Lord of The Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth Review

when a box the size of an actual Hobbit drops on your table with these four words on it your heart will rightfully skip a beat and your brain will abandon all reason because you know that no matter what you are going on an adventure is it a good adventure though because I think my heart did skip a beat and I'd like to call the doctors Nord of the Rings journeys in middle-earth in terms of ideas is incredibly ambitious the core box comes with a campaign of twelve scenarios but not only is there an app to take on the role of the dungeon master that same app will let you create characters choose equipment name your party I said name your party moving right on each adventure you play the app will not only generate a brand new map for it it will also seed it with different encounters not only taking into account your party size but also the characters that you chose to bring along making it a box that you can play for ever and ever and ever any of you thinking wait a minute this sounds like mansions the madness second edition a game you've reviewed three years ago and to that I say yes the similarities in fact are abundant to the point where sometimes this game feels like the greatest hits album of Fantasy Flight Games mechanisms players will select a character obviously this time they are a Lord of the Rings flavored like our groin grumbly legoland or Billy Bob Baggins then you'll equip them with items which do different things depending on how many success symbols you can feed into them and the app will tell you which initial tiles the place and various points of interest represented with search person and Fred Tolkien's that's right I said Tolkien's I made a pun so sue me you won't immediately know what you'll need to do but the story will give you leads much like that time when Gandalf told Frodo all you need to do is just take this ring to Rivendell and that's it that's all you need to do you'll be fine you certainly won't stuff is so much drama that by the end of it you will feel like you're not at home in this world anymore and you'll need to leave as you uncover clues more tiles will get added and sometimes enemies will appear if you find them you can suffer two kinds of damage that being fear and damage making it also easy to distinguish between fear damage and damage damage whenever you suffer a damage fear or damage you will draw a card from the respective deck and most frequently ill just instruct you to clip it back facedown in which case LLL serve as that type of damage being fear or damage or sometimes ill stay face up and be very pesky indeed eventually you'll discover what your objective is and we'll have to trundle your way through tests that will challenge one of your six skill can the mighty Gimli lift this rock to see what's underneath it no son because Gimli is very tired and so tired Hey one final brief interruption to let you know that the no pun can included Kickstarter campaign is live and is going to be live for just another three days if you've been watching Open included for the last year and enjoyed it and observed just how much we've grown and improved then you might want to consider backing us and if you have already done so then thank you very very much somewhere in the corner of the screen there's going to be an eye that will take you to our campaign page and you can check out some very cool rewards I'm very proud of the rewards we've arranged for you this year because there are all things that we're gonna personally make to send to you did you see or even physically and most importantly we haven't yet met our first stretch goal which is for Elaine to go part-time and that one is incredibly important to us so if you want to help us out if you want to throw us a couple of quid please consider checking out the campaign page and pledging thank you very much back to the video but that's where the similarities end in manners of madness you never know quite how much time you have left to solve the riddle but the end sometimes abruptly creeping up on you now you've got a clearly visible threat track telling you you've been procrastinating too long and that paper on how to kill a goblin it's doing two cans of Red Bull you'd better get killing it's not just a quality of life adjustment because you can't have tracks in board games and not gamify them each round you'll generate a number of threat based on how many characters are in your party the amount of unexplored areas you have on the map and how many threat tokens sit there just taunting you obviously the less threat that you generate each round the longer you will have to figure out how to win this thing which makes people make some strange decisions hello do you want to help me fight this joke because I think it's going to kill me I think I'm just gonna go off to the other side of the map and explore after all no seriously it's going to kill me you need to stay this threat track will cheerily remind you that if you reach a certain threshold then something bad will happen adding a touch of tension and trepidation to constantly remind you that something nasty lurks around the corner but you still can't help but want to take a peek I'm talking of losing if you lose that's it you've lost because the scenarios are strung together in a campaign you can't just go back and Groundhog Day all over again you have to take the loss and move on to play the next scenario you have to live with the choices you've made even if they've led you to failure then there's Elena and bearable two characters Lord of the Rings fans won't recognize at first I thought it was jarring to have an odd mix of faces such as Legolas and then this lady that for some reason is not Elrond but the more I thought about it the more it made sense journeys in middle-earth is a game that wants you to feel like you are going on an adventure and this character that you make is yours it became even more apparent once I realized that once you pick a character you can give them any claws so if you pick Gimli you could make him a guardian which is the recommended class all you could even make him a burglar if for some reason that made sense whatever character you pick you get to flesh them out and whether it's a familiar face that you're going to blend yourself into or someone that you get to come up with stories for by yourself which brings us to the most important change no more dice that's right like before each time the game challenges you with a test you will need a number of successes pushing down a statue might require might if your mind is free instead of just rolling free licensing how many successes you get you draw free cards from your personal deck each success symbol is a success each inspiration symbol can become a success if you spend an inspiration token that's already much more interesting than rolling dice you know your decks composition you know the number of cards in it and you know the number of successes you can see how many cards there are in the discard pile you can constantly evaluate the always changing odds but to put an extra little spin on it each card comes with abilities oh yeah abilities as in you get to do extra cool stuff but not when you reveal them that would be too easy at the end of each round you get to reset where you pick up your discard pile and your deck and shuffle them all together and then you get to scout that means drawing two cards having a good look and then if they want to preparing one of them that card is no longer circulating through your deck but will have an ability that is either always active or can be activated by discarding it returning it to regular circulation and what's more the card that you haven't prepared can either go on the top or the bottom of your deck there's so many interesting decisions that spring from that at first it might feel like a no-brainer to prepare any cards with no symbols and just stack all the successes on the top but the more likely a card will lead you to success the better the ability on it if you play bearable as the Pathfinder and you discard a card with Sprint's you can move one for free and then you get to scalp for free because of her action and then if you prepared another card with Sprint you can discard that too and move again and with any luck you've traversed like half the map and you've not even spent an action as if that were not enough each class has an extra deck of cards that you can purchase with experience points as you go through the campaign it's not quite deck building but you