Game: Battle of Five Armies, The

Thread: Re: A game for any Tolkien enthusiast

sharpe1813 — 2008-11-21T20:52:04+00:00

Thanks for doing a review of this game. I actually saw the designer and playtesters working on this game many eons ago in Charlottesville.

I bought this game mainly because of my love of the first (very flawed) TSR version. This one definitely surpasses that game which I have also played dozens of times as well.

That said, Iron Crown poured a lot of love into their rendition. As the reviewer noted the production quality for the time was excellent, and then there is all the chrome in the form of special rules.

I've probably played just about all the old AH/SPI classics but his hexagonal game is a personal favorite. With its random sequence of play, the use of victory point hexes, and distinctions between melees and assaults, there is something about it that makes it stand apart.

Britton, where ever you are "Thanks!"

Thread: Re: A game for any Tolkien enthusiast

rcmoore4 — 2008-07-18T02:53:11+00:00

Thanks so much for the errata...it helps clear up a lot! I'm going to print it out and put it in the game box. That's definitely worth a !

Thread: Re: A game for any Tolkien enthusiast

liberor13 — 2008-07-17T14:14:50+00:00

Great review, thanks!

Thread: Re: A game for any Tolkien enthusiast

Jedit — 2008-07-17T11:50:50+00:00

cannoneer wrote:
I only wish this were available for less than a zillion skillion dollars.

I'd offer to sell my copy (punched, played twice, but otherwise almost as-new), but by the time international postage was factored in I don't know that it'd be any cheaper than going to T&T.

Thread: Re: A game for any Tolkien enthusiast

cjsloki — 2008-07-17T08:08:18+00:00

Hi,
Thanks for your review of one of my favorite games. I played this one to death and purchased another copy! I was sorry to read in your review that you don't have a copy of the errata. I have uploaded a file that I typed up that is an exact copy of the errata I found in my game. Just in case they reject it, I will post it here.

B-11 VICTORY CONDITIONS
In the basic game version of BOFA, players fight for control of the battlefield as represented by

victory hexes and areas.

1) In order to win the Battle of Five Armies, a player must have control of more of the victory

hexes or areas than his opponent at the end of the game. Control is defined as being the sole

occupant of that victory hex or area.

2) The 5 victory hexes or areas are all marked with red stars. There are the 2 guardrooms, one on

each of the mountain spurs, the Front Gate, the hillock top, and the town of Dale (the hex in the

center of the town with the red star).

3) Note that the hillock top contains 3 hexes. In order to control it a player must have a

counter in each of the 3 hexes. Enemy presence in any of the hexes denies it as a victory area to

either player.

4) In order to control Dale a player need only occupy the center hex marked with a red star.

5) Great Eagles or leader/character counters, except Thorin, may not affect the control of a

victory hex or area for victory purposes. Flying a Great Eagle or moving a leader/character

counter into a victory hex/area will neither gain nor deny control.

Good luck and have fun!

Charles

Thread: Re: A game for any Tolkien enthusiast

cannoneer — 2008-07-17T05:23:31+00:00

I only wish this were available for less than a zillion skillion dollars.

Thread: A game for any Tolkien enthusiast

rcmoore4 — 2008-07-17T03:20:28+00:00

First off, a warning. I come to this game NOT as a wargamer, but as a collector of Tolkien games. I have plenty of newer/shinier games, and perhaps my opinion of this “classic” is a bit tainted by those. Also, I’ve only played one game, and even then only the basic rules. Still, this game needs a review!

For those of us who are crazy about Tolkien and Tolkien themed games, we are living in a dream right now. Since the publication of Knizia’s Lord of the Rings in 2000, there have been a great number of Tolkien-themed games released. There have been surprisingly few games, though, that are based on Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” in that time. The one game that comes immediately to mind is FFG’s lack luster game “The Hobbit: the defeat of the evil dragon Smaug”. If one really wants to experience the world of the Hobbit in game form, one must travel back to the 80s and early 90s, where we find a number of Hobbit-themed games released by Iron Crown Enterprises. Battle of the Five Armies is one of those games.
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Admittedly, Battle of the Five Armies focuses solely on one chapter of the Hobbit, that is, the final battle between the goblins, dwarves, elves, men, and eagles (the five armies of the title). Still, one has to give credit to the creators for designing a fully fledged war-game designed for a mature audience based on this seminal fantasy conflict. Actually, this battle has been the basis for at least two other games, one released in the 70s by TSR and one more recently by GamesWorkshop (the later with miniatures). Needless to say, though, the I.C.E. version is a game from a different era of boardgaming (the 80s), and the gameplay and components reflect this.

