Ares Games The Battle of Five Armies Board Game

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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. Once the game board is set up (the game has a static setup) and players have chosen their side, you are ready to begin. The game is played over a series of rounds, each of which is divided into 6 Phases. To accomplish these goals, players will be using the familiar action dice system introduced in The War of the Ring. Each turn, players will be mustering troops, moving around leaders, fighting battles and playing story cards. Be prepared to put for a heroic effort, for leading your troops to victory is no simple task. Game Components: Over a hundred plastic miniatures come with the game, all are well sculpted and a lot of fun to use. The Shadow player commands the armies of Bolg, son of Azog, 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. 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. 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: The game ends when one player captures their opponent’s stronghold or eliminates all their units. If neither player has achieved victory by the end of the game, the player with the most units on the board wins. 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.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 ] For the most part, Ares Games did a stellar job of putting together the components in The Battle of Five Armies. First off, each players gets a pile of miniatures to use to represent their various forces. From the different humanoid factions to the monstrous races, all are well sculpted and fun to play with. The character minis themselves are especially just begging to be painted. 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. 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.

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. The Battle of Five Armies – based on the climax of JRR Tolkien's novel The Hobbit – pits the hosts of the Elvenking, the Dwarves of Dain Ironfoot, and the Men of the Lake led by Bard the Bowman against a horde of Wolves, Goblins and Bats led by Bolg, son of Azog. Will Gandalf turn the tide for the Free Peoples? Will the Eagles arrive, or Beorn come to the rescue? Or will Bilbo the Hobbit perish in a last stand on Ravenhill?

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: Final Score: 5 Stars – The Battle of Five Armies is an incredibly well designed game that I am really enjoying. This one has a permanent place in my game library.