If you have ever looked up the price of a second-hand copy of Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit, you know exactly why this is exciting. The cult Battle of Naboo game from 2000 is one of the hobby's true grail games, long out of print and routinely changing hands for silly money. Now it's coming back, reimagined in Middle-earth as The Lord of the Rings: The King's Gambit.
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Set up your group for freeThe reveal comes from Restoration Games, the studio that specialises in giving old classics a second life, working alongside Space Cowboys with Asmodee handling worldwide retail. Design is led by Rob Daviau, the legacy-games pioneer behind Pandemic Legacy, Risk Legacy and Betrayal Legacy, who co-designed the original Star Wars version a quarter of a century ago. As Restoration's Justin D. Jacobson recalled, the Queen's Gambit was "everybody's grail game," and the team wanted a licence epic enough to match it.
The King's Gambit spreads the War of the Ring across several connected battlefields at once. The Riders of Rohan crash into Orc hordes on the Pelennor Fields, Gondor defends the walls of Minas Tirith, and Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas fight through the Haradrim at the port of Pelargir. All the while, Frodo and Sam creep towards Mount Doom in a separate strand of the campaign.
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Start organising for freeA limited deluxe edition will crowdfund later in 2026, complete with three-dimensional models of Minas Tirith and Mount Doom bookending the table, before a wider retail release in 2027. If this lands the way the original did, copies will be precious. Worth rounding up your fellowship now: find a game night near you.
Sources: Restoration Games | Kickstarter | GamingTrend
