Countless players and critics have already pointed out that Matt Leacock’s Fate of the Fellowship is magnificent, and there will be no hot takes here. I’d call it the finest Lord of the Rings board game ever made, but I still have War of the Ring sitting unplayed on a shelf somewhere, and anyway there are so many wonderful tabletop adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy that any quibbles would be matters of taste more than quality.

What impresses me the most is the granular stuff. The sheer amount of love poured into the adaptation, of course, but also the way Leacock has refined his original Pandemic formula until it’s all but unrecognizable. The crucial elements are present, but Fate is so far removed from that disease-inoculating 2008 original that it’s like observing evolution in freeze-frame.

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