LOTR Board games (and other cool Tolkien stuff)

[Folca]

(Note: This thread combines two threads, the original LOTR Board games thread and Alatar's "Cool Tolkien stuff I got for Christmas" thread - VtF)

For those of you who are fans of board games, Lord of the Rings Risk: Trilogy edition is fun.

More importantly, "War of the Ring" by Fantasy Flight Games is an awesome board game. It is set up with the intent of replicating the situation of the story in the book. Challenging and well balanced, it offers lots of little angles to influence the outcome and add spice.

And for the hobbyist, the Games Workshop LOTR miniatures battle game is fun. Not always well balanced play, but a lot of fun and the models are very good.

[Crucifer]

Risk, and LoTR combined!?

Wow...

As for LoTR GW, the Fellowship alone can kill a whole bloody horde of orcs with very little effort. No one ever goes up against the Fellowship.

And it's really really expensive. *grumble grumble grumble*

[Alatar]

I'm a bit of a collector of board games (among other stuff)

So far I have

LotR Risk (UK Two Towers Edition)
LotR Risk (UK RotK Expansion)
LotR Risk (US Edition)
LotR Monopoly
LotR GW Mines of Moria (Thanks yova!)
ICE The Hobbit Adventur Boardgame
Lord of the Rings Trivia Boardgame (Books License)
Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuits (Movie License)
Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuits DVD Edition (Movie License)
Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuits Portable DVD Edition (Movie License)
War of the Ring Boardgame
War of the Ring - Battles of the Third Age Expansion
Lord of the Rings Boardgame (Reiner Knizia)
Lord of the Rings Boardgame - Friends and Foes Expansion
Lord of the Rings Boardgame - Sauron Expansion
ICE Middle-Earth Roleplaying Box Set
ICE Middle-Earth Roleplaying 2nd Edition
Many ICE RPG Campaigns and Modules
Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation
Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game
ICE Middle-Earth: The Wizards Trading Card Game
Lord of the Rings Tarot Game
Lord of the Rings Top Trumps
Lord of the Rings Boardgame (LotR Musical License)
ICE Middle Earth Quest Adventure Gamebooks


Thats not including LotR-type games like Dungeonquest, Heroquest and the like.

The sad thing is I never have time to play any of them!

And there's a few more on my list too...

[Folca]

Alatar, you certainly have me beat when it comes to the LOTR games section, but the RPG's are a lot of fun, should you ever find time to play them. Luckily I have a good group that likes to play.

Crucifer, if you think the Fellowship is powerful, try fighting the Balrog. My brother and I threw Dain, Gimli, Balin and a bunch of captains and other dwarves at one and it was a disaster. I can tell you the Fellowship would have fallen to the group we threw at that demon, and he wasn't very cooperative. The game is expensive, but I am enough of a fan to purchase it anyway. As it is, Games Workshop has angered me enough that this is the last game I will invest in from them. After this one is done, I may be looking into Warmachine by Privateer Press.

[Alatar]

So, I guess most of you know by now I'm a bit of a collector. Not in the "expensive, put it in a safe" way, but in actual stuff that I love to own for my own pleasure. Anyway, here's the latest additions to my hoard:

Tales from the Perilous Realm. I asked for and received the plain hardback version, simply because it better fits my collection. After buying the Collector's edition of Children of Húrin I found I was disappointed that it didn't match the rest of my Alan Lee artwork covers, so I bought the basic version also. This time I jumped straight to the standard version.



This version contains Roverandom as well, which I didn't buy when it first came out, so thats an added bonus! The images are up to Alan Lees usual standard, all in the pencil sketch style used for the Illustrated Hobbit and Children of Húrin. No colour plates apart from the dust jacket which is duplicated as frontispiece.

I also received the new 2009 Calendar with images from Ted Nasmiths illustrations for the Silmarillion. Some nice stuff here, although Nasmith is not my favourite Tolkien artist. However, I've always felt his best work was in landscapes and settings, and he concentrates on these more than individuals, which helps a lot.



