Stone Blade Entertainment has had a good fortnight. The Lord of the Rings: Ascension funded on 14 July, the day it launched, and as of 26 July has passed $1.1 million from more than 4,100 backers. The campaign runs until 13 August 2026.
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Find events near youIf Ascension has passed you by, it is one of the elder statesmen of deckbuilding. Stone Blade launched it in 2010 with Justin Gary, Brian Kibler, Rob Dougherty and John Fiorillo on design, and fifteen major expansions have followed since. The publisher reckons it had over a million games played online by May 2012, back when it was topping the paid iOS charts.
The Middle-earth version is for 1 to 4 players and comes as three sets, one each for The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Crucially, Stone Blade describes all three as standalone games, so you are not buying a third of a game if you only want one. You recruit heroes, acquire cards and choose whether to rally the Free Peoples, the Elves, Humans, Dwarves and Hobbits, or turn towards the Shadow of Mordor, with the corruption of The One Ring tugging at you the whole way. Stone Blade's own line is that it is "fast to learn and difficult to master".
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See how it worksA single set is $60. The Trilogy Bundle is listed at $180 and currently discounted to $150, and there is a faux leather-bound Deluxe Saga Collection at $499 for anyone whose shelf demands it. Estimated delivery is December 2027, so this is a long wait in anyone's money.
Middle-earth is not short of board games, and a licensed reskin of a fifteen-year-old system is not automatically interesting. This one earns a look because Ascension's shifting central row has always created the exact tension the source material runs on, where the thing you need shows up just after somebody else has taken it.
Sources: Gamefound | Stone Blade | Wikipedia: Ascension
