The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick Taking Game unseats Sky Team to top weekly new owner charts | BGG Stats

Co-operative card game The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game has surged to the top of the new owner charts on BoardGameGeek just a few days after release, unseating 2024 Spiel des Jahres winner Sky Team after its latest spell at the top.

The new trick taker from Asmodee North America’s developmental studio Office Dog jumped straight to top spot for the number of new owners adding games to their BGG collection between January 13 and 20, following weeks of interest and exposure on the website’s prominent Hotness section.

Bryan Bornmueller’s design sees players work together to play out the adventure from the first volume of The Lord of the Rings, with each taking on the roles of different characters such as Frodo and Gandalf with unique conditions that must be met to advance the story.

The game’s surge to the top of the weekly BGG new owner charts follows several years of growing interest in trick taking games, in the wake of the success of The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine and its successor The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, and the growing influx of interesting trick taking games such as Cat in the Box making their way over from Japan.

Developer Taylor Reiner, who also runs the YouTube channel Taylor’s Trick-Taking Table, has confirmed that work has been under way on follow-up titles covering the remaining Lord of the Rings volumes, The Two Towers and The Return of The King.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game hitting the number one spot in the BGG new owners chart means industry heavyweight Asmodee publishes four of the current top six games.

Fellow Tolkien-inspired title Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth dropped one place to third week-on-week, notching up its 15th appearance in the Top 25.

The 7 Wonders Duel re-implementation previously spent 11 weeks in the number one spot from the end of September, BGG’s data shows, with the game picking up huge demand amid being promoted heavily within Asmodee’s large exhibit space at this year’s Spiel Essen board game fair.

It also garnered strong interest from content creators and reviewers ahead of release given its popular theme – with many suggesting the game refines and improves what was already a very well regarded design in 2015’s 7 Wonders Duel. It also drew praise for its captivating art design from Elaine Ryan and Samuel Shimota.

The two-player strategy game picked up more than 7,300 new registered owners on BoardGameGeek across all of October – roughly double the usual total for the most-added game in a month.

Spiel des Jahres winner Sky Team fell to fourth place after four weeks in the top spot, with the game showing significant longevity, having also spent seven consecutive weeks at number one in the summer of 2024.

Tomáš Holek-designed space exploration eurogame SETI climbed to second place in the weekly new owner chart, up from seventh place the previous week and 21st spot in the first week of 2025.

In the middle of this month SETI picked up its first major award by scooping the 2025 Diamant d’Or, a prize launched a decade ago to celebrate the sort of complex eurogames the jury believed were being overlooked by more mainstream board game awards.

SETI, published by Czech Games Edition

Harmonies finished in fifth spot in last week’s table, giving it a combined 34 weeks in the top 25, while sixth-placed Azul notched up its 368th week – meaning the game has spent around seven years in total in the Top 25.

Catan holds the record for the most weekly appearances on the list, at 943, BGG data shows – an aggregate total of roughly 18 years.

New appearances on the weekly new owners chart last week included two Scott Almes designs – Tiny Epic Game of Thrones: Ice & Fire in 12th place and Tiny Epic Cthulhu: Cult of Chaos in 25th spot.

Open world co-op adventure game Arydia: The Paths We Dare from Cody Miller also made its first appearance on the Top 25 list, debuting at number 13.

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