Inside Up Games | Earth | Board Game | Ages 13+ | 1-5 Players | 45-90 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

Journeys in Middle Earth: Spreading War Expansion has excellent replay-ability, as does the previous expansion and core game. This expansion features many branching paths, handled by the app, ensuring that each play-through is different. Additionally, the expansion features new enemies, mechanics, and heroes, allowing players to experience new and exciting variations with replaying other campaigns. Player Interaction

The App is very good, provides a ready opponent day or night and takes most of the effort out of book-keeping. Most importantly, it provides an unfolding story as the landscape is revealed around you as you take your hesitant steps forward. Then as you Explore you reveal locations to Search and NPCs to Interact with. Further, what may not be immediately apparent, is if you replay a scenario it will provide a different landscape. This also applies if you buy any of the boxed expansions, either just figures or the two full sized sets Shadowed Paths and Spreading War the app will add new figures, tiles and terrain features into the existing campaigns. The key events in a scenario will still be present but locations, enemies, items and NPCs wil be re-arranged. This dramatically improves replayability. The Board Is Set, The Pieces Are Moving. We Come To It At Last, The Great Battle Of Our Time Either way, it is safe to say that Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth has impressed me; with its app integration, its familiar yet upgraded gameplay and, of course, the brilliant theme! FFG have pulled out all the stops to make this game a winner, pulling off a fantastic use of their IP while creating a game that seamlessly fits into the realm of app-driven games. Having rated Mansions of Madness so highly, I thought nothing would top such a game. Of course, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) had to prove me wrong! Mansions of Madness has had a baby, and Lord of the Rings (LOTR) is the dad! In a game about constructing a house of God, when you reveal these pawns you feel like a deity, yourself. All eyes gaze upon you. Colossal, pious power sits in the palm of your hand. Of course, if you draw the same colour again that’s karma, and hilarity ensues! Michael Menzel Does It Again Otherwise the set up is very similar to a multiplayer game, you put the little leaf tokens on the board as well as your starting island, climate and terrain, which’ll give you some of your initial scoring goals. In this initial set up, I was on Nishinoshima island (with a sunny and cloudy symbol) with a hemiboreal climate and Monteverde cloud forest ecosystem. I was trying to get as many mushrooms as possible for this ecosystem. These details are lovely, and I feel like I’m learning with a board game! I didn’t know hemiboreal was a word or that it supported a variety of deciduous plants.Embark on your own adventures in J.R.R. Tolkien's iconic world with The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth, a fully co-operative, app-supported board game for one to five players! You'll battle villainous foes, make courageous choices, and strike a blow against the evil that threatens the land - all as part of a thrilling campaign that leads you across the storied hills and dales of Middle-earth. There are several different types of action, often costing health, food or ammo tokens to complete, depleting your resources. You can also move your characters further down the location line of cards, or the Perps, whenever you need to you draw the next location card and resolve any specific location actions accordingly. This provides an additional level of gameplay that was not included in The Lost Expedition. Overall, Journeys in Middle Earth: Spreading War is a great expansion for the game. Is it better than Shadowed Paths? I’m divided on this question. Personally, I think that Shadowed Paths had a better campaign story – I really loved painting and fleeing (you fools) from the Balrog. Plus it included Gandalf as a playable character – arguably the most powerful of all the characters. However, Spreading War definitely adds more to game-play with the enhanced level 4 cards. It also included some really interesting and fun-to-play characters like Beorn, Boromir, Dwalin and Renerien. Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth is a step up from The Lost Expedition, building on a great co-operative survival game but adding a couple of additional options and mechanics that increase the difficulty and fits the theme. The artwork and card size make this a great looking game on the table and is a steal at this price. The app is beautifully designed, with every little aspect being thought of. The theme runs throughout, with atmospheric music being used to provide theme to the actual game itself, while the UI and use of the app was easy and pleasant to get along with. I would go as far to say that this app smashes the Mansions of Madness (MoM) app out the water. The MoM app is good, but this takes all the bad bits and spits them out, leaving a superb app and one that most will get on fairly easily with.

Draw the first three and place the judge meeple on the first card and give the Perps a head start by placing the meeple on the third location. Take the judge cards and place five health tokens on each and place four ammo tokens and three rations that the team will share. Decide who the first player is and chief judge, set the time marker to dawn and you are ready. Similarily you don’t need to paint them to use them but they are just crying out for a bit of decorative love and attention. All three of these characters are creations of the minds of the Fantasy Flight Games creative authors for their carefully crafted stories which gives you licence to paint them how you will. There are plenty of suggestions about on the Internet but I just did my own thing with Army Painter Speed Paint 2.0 paints to blend in with my other painted figures. If you are looking for a guide, though, the Gulgotar figure is used in the App’s menu screen to choose the Normal difficulty mode! The Cards Each individual game of Journeys in Middle-earth is a single adventure in a larger campaign. You'll explore the vast and dynamic landscapes of Middle-earth, using your skills to survive the challenges that you encounter on these perilous quests. As you and your fellow heroes explore the wilderness and battle the dark forces arrayed against you, the game's companion app guides you to reveal the looming forests, quiet clearings, and ancient halls of Middle-earth, while also controlling the enemies you encounter. Whether you're venturing into the wild on your own or with close companions by your side, you can write your own legend in the history of Middle-earth.The Last Night on Earth board consists of L-Shaped tiles which are placed around a central square tile and give you the town in which the scenarios are played. The shape and layout of the town can be different each time as more often than not only four of the six L-shaped tiles are used and the central tile is double-sided. Or, as I have done, you might want to create your own scenario involving all the game board pieces for one large town full of the undead. Shiring Castle, meanwhile, earns you two extra workers for the next round. These could become game-changing. Extra workers mean you could afford more lavish cards in the next draft. Or, you’ll have further excess to send to the Wool Mill. The Market is your final chance to buy or sell resources before players activate their Craftsmen. Arrive here late, and supplies might sell out… To increase replay-ability, there are a number of additional games modes including a solo variant and a competitive mode. You can also use the Perp cards in a shootout in Chief Judge difficulty mode.