The Hobbit Strategy
Battle Game: Escape from Goblin Town
Crazy Gamer here to give you a crazy review of Games
Workshop’s latest game, The Hobbit
Strategy Battle Game: Escape from Goblin Town, from here on out referred to
as The Hobbit.
Let’s dive in.
The rules: The
Hobbit is based on the original Lord of the Rings: Strategy Battle Game, which
is not to be confused with the War of the Ring games, also released by Games
Workshop. Whew, that’s a lot of
titles. Back to my original point: the
Hobbit is essentially a new version of the Lord of the Rings games rules. The rules are fundamentally the same as
LOTR. In essence, one player plays the
good guys (in this case, Thorin’s dwarves) and the other plays the bad guys
(the Goblin King and goblins). Heroes and
monsters have special abilities and equipment like their movie
counterparts. Players recreate the movie
moments in six scenarios.
This is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg, but I will
discuss that in the hobby section.
The rules themselves are easy to learn and are fun. Most of the rules are identical to the
previous version of the LOTR strategy game with some confusing elements
refined. What has changed are more sophisticated
moving and shooting mechanics, shooting into and out of terrain, fighting
behind obstacles, heroic actions, and monsters.
Monsters have been given new options to use that make them more tactical
to use and heroes now have twice as many heroic actions that they can call.
The game has plenty of tactical decisions for players to
make - just because the rules are easy to learn doesn’t mean the game is easy
to master. Players must balance the need
to modify their dice rolls with calling heroic actions. The canny player will be rewarded; the
careless player will lose regardless of how mighty their models may be. The game is fun to play if you give it a
chance.
The models: Having played miniature games for almost
20 years, I am still amazed by what can be accomplished in plastic these
days. Even if we go back to 2001, when
the original LOTR game came out, there were only a handful of poses and none of
the models in the basic set were heroes.
The Hobbit game comes with all the members of Thorin’s company, all
heroes, plus the Goblin King, 18 different posed goblins times two, plus Goblin
Town scenery. Each member of Thorin’s
company is excellently sculpted in the likeness of their movie
counterpart. Thorin’s model has the
option of his Oakenshield or Orchrist, while Bilbo can be equipped with Sting
if the player wants it.
The goblins, thirty-six of them, are hideous, lumpen,
grotesque critters. The models are
nasty, just like in the movies. The
Goblin King is large and imposing, bigger than a cave troll, not quite as big
as a Balrog. Goblin Town itself is
functional and includes the goblin scribe and the Goblin King’s throne.
Overall, the miniatures are excellent, coming in at a little
over $2 a piece for the collector’s set.
The Hobby: The one weak area of the Hobbit box game
is its tight focus on Goblin Town. All
the scenarios revolve around that portion of the movie when the dwarves and
Bilbo are in the clutches of the Goblin King.
This can be fun, but players will quickly want to explore
other portions of the Hobbit movie.
There are miniatures for other parts of the film (and the other Lord of
the Rings movies), but this will require purchasing the hardcover Hobbit
rulebook and additional miniatures.
As far as what’s out there for you to collect, gamers can
collect all of their favorite characters and can recreate all their favorite
events from the movies and books – everything is available from both the Lord
of the Rings movies and the Hobbit.
Overall – worth a buy!
