Battle in Balin’s Tomb is the latest board game from Games Workshop for The Lord of the Rings.
Recently my kids watched the first first Lord of the Rings movie and within an hour of watching the scene in Balin’s Tomb I received the press release for Battle in Balin’s Tomb. The timing could not have been more perfect and Games Workshop sent us a copy to play