There have been an enormous number of tabletop adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings, but few capture the emotional weight and narrative journey of the source material quite as well, or in such an accessible fashion, as Bryan Bornmueller’s acclaimed trick-taking card game series.
Following the widespread success of The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game, which was published in 2024 to introduce players to cooperative, limited-information card play based on Middle-earth’s most iconic moments, designer Bryan Bornmueller expanded the trilogy with the equally well-received The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game in January. Now, the celebrated trilogy is set to reach its emotional and mechanical climax with the upcoming release of The Return of the King Trick-Taking Game, scheduled to arrive in February 2027.
The journey to adapt one of literature’s most enduring sagas into a cooperative trick-taking card game has been a labor of love for Bornmueller, who serves as the innovation and sourcing director at board game publisher Asmodee. Speaking in an interview at the annual Spiel Essen board game convention, Bornmueller reflected on the deep emotional resonance the final chapter achieves during playtests, noting that the culmination of the trilogy hits close to home for seasoned gaming groups.
“My proudest achievement with this game is I had multiple playtest groups tell me that they teared up a little bit when they played the last chapter, especially people who have played for a few years together,” Bornmueller told Polygon.
Bornmueller’s connection to Tolkien’s universe runs deep, stemming from childhood memories of his father reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings aloud to him. Years later, while working at a local comic book store during his time at Iowa State University, he helped organize midnight screenings of Peter Jackson’s landmark cinematic adaptations. When Reiner Knizia’s classic cooperative board game The Lord of the Rings was released in the year 2000, Bornmueller famously stayed up all night trying to successfully save Middle-earth alongside fellow fans. After graduating college, he transitioned into the professional board gaming industry, beginning his career as a senior sales associate at Asmodee before rising through the ranks to manage studio relations and develop new board and card games.
As Asmodee looked to expand its portfolio of Tolkien-licensed titles—building upon existing games like the app-supported campaign experience Journeys in Middle-Earth and The Lord of the Rings living card game—Bornmueller decided to try his hand at designing his own unique contribution to the franchise. For mechanical inspiration, he drew heavily from traditional trick-taking card games he enjoyed growing up, including Hearts and Doppelkopf—the latter of which he learned from a German exchange student. He was also heavily inspired by Thomas Sing’s modern cooperative masterpiece, The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, which brilliantly transformed traditional trick-taking rounds into discrete, objective-driven missions.
Translating a sweeping literary narrative into a structured card game format, however, proved to be an iterative and challenging process.
“My original idea was going to be like the moment when the Fellowship leaves Rivendell,” Bornmueller explained. “There are 10 characters, and you just play two or three hands and you see how it goes. You win or you lose. When I played it with gamers who played a lot of card games, it worked really well. When I taught normal people, those 10 options were too much.”
Recognizing that throwing players directly into the deep end of the Fellowship roster created a steep learning curve, Bornmueller realized he needed a foundational introductory scenario to ease newcomers into the rules. He decided to begin the experience right at the peaceful start of The Fellowship of the Ring. From that realization, a larger design philosophy clicked into place: he could break the entire three-part literary saga down into distinct chronological chapters that play out across successive rounds of the game, slowly and organically introducing new characters equipped with their own unique abilities and specialized win conditions.
To bring his vision to life, Bornmueller teamed up with Taylor Reiner, a content creator who runs a popular YouTube channel dedicated entirely to the strategy and analysis of trick-taking games. Together, they developed The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game, and immediately commenced work on The Two Towers installment once production wrapped.
“It was one of those ideas that you have and then spend multiple years trying to actually pull off,” Bornmueller noted.
Knizia’s early cooperative board game had been the first cooperative tabletop experience Bornmueller remembers playing, instilling in him a lifelong appreciation for the genre. However, he emphasizes that the inherent mechanics of a trick-taking game—specifically the strict limitations placed on player communication and shared information—fundamentally transform the collaborative experience. Unlike other cooperative games where a dominant player can easily take over and quarterback the table, a trick-taking game demands constant, active participation from everyone involved.
“Everyone has to be trying all the time,” Bornmueller said. “It makes it a little less casual than it could be, but I think it really adds to people’s engagement. There can’t just be one smart friend who solves the puzzle for everyone. We all have to understand how to solve this puzzle.”
True to this design philosophy, Bornmueller takes immense delight in crafting scenarios that initially appear mathematically impossible to beat, forcing players to strategize their overarching approach before they even look at the individual cards dealt to their hands. To ensure authenticity, he conducted extensive research into Tolkien’s lore, closely rereading the original novels and listening to deep-dive academic analyses on The Prancing Pony Podcast. This meticulous preparation allowed him to break down key characters and pivotal moments, translating their narrative traits directly into clever game mechanics.
For instance, a casual textual observation that “Treebeard plays slow” was cleverly adapted into a distinct ruleset where the player controlling the ancient Ent must always act a full turn behind the rest of the group, setting aside specific cards that must be played on subsequent tricks rather than the current one. Similarly, The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game introduced the opposing White and Black Towers to function as dueling trump cards, reflecting the fractured and high-stakes political landscape of Middle-earth’s middle chapter.
The upcoming conclusion to the trilogy, The Return of the King Trick-Taking Game, introduces an entirely new crown mechanic utilized for the strategic exchange of cards. Rather than trading cards directly with one another to curate their hands, players must now place specific cards underneath a physical crown and metaphorically kneel to the king in order to acquire them.
The mechanics throughout the expansion remain tightly intertwined with the character arcs and political shifts of Tolkien’s writing. Pippin, who eventually joins Aragorn’s loyal army during the campaign, is tasked with winning specific tricks using cards that directly match whatever has been placed underneath the crown. Conversely, Denethor, the beleaguered Steward of Gondor, begins the game holding a special king card that functions as the highest-value card of any suit in the deck; however, because he is merely the caretaker of the realm rather than its rightful monarch, the rules dictate that he must eventually give it away.
The first third of The Return of the King Trick-Taking Game focuses heavily on the mounting tension and strategic buildup leading up to the historic Battle of Minas Tirith. Each sequential chapter introduces fresh cards and rule variations that ultimately converge into a massive, cooperative puzzle representing the battle itself. The campaign eventually reaches its narrative climax with the destruction of the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. True to the source material, the game does not end abruptly with the defeat of Sauron; instead, it incorporates numerous possible epilogue endings, offering players not only an epic conclusion to the overarching saga but also the poignant, emotional farewells famously found in both Tolkien’s original text and Peter Jackson’s acclaimed cinematic adaptation.
“You can’t have absolutely everything in The Lord of the Rings in the game, but you just need to evoke the feeling of experiencing the story,” Bornmueller said. “People know so much about The Lord of the Rings, and you can leverage all of that knowledge and feeling with the game mechanics where it makes sense. It’s not generic fantasy. It’s kind of its own thing. The more it feels like D&D, the less it probably feels like it’s working.”
The Return of the King Trick-Taking Game is scheduled to receive a limited pre-release appearance at PAX Unplugged alongside select independent U.S. board game hobby stores in December, ahead of its wider, official retail release in February 2027.