I also got the desk calendar or Diary version:


However, the Piece de Resistance has to be the Boxed Set of "Battle of the Five Armies" by Games Workshop.


This comes with the complete armies, the terrain, the dice, some wall sections and the full instructions for how to play and paint this full "wargame in a box".

Here's a look at the full professionally painted version. Bear in mind, these are 10mm scale, rather than 32mm, which is the standard. The models come in strips with multiple figures, to be painted, then slotted into stands as battalions, with seperate models for Hero characters like Beorn, Thorin and Company, Dain, Bard etc.

[Inanna]

Awesome!!!! Incredible. And some more such words.

I particularly like the boxset. I didn't even know such things existed.

I've been looking for a Tolkien 2009 calendar, but found only one of the movies. And I didn't want that. Yours looks nice.

[N.E. Brigand]

Very nice! But does Beorn have too many claws on his right forefront paw?

I also got Tales from the Perilous Realm for Christmas, along with a 1971 reprint of Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, and a smattering of other Tolkiena.

Do you think Lee makes Chrysophylax too large? Should he have included a sketch of the Archbishop of Canterbury slipping on a banana peel to illustrate "On Fairy-stories"? Speaking of that essay, Tolkien writes there that illustrations of fairy tales should have borders, but Lee's pictures don't -- a mistake? (For that matter, why didn't most of Pauline Baynes' Tolkien illustrations include borders?) Does the picture of Wootton Major show the Great Hall before or after its Alfish makeover? What's your favorite illustration in the new book? I'm taken by the seashell in "The Sea-bell", and the plum pudding in "The Man in the Moon Came Down too Soon". And Giles with his blunderbuss.

[Hurin]

I got Tales of the Perilous Realm recently too, more for the Alan Lee art than the stories, all of which I already had apart from "Roverandom", which I need to read soon. I really love Lee's pencil sketch type drawings and would have preferred that he had used that type of illustration for his LOTR book art than watercolor. I was lucky enough to meet him on his LOTR Sketchbook book a few years ago, when he autographed my copy of the book and had his photo taken with me.

Alatar, that's a pretty cool picture of the Battle of Five Armies on the gamebox. I have Nexus Games "War of the Ring" boardgame which includes 204 figures, as well as about 90 more in the expansion. The figures are about an inch high (the bigger ones, such as cavalry, Ents, the Nazgûl) are taller. The figures include all the members of the Fellowship, Elves, dwarves, Rohirrim, men of Gondor, men of the North, Galadriel, various types of orcs, warg riders, trolls, the Wiki, the Mouth of Sauron, Saruman, the Balrog, Ents, Mûmakil, Southrons and Easterlings, Dundlendings, etc. I spent about 6 months painstakingly painting them, with a bit of help from my wife. My daughter enjoys playing the game (my wife does not) although she for some reason prefers to be the Shadow Player. I guess it's more fun for her to try to conquer Middle-earth than to slowly journey toward Mt Doom and destroy the Ring before being corrupted. The game is a lot of fun and thematically quite true to the books, although it normally take us at least 3 or more hours to play it. John Howe did the art for the gameboard (a map of Middle-earth), the game box, and the cards.

[Alatar]

I have The War of the Rings also Húrin, but haven't yet found anyone interested enough to play it with me! My kids are too young yet I'm afraid, although they love the Hobbit Boardgame!

Did you know that there's an expansion to War of the Ring also? Its called Battles of the Third Age and adds more figures and rules options, and it also contains an extra board allowing you to play Helms Deep and Pelennor Fields.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/18034

[Hurin]

Alatar, I do also have the Battles of the Third age expansion and have painted the figures to that game too. When my daughter and I play WOTR we use the expansion figures and rules. I have only played the Rohan battle expansion once (against myself) and the Pelennor expansion once (which I didn't complete). I don't know if my daughter ( 10 years old) will ever want to play those or not. Too bad there is no Éowyn figure - my daughter loves Éowyn. When I set up the Pelennor Fields game the one time I played it, I put the Minas Tirith model which came with the ROTK DVD extended edition special package on the board because it fit almost perfectly on the map over the Minas Tirith painting. That was fun.