Components
Let’s take a look at the components first. The game is packaged in a pretty flimsy box that was standard for the time. The paper playing map is actually quite nicely detailed. Depicted are the northeast and northwest spurs of the Lonely mountain, with the valley of Dale nestled within. There are nice little details, such as the “hillock” that Thorin died defending and the ruins of the town of Dale. There are elevations on the mountains as well as rockslides that can be used to a players advantage. Get yourself a piece of plexiglass to cover it, though, there’s a LOT of chit action that will take place on that map and you need that map to lay flat!
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One very odd component is a large sheet with all of the combat tables (and others) on it. This awkward sheet is just about as big as the map! I actually posted an 8.5” x 11” version of this on BBG quite some time ago, and it is available for download. My advice: Download and use it!
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/8867

Otherwise, we have the cardboard chits that represent the armies (see pictures). I can’t remember if I got mine unpunched or punched, but regardless, it must have been hard to get good punchouts, and some of them have pretty gnarly edges. Hopefully, you’ll have more luck! Still, I found the quality to be a bit lacking. Some have edge lines printed on them and the centering isn’t always perfect. And they are small, which makes manipulating them in the game all that harder.

Each chit is double-sided; one side represents full strength and the other half strength. These designations are important, as certain rules (such as being able to stack) depend on whether they are full- or half-strength. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to distinguish which side you are looking at. For some, it is obvious; for example, there is not half side with strength greater than 4. But in some cases, there are chits of the same army type that have the same values, although one is full-strength and the other half-strength (full strength 6 vs full strength 3). It also makes set-up harder, as you spend most of the set up figuring out the correct side to place them at.
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The armies are represented by colors and silhouette images of the type of weapon they wield, or, if a leader, a silhouette of that leader. These distinctions are not as important in the basic game, but in the standard game certain weapons get advantages in certain situations. For example, spears are stronger in assaults, but weaker in melee (see below for Combat details). The free peoples are easily distinguishable, the goblins not so much. For example, one army is orange with white icons, another is orange with back icons. One is light orange, another darker orange. However, it isn’t necessary to be able to distinguish between the different goblin armies except during set up; a couple of plastic bags will keep them separate.
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The game also comes with a 20-sided die, but it has the numbers 1 to 10 repeated on it. I replaced mine with a 1d10, which will give the same results. I actually cannot find the die, so either I tossed it or it didn’t come with my used copy!

Gameplay
The game is divided into 12 rounds, and the free peoples start out hopelessly outnumbered. To top it off, the goblins get two waves of reinforcements, the last of which is the Bodyguard of Bolg, which are the strongest goblins of the bunch. Generally speaking, the free people’s armies are more powerful than the goblins, with the elves being the strongest. Plus, they start out in the higher elevations of the mountain spurs, and have easy access to some of the special spaces called “victory hexes”, which are important for, well, victory.
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There are a very limited number of actions one can perform: move, combat, or fire. Each turn a different side gets initiative and can pick one action from a pool of action chits to perform first. The other player gets to pick a chit too, but has to wait until their second, or later, action to use it (I don’t get this need to delay the play of this chit…but I assume it helps balance the game). Otherwise, you pick from the action chit pool to determine what you can do. This leads to some frustration, as you often pick a meaningless action. For example, you move, and are in good position for combat, but your random draw is…another move. Or you draw one of the Fire chits, but have few, if any, archers left. I suppose this is why you are guaranteed at least one action of your choice.

Combat is the heart of the game and comes in two forms: Assaults from adjacent hexes, which can involve any chit adjacent to a target; and melees, when one enemy chit is stacked on another one. Melees are mandatory and can involve one adjacent unit (the “second wave”), while assaults can be performed with any combination of adjacent units. For each battle, you add up the strength of the attacker(s) and subtract the strength of the defenders. This gives you some number (like –2 or +12) that you find on the combat chart. You roll your d10, look for the column with your difference and determine if you hit or are hit! Low numbers are good, high numbers bad. Usually, if you do hit, it’s for 1 damage and you reduce a full-strength counter to half-strength; a half-strength defender would be removed. If you really roll well, though you can do 2 or even 3 points of damage, essentially killing almost any unit.

Combat can be quite the brain buster. The math is simple, but once the chits pile up next to each other it can be difficult to keep track of who has attacked and who hasn’t. Especially early on when your goblin army has some 60 chits! Stacked chits are another frustration. It is difficult to stack them so that you can see who’s underneath the top chit which means invariably you’re picking up stacks to check what’s beneath. Usually, there’s only two chits…one enemy and one defender (melee), but you could theoretically have up to 6 chits in one stack (one leader + two half-strength chits per side)! Once you’ve done the math, you still need to roll the die and consult the chart. Rinse, repeat.
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Firing arrows, while a nice addition, is really somewhat wasted. First, it’s really hard to hit anything when firing. You need to have at least two or three archers target the same chit and be pretty close to have a decent chance according to the chart (yes, another chart). And even then, the elves are really the only decent archers out there. For the goblins its really a joke. First, they really have only a 10 archer units in the whole army and each is half the strength of an elven archer. As archers die, late game Fire actions can really become wasted opportunities.

