrible trap.[/o]

Bryan Bornmueller

Additional Interviews and Discussion about The Two Towers: Trick-Taking Game:

▪️ Podcast Interview Trick-Talkers Episode 43

▪️ Space-Biff! Space-Cast! #52. Fellowship of the Trick

All quotes: Tolkien, J. R. R., The Two Towers. HarperCollins, 2005.