''Battle of the Five Armies'' is a 1975 board wargame published by LORE / JMJ Enterprises and by
TSR later.
Gameplay
''Battle of the Five Armies'' is a game that simulates the Battle of Five Armies.
Publication history
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)."
Reception
Larry Pound reviewed ''The Battle of the Five Armies'' in ''
The Space Gamer
''The Space Gamer'' was a magazine dedicated to the subject of science fiction and fantasy board games and tabletop role-playing games. It quickly grew in importance and was an important and influential magazine in its subject matter from the la ...
'' No. 3.
Pound commented that "All in all, the game
sfair, but the total impression is not enhanced by the colors used for the unit counters or the way the terrain features are drawn."
Martin Easterbrook reviewed the TSR version of ''Battle of the Five Armies'' for ''
White Dwarf
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes fro ...
'' #3, giving it an overall rating of 5 out of 10, and stated that "The game's main strength is that it does possess something of the atmosphere of the book. The inexorably slow advancing sea of goblin warriors becomes quite hypnotic after a while and you really do begin bitting your fingernails whilst praying for the arrival of the eagles and Beorn."
2005 Version
In 2005,
Games Workshop
Games Workshop Group (often abbreviated as GW) is a British manufacturer of miniature wargames, based in Nottingham, England. Its best-known products are ''Warhammer Age of Sigmar'' and ''Warhammer 40,000''.
Founded in 1975 by John Peake (gam ...
released a ''
Battle of Five Armies
''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the '' ...
''
tabletop wargame
A wargame is a strategy game in which two or more players command opposing armed forces in a realistic simulation of an armed conflict. Wargaming may be played for recreation, to train military officers in the art of strategic thinking, or to s ...
, designed by
Rick Priestley
Rick Priestley (born 29 March 1959) is a British game designerSlingshot, No279, Nov 2011, p1 and author mainly known as the creator of ''Warhammer'' miniature wargame.
Career
Rick Priestley, with Bryan Ansell and Richard Halliwell, designed t ...
using highly detailed 10 mm figures sculpted by Mark Harrison, based on Games Workshop's
Warmaster
''Warmaster'' is a ruleset for tabletop wargames written by Rick Priestley, published by Specialist Games (a division of Games Workshop), and set in the ''Warhammer Fantasy'' setting. It is different from ''Warhammer Fantasy Battles'' in bot ...
rules.
2014 Edition
The Battle of Five Armies is a standalone game produced by Ares Games based on the rules for
War of the Ring (board game)
''War of the Ring'' is a strategy board game based on The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. The game was made by Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello, first produced by Nexus Editrice (Italy), and is currently published by ...
, but with the rules modified to function on a tactical level as they describe a smaller battle rather than the entire war.
boardgamegeek.com
/ref>
References
{{reflist
Board games introduced in 1975