The Standard game
The standard game does up the “realism” at the expense of more rules. And I mean many, many more rules. For example, I count at least 16 different rules just for the Eagles. Oh, some of these rules are pretty sweet for sure. For example, the Eagles can swoop down, pick up an enemy goblin, and smash him against the rocks. To do this, you literally pick up a goblin chit and drop it on the board…if it lands on the wrong side, it’s dead. Also, all of the characters have special abilities; Gandalf even gets two spells to Fire at the goblins during the game. Still, I had a pretty tough time with just the basic rules! It’s incredibly difficult (and too tedius) for me to remember all the standard rules and exceptions. Just for Bolg alone you must remember to look one column to the right on the combat table for all assaults against enemies within three spaces of Bolg AND if they happen to be a bodyguard of Bolg, they subtract one from their role. Because of this, I’m hesitant to attempt the Standard rules, although it seems to be a more realistic simulation.
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Victory
Well, I wish I know how to actually win the game. You see, for the basic game, the victory conditions are completely omitted. Oh, if you look at the table of contents, it’s there alright…section B-11. But section B-11 is completely MISSING from the rule book. This section was just not printed! Now, Standard victory conditions are detailed, but it this section starts out: “The standard victory conditions are similar to those of the Basic game…” Ugh! But I don’t know what they are for the Basic game! Still, one can infer that you have to control a certain number of special “victory hexes” by the end of round 12 to win in the Basic game (you just don’t know how many). Victory hexes are special places like Dale or the Front Gate. For the standard game, there are different levels of victory depending on how many more of these spaces you control compared to your opponent. One more space, a marginal vicotory, two spaces a tactical victory, and three spaces, a total victory. I think this type of victory scale must have been common way back when (or maybe a trait of wargames in general?), as I.C.E.’s “Fellowship of the Ring” also has these levels. Personally, I think if you win, you win. After all, only one side is going to walk away with Smaug’s treasure!

Summary
There’s only one word that comes to mind after my gaming experience, and I wish that word were “epic”. It’s not though. The word is “fiddly”. I actually hate using this word, but I’m going to anyway. The rules, though detailed, are fiddly. Having to look up the result of EVERY attack on a chart? Fiddly. Moving and stacking the little chits around the map? The most fiddly aspect of all.

Still, for a collector of Tolkien games, it is a must have. The designers obviously knew their Tolkien lore (these are the folks who brought us the Middle Earth Role Playing game and the excellent Middle Earth Collectible Card game after all.) I mean, at one point they politely say, “Please note that Bolg’s bodyguard was armed primarily with scimitars of quality steel; the pole-axe symbol is used to make them more distinctive.” THAT is hard-core. I don’t know how this version of the Battle of the Five Armies compares to the TSR version or the Gamesworkshop miniatures game (I don’t own either), but it’s certainly one of the best Hobbit-themed games out there, if not for the gameplay, then for the sheer devotion the designers had for Tolkien’s world.

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rcmoore4 — 2008-07-12T23:44:18+00:00

All of the goblin army tokens (for reference)

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rcmoore4 — 2008-07-12T23:43:28+00:00

All of the Free People's Army tokens (for reference)

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rcmoore4 — 2008-07-12T23:42:39+00:00

The goblins rout the elves (and Beorn)

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rcmoore4 — 2008-07-12T23:40:47+00:00

The eagles are coming!

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rcmoore4 — 2008-07-12T23:40:04+00:00

Thorin and company defend the hill

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rcmoore4 — 2008-07-12T23:39:07+00:00

Elves meet the first goblin wave

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rcmoore4 — 2008-07-12T23:38:12+00:00

Beginning of a game...the armies rush toward each other

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Boltana — 2007-06-22T02:41:55+00:00

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RolloTommasi — 2004-12-01T17:18:53+00:00

Back of the box

Thread: Re:General Comment

Moon Knight — 2004-05-30T12:13:52+00:00

Chris Brua (#2249),

According to Dave and Mike's Tolkien Boardgaming sight (see link below), the ICE game is not a remake, but "a completely different set of gameplay."

Thread: General Comment

BoardGameGeek — 2002-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

TSR released a very similar game (same title) back in the early - mid 1970's. Not sure if this ICE version is a reprint/update or totally different game.

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greg — 2001-12-24T08:51:59+00:00