do get all to your suite of skills in minor ways decide if you want an extra success in your deck or just a repeat of something your characters really good at and the more players you play with the more fun it gets as you coordinate each other's abilities to swiftly deal with any task that might feel initially in surmountable someone will help with preparing more cards another person will pepper you with inspiration tokens while you teleport your friends across the map to swing an axe into a giant role in its best moments journeys in middle-earth is exhilarating fast clever and very rewarding folks what we have here is an update on a beloved game that has been juiced up and is now mechanically more vigorous as a universally compelling theme comes chock-a-block with adventures and lets you yell and my axe more frequently than tone vassal changes hats surely all that's left to do here is to recommend it right let's get to it the first problem with journeys in middle-earth is monsters even at a quick glance the variety comes across as lacking but once you start playing you'll eventually realize that actually it's not the number of different types of miniatures you have that's going to be the issue attacking something works like regular tests your weapons have skills you can use them with so you test them see how many successes you can get and then convert those successes into hits and subtract them from a monster's health then if the monster isn't dead and hasn't acted yet it will hit you back with a combination of fear damage and damage damage and when I say that's it I really mean that say sure this a little bit of difference for example a goblin could have a bow which makes it a ranged attacker or a monster could have armor which is a different type of hit point or a monster can have sorcery which believe it or not it's just a different type of armor or a monster could be an elite which means it attacks back more frequently but if you asked me to distinguish between a Goblin and worgen a ruffian and a white I'd be forced to admit that they're just differently sized and slightly unsanitary sponges teasingly the app will tell you that some monsters are ruthless or wary but it all just adds health or more damage and I don't want to be too disparaging because the card play mechanism is still clever and lets you engage with the monsters in your own way it's just that those ways start wearing thin very quickly soon any that just becomes a distraction an artificial obstacle with no character that's put in front of your objective and it just makes me think it's a missed opportunity and the adventures there's nothing quite as disappointing as admitting that not much about the story feels like a Lord of the Rings story sure it's mechanically representative of the films for example when Gimli attacks he can put one card from that test back on top of his deck meaning that the more he attacks the more that he can potentially pass tests that turn fueling those crazy jump into a bucket of enemies and keep swinging your axe moments but I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the story itself and I'll give it props in that it gets the tone and the nouns right but otherwise just feels like typical fantasy fairy skin to be middle-earth Ian and I guess that's to be expected from a board game but honestly after seven games I can't recall more than maybe two moments there were any kind of memorable every time we engage with an element we were excited to see what we would uncover what will I get if I talk to this person what's inside the locked chest but I say if I climb up on top of this roof seventy percent of the time it's inspiration a token over and over and over again and the funny thing is the inspiration tokens feel like the least inspired part of this whole game whereas in matches of madness within half an hour of any given adventure you'd be armed with a shovel a shotgun a mystical time and a bundle of dynamite journeys is stingy if you're lucky you will at most get one new item per adventure and whereas in mansions you use the item as part of the solution to whatever puzzle you were trying to solve in journeys you get well rope you see journeys can't give you more than that because of the campaign structure everything you get you can keep so it solves that by not giving you things and remember there's the threat of threat so you can't just bimble about exploring every token and sometimes you will miss the more rewarding encounters and the less players you have the more likely that is to happen so likely in fact the now first five games we didn't get a single new item yeah structurally adventures are hit and miss as well sometimes they'll fire off especially if they're of the second variety oh yeah we forgot to tell you there are two types of adventures the regular ones that would let you explore a large area and the battle adventures that really zero in on a location and feel tighter smoother and more like a puzzle that you need to solve the journey style adventures feel just a touch too abstract clicking on things passing tests until you find the right encounter that will let you progress at times you feel like you're wandering aimlessly with nothing to do and then in a flash of a hobbits fan it wraps into a nightmare of unexplored tiles and monsters like someone has dumped a nest of bees on your head gone F could do the bee thing the bee bit you know oh crap I forgot to order the bees on Amazon bees oh no bees I could keep going but I don't have to because Lord of the Rings journeys in middle-earth can be summed up by one simple observation each game has that penny drop moment where the mystique of the new wears off a new peek behind the curtain just a little bit in a great game that's not even noticeable you carry on as if nothing has happened but in this game not only is that moment noticeable it comes far too soon that card game mechanism that we've raved about and still love soon become so central to the experience that everything else falls off because it doesn't stand up to it like a leg of lamb that's been stewing in the pot for far too long and now all you're left with is the bone the monsters and the stories become superfluous set dressings you're flipping frantically through your deck trying to find fleeting successes and at a price point of 90 pounds I don't care how many adventures are in this box if none of them make me feel engaged although some of them certainly did try no spoilers anyway I still think there will be a lot of people who enjoy this game Lord of the Rings game and a mechanically title version of mansions of madness and if you think you're gonna engage with that not quite a dead build a constant loop with push your luck and decent miniatures often excellent artwork even though it is frequently recycled from the Lord of the Rings living card game 490 pounds whoa am I to tell you otherwise but in the wake of campaign game after campaign game I think it's important to be just a touch more critical you think about campaign games is that they have to fire on so many levels and journeys in middle-earth certainly comes close certainly closer than some previous attempts I'm looking at you gen 7 but it's in this old place where if you want a really crunchy dungeon crawler then I'd still recommend Imperial assault over it even if this story is significantly weaker or if you want that really zany puzzly app driven experience then mansions of madness is much cheaper and more memorable than this and of course I won't recommend gloom Haven because that would be ridiculous this game is aimed at an entirely different market and it would be gauche even if gloom Haven is the best campaign game ever normally at this stage we'd recommend alternative viewing material but for once we're one of the first few with a video on this game however if you enjoy painting miniatures marks or Ostrow already has a tutorial on how to paint some of the game's monsters and we highly recommend it not only is Mark an excellent painting teacher but he also composes his own music for each tutorial if that's not worth a watch then I don't know what is and that's it that's lord of the rings' journeys in middle-earth of course you didn't listen to a single thing I said and already bought the game anyway because it's Lord of the Rings from Fantasy Flight Games I understand that but I think you need to think about what you've done so I'm gonna leave you here with your thoughts while you ponder it and hit the subscribe button so goodbye [Music] [Music] you forgot to subscribe so do it now right