[sauronsfinger]

I am glad to see others here playing these games. My seven year old grandson - who just adores the LOTR films and figures - got for Christmas the board game LOTR: The Confrontation. Its made by Fantasy Flight Games.

If he can play that with no difficulty, could he then play some of the other games you have discussed here?

[Alatar]

I think The Confrontation, and the Duel are the two easiest boardgames, followed by The Hobbit Boardgame.

Lord of the Rings Risk would probably be the next in complexity (aside from LotR Monopoly, which doesn't really count). The Trivia Boardgames are good, and there are flavours for both the Books and Movies, so whichever takes your fancy.

The Reiner Knizia Lord of the Rings Boardgame is probably the one that best captures the spirit of the books, with up to 5 players co-operatively working to beat the game mechanics. Effectively, this means you are on a turns timer to reach Mount Doom before the ringbearer is corrupted. Its quite difficult for kids though.

[sauronsfinger]

Thanks for that advice Alatar. I do have the film Trivial Pursuit and he is pretty good at most of the categories other than the behind the scenes filmmaking stuff. I will check out those that you have mentioned.

[Hurin]

I think the easiest of the games mentioned is "The Hobbit" boardgame (assuming that Alatar and I are talking about the same game - the one we have is "The Hobbit - the Defeat of the Evil Dragon Smaug"). It is pretty much just based on luck with dice and a spinner the main determinants of who wins. My daughter has regularly defeated me in this game since she was 5 or 6. "The Confrontation" is a very good 2 player game. The rules are not very long and it doesn't take very long to play. But it requires a good deal of thought and planning ahead to do well. You need a good handle on what all the characters' special abilities are and how they interact. We don't have "The Duel" but from the game description I think a 7 year old who can play "The Confrontation" could certainly handle "The Duel".

As Alatar said, Knizia's LOTR game is different in that it is a cooperative game with all the players working together trying to beat the game system (which represents Sauron). I think if another player has a good grasp of the game then a 7 year old might enjoy it. Players talk to each other and can make suggestions to the other players so help for an inexperienced player is built into the play of the game. I first played this game with my daughter when she was 8 (almost 9) and she learned the rules fairly quickly. In my experience, it is very hard to win the game (i.e., successfully destroy the Ring) in the first several plays, no matter what the age of the players.

"War of the Ring", which I talked about in an earlier post, might be too hard and detailed for a 7 yr old. My daughter was introduced to this game at age 9 a year or so ago and can now play it pretty well. I know the extensive rules backwards and forwards so she can rely on me to keep track of the more obscure ones.

[sauronsfinger]

Thank you Húrin for that great summary.
And my grandson thanks you also

[Alatar]

I was referring to the newer Hobbit Boardgame, this one:



The older Boardgame is also easily playable by younger kids but is hard to get nowadays:



There's also two older games from the 70's that are almost impossible to find. I don't have either of these:

[Aravar]

I have The War of the Rings also Húrin, but haven't yet found anyone interested enough to play it with me! My kids are too young yet I'm afraid, although they love the Hobbit Boardgame!

If there's time during the Ireland Moot, I'd be happy to give you a game.

[Alatar]

Sounds great! I'll see if I can get some of them painted before then!

[sauronsfinger]

Thanks again Alatar --- here is the old Rankin & Bass inspired HOBBIT board game --- its on ebay - US version ---

http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Hobbit-Board-Ga ... 7C294%3A50

I never knew it existed ... If you want it, I will not bid for it ... If you do not want it tell me and I may take a run at it....

[Alatar]

Thanks, SF! I'll see if they will ship to Ireland. If not I'll let you know so you can bid!