This is a series of posts where I play 100 boardgames.
Game: The Battle of Five Armies
Designer: Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi & Francesco Nepitello
Year: 2014
Country: Italy
Publisher: Ares Games
War of the Ring is an excellent asymmetric strategy game looking at the events in Lord of the Rings at a grand scale. The Battle of Five Armies is a companion piece to that game, sharing design, designers and a publisher. It’s focus is on a single battle, the climactic confrontation at the end of The Hobbit. The elves, dwarves and humans fight off goblins, with the wargs as the fifth army.
The Battle of Five Armies is an asymmetric game for two players, with one holding most of the territory for the free peoples of the west, and the other threatening to raze their settlements by attacking from the periphery. The attacker, playing the goblins and the wargs, wins by taking over 10 victory points worth of settlements. The defender wins by stalling until the Fate track reaches its maximum, by killing Bolg, the son of Azog, or if Beorn joins the fight and the attackers haven’t had six victory points yet.
The energy of the two sides is very different, since the attacker is playing against the clock and trying to rush as many armies onto the map as possible, while the defender is trying to play for time and slow down the assault. The Fate track creates a sense of drama for the game, as new resources make it possible for the dwarves, humans and elves to stay in the fight just a little longer. The defenders have access to characters like Thranduil, Gandalf and the Lord of the Eagles, each acting essentially as artillery, bombing enemy armies as they try to get closer.
The game’s best mechanic is shared with War of the Ring. Each player has a handful of action dice they can throw at the beginning of the action phase of the round. The dice determine what kind of actions they’re able to take, such as mustering more troops or moving their armies to advantageous positions. The dice keep each round interesting as the best laid plans can be sabotaged by bad luck. Perhaps you want to move your armies to safety but you only have character actions available and your characters are badly positioned to lead armies anywhere.
The mechanics felt very robust and the sense of being present in the world of The Hobbit is impeccable. It’s hard to say which game I liked more, this or War of the Ring. The latter has a sense of grandeur to it because of its scope, but The Battle of Five Armies has an immediacy and drama that arises from desperate defenses and daring raids.