Channel: No Pun Included

Views: 116,032

Keywords: no pun included, board game, review, ffg, fantasy flight games, lord of the rings, lotr, journeys in middle-earth, journeys in middle earth, npi, boardgames, boardgamegeeks, brettspiel, brettspiele, jeuxdesociete, tabletop, games, juego de mesa, gamenight, miniatures, 2019

Id: DrMDB9Tfg-Q

Length: 18min 26sec (1106 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Notfaye]

OH NO, there was so much concentration on how amazing the player side of combat was, I never though about every monster being a themeless hit sponge. Mansions of Madness with it's boring X-wing combat mechanics at least had interesting stories and puzzles that broke things up.

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It looks like when moving from 3 missions a box to 12 that they made everything more bland.

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Thanks NPI for being honest and critical about everything, and not giving us a standard everything is positive review.

[u/Coin1873]

I like FFG, I like LoTR I like MoM, I like NPI, I don't dislike MvM.

I like stuff

[u/Exceon]

Man the pacing of this review is soo slow. I feel like all of this could’ve been said within 10 minutes.

Are all NPI-reviews like this?

[u/riin1979]

Why is this game so polarizing? Is it because it has an app? Is it FFG fans vs FFG haters? Is it the IP and people just wanting the game to be something it’s not?

Maybe I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention, but it has been a while since I’ve seen such a strong reaction from an unreleased game.

[u/randomise42]

Looking forward to watching their review but from everyone's summary of it sounds like they agree with my interpretation after watching the FFG playthrough. In that it looks without character and a bit of a mindless combat tunnel.. which is a shame since I like lotr.

I like that FFG have started doing playthroughs. This one I lost interest in 1/4 through while the Outer Rim one I watched to the end and made me decide I want the playmat as well!

[u/Sparkly_Fish]

Glad to see an honest review after MvM gushed over this. Just saved me $100.

[u/forceawakensme]

I am excited to play the game. I watched Rolling Solo start a play through and the game looks to be an immersive story. From what I have seen so far the combat reminds me of what I saw in the movies. Your heroes are larger than life and can do extraordinary feats. They can kill several goblins and orcs quickly. I would have preferred to have a hand of cards to play like in Mage Knight or Gloomhaven but the scout and prepare seem interesting enough.

[u/j3ddy_l33]

A well made review and I agree with many of their points but I disagree with their conclusion. My experience so far is that it has been very fun, like an Eldritch Horror that is much more manageable with an incredibly cool skill test / combat system. If each game took 2+ hours I could see some of their points being way more jarring, but at 60-90 minutes I’m not expecting Gloomhaven level of depth. Though maybe it’s meaninful that my household completely bounced off of Gloomhaven.

[u/GilwynGames]

I'm still going to buy despite being relatively sure their assessment is probably accurate. Theme goes a very long way for me so I know I'll at least enjoy one playthrough, and I'll definitely enjoy painting everything. I mean, if I can enjoy a couple playthroughs of Dark Souls the Board Game, I think I'll get something out of this as well.