It’s a fun strategy game but it could do with more story-telling.

Entering the Tolkien universe is akin to entering the mines of Moria: it’s a journey fraught with peril, one from which you may never return. But if, like me, you love going on adventures, then receiving and “having” to play the The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey board game left me feeling the same way Bilbo Baggins felt after Gandalf stopped by.

An Unexpected Journey comes to us from the brilliant mind of Reiner Knizia. It is packaged in a nicely designed box, with Bilbo right on the top, stepping out into his adventure. The first thought that comes to mind, though, is that illustrations from the book instead of illustrations from the movie would be much more engaging. But then, I’m a purist.

Everything about this game screams high production values. The cards are printed on thick stock, with the character cards on even thicker cardboard. The portraits of the company are of the actors from the Hobbit movies.

There are three boards, a Resource Board, a Shire Board, and a Misty Mountains Board. These are also well-made and sturdy. About the only gripe I have with any part of the design is that the rulebook can sometimes be hard to read, due to the strange choice of contrast on some pages.

An Unexpected Journey is a cooperative game that can be played by one to four players. It can be played as a standalone game, with players progressing from Board One (The Shire) to Board Two (Misty Mountains), or extended through The Desolation of Smaug, and The Five Armies (no release date in sight!).

Once the boards are set up, two character cards are set aside in the character pool, and the rest of the cards are dealt out equally to all players. There are 14 character cards in all. The player who holds the Bilbo card always starts first, then gameplay progresses to that player’s left.

The well-made character cards.

The objective of the game is to complete the Challenges that describe the Company’s journey across Middle-Earth. Challenges are broken up into Running (represented by Rabbits), Diplomacy (Wizards) and Fighting (Axes – what else?).

The Running Challenges are found in the top row, and these must be completed in order. The Diplomacy and Fighting Challenges make up the bottom row, and these can be completed in any order. Board Resource cards are placed below these but never put into play.

At the start of each turn, an Event card is drawn. All Event cards make things more difficult for players, adding complications such as no re-rolls or upgrading Challenges to make them more difficult. Players then roll the dice. There are four white dice with each face either showing one or two Wizards, Rabbits or Axes. There is also a golden die that players can roll, should the fates allow it, with each face showing three or four Wizards, Rabbits or Axes.

Players then allocate the number of Wizards, Rabbits or Axes thrown to one or more Challenges, hoping to assemble enough of each to complete them. A player is granted one free re-roll of the unallocated dice. Once the second roll has been completed, if players still do not have the requisite number of Wizards, Rabbits or Axes to complete the Challenge, they can use the abilities on their Character cards to continue trying.

For example, Bifur, Bombur, and Bofur allow a re-roll; Fili doubles up the score of the last dice roll; and Kili allows the player to turn the dice to whatever symbols they choose.

Character cards, once played, are added to the character pool, and must be allowed to be re-drawn before they can be played again. Once these are played, if the player still does not have the required score to complete the Challenge, they can use a Resource from the Resource Board. These Resources are powerful and make it easy to complete Challenges, but once used, they must be discarded. Resources are also assigned points. The more Resources from the Resource Board you finish the game with, the more points you have. These points can be used to progress from the basic level of the game to harder and harder levels.

If players are able to meet the required score, they place a Quill token on the Challenge and play progresses to the next player. If not, the leftmost Resource Card on the game board is discarded and play progresses to the next player. When there are no more Resource Cards on the game board, the game is over and players have lost.

Running out of Event Cards also causes Resource Cards to be removed from the game board. Players win the game once all Challenges are complete, across both game boards.

What this game provides in complexity and strategy, however, it sorely lacks in story-telling. Instead of progressing through the story, this just felt flat and unexciting, with the Challenges barely read out.

Instead, we were more interested in getting the required score to complete a Challenge than with what the Challenge was about. I would have preferred more depth.

All in all, this was a fun game and can be completed by four players in about an hour. If you’re a movie buff or an avid Tolkien reader, this game can be a bit disappointing, in that there is no depth at all to the Challenges. However, players who enjoy planning and strategy games and who enjoy Middle-Earth at a distance will undoubtedly like this game.

>> Pick up today's (Jan 4, 2015) copy of The Star for a 20% discount coupon for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.



