Ares Games The Battle of Five Armies Board Game

Product Information

Battle of the Five Armies is a 1975 board wargame published by LORE / JMJ Enterprises and by TSR later. Martin Easterbrook reviewed the TSR version of Battle of the Five Armies for White Dwarf #3, giving it an overall rating of 5 out of 10, and stated that "The game's main strength is that it does possess something of the atmosphere of the book. The inexorably slow advancing sea of goblin warriors becomes quite hypnotic after a while and you really do begin bitting your fingernails whilst praying for the arrival of the eagles and Beorn." [3] 2005 Version [ edit ] Larry Pound reviewed The Battle of the Five Armies in The Space Gamer No. 3. [1] Pound commented that "All in all, the game [is] fair, but the total impression is not enhanced by the colors used for the unit counters or the way the terrain features are drawn." [1]

Movement: Each unit has a set movement range, which is represented by a number on the unit’s base. Units can move up to their full movement range or any lesser distance. Players must carefully position their units to gain tactical advantages. The Free People’s player decides how many of their four generals they will be activating during their turn. They can choose as many as 3 of them or as few as none. Each general has a special power that their activation allows the free player to use. For each general they activate, they also get a leadership token to place with an army. However, there are consequences for activating generals…TheBattle of Five Armiesis a two-players game that allows you to re-create the epic conclusion of The Hobbit, the world-renowned masterpiece by J.R.R. Tolkien. According to Shannon Appelcline, in 1975 TSR "started distributing other publishers' games — a pretty common tactic at the time, as the hobbyist industry was pretty fractured. They advertised their first distributed items in The Strategic Review #3 (Autumn 1975): a set of three fantasy board games. To be precise, they were three fantasy board games based on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien: Fact and Fantasy's The Battle of Helm's Deep (1974), Fact and Fantasy's The Siege of Minas Tirith (1975), and LORE's Battle of the Five Armies (1975)." [2] :22 Reception [ edit ] Free People: Fate Marker reaches step 15, Bolg is killed or Beorn enters play and the Shadow Player has less than 6 Victory Points. The designers wanted to create a game that was easy to learn, but still had a lot of depth and replayability. They accomplished this by creating a set of simple game mechanics that could be easily understood, but also allowed for a lot of strategic decisions.

The Shadow Player places a number of Leadership Tokens or Great Bats equal to the amount of dice they have. Leadership tokens let players move armies faster or re-roll dice during combat. At the heart of the game is the action dice system, these dice will determine what you can do on your turn. The Battle of Five Armies is a two-players game that allows you to re-create the epic conclusion of The Hobbit, the world-renowned masterpiece by J.R.R. Tolkien. The Shadow player commands the armies of Bolg, the King of the Goblins of Mount Gundabad, while the Free Peoples player is in control of Men, Dwarves, and Elves, led by Gandalf to fend off the goblin army. The epic boardgame inspired by the most famous battle from The Hobbit, The Battle of Five Armies will become available again by September 2021 with a revised edition, including an exclusive variant scenario for the War of the Ring Second Edition board game, The Fate of Erebor, in its first printing. Once the round ends, a new rounds starts with Phase 1. The game continues in this fashion until one player completes their objective. then began to brainstorm different game mechanics that could simulate the different aspects of the battle and played numerous prototypes of the game, tweaking and refining the mechanics until they found a set that was both fun and balanced.This is where the meat of the game happens. Players roll all of their action dice and then take turns using them. The dice can have 6 possible results: The game mechanics of The Battle of Five Armies are designed to be relatively simple, but allow for a lot of strategic depth and replayability. Here are some of the key game mechanics: Movement: Each unit has a set movement range, which is represented by a number on the unit’s base. Units can move up to their full movement range or any lesser distance. Units cannot move through enemy units or strongholds. According to the designers, their goal with The Battle of Five Armies was to create a game that was both faithful to the source material of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and also fun and engaging to play. They wanted to create a game that captured the epic scale of the battle scene from the book, while also allowing players to make strategic decisions and experience the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. Mechanics: The Battle of Five Armies is a two-player game that allows you to re-create the epic conclusion of The Hobbit, the world-renowned masterpiece by J.R.R. Tolkien. The Shadow player commands the armies of Bolg, the King of the Goblins of Mount Gundabad, while the Free Peoples player is in control of Men, Dwarves, and Elves, led by Gandalf to fend off the goblin army.

Finally, I have to say that I absolutely love the hero characters in the game. Each one feels unique and contributes to the game in different ways. As the Shadow player, I’m completely jealous of the Free Peoples pile of characters they get to use when I only have one. Although Bolg is an absolutely monster in combat, you have to balance bringing him with an army vs risking his death (and losing the game). The Free People have that same risk, but they have more characters to part with (Bard always seems to die in our games). The Free People will be using settlements to muster more troops to the game board, while the Shadow Player must take these locations to win. Final Thoughts: Those are fairly brief explanations of what the dice do. In addition to those results, cards can be played on any die result where the symbol matches the symbol on the card. Overall there are a lot of ways to use your dice on a turn.The designers started by reading the source material and studying the battle scene in detail. They wanted to make sure that the game accurately represented the different factions, units, and heroes from the book; The Battle of Five Armies was designed by Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi, and Francesco Nepitello, who are well-known in the board game industry for their work on other popular games such as War of the Ring and Age of Conan. The game was published by Ares Games in 2014. Design Goals:

The Battle of Five Armies is a strategic board game designed for two players that simulates the epic battle scene from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” In this game, players take on the roles of either the armies of dwarves and men or the armies of goblins and Wargs. The objective of the game is to either capture the opponent’s stronghold or eliminate all their units. The game typically takes around an hour to play. Components: Battle of the Five Armies is a game that simulates the Battle of Five Armies. [1] Publication history [ edit ] Combat: Combat is resolved by rolling custom dice, with each unit type having a different set of symbols on the dice.Still with me? Good. While not the most complex war game out there by a long shot, The Battle of Five Armies is still quite the involved game. But with that comes the epic feeling that you’d expect with a large clash of armies at the door step of the Lonely Mountain. The Battle of Five Armies was quite the event in The Hobbit and the trio of game designers did an absolutely amazing job of capturing the feel of the battle. But we’ll get to the theme in a minute. Each of the games 9 different heroes have their own special abilities and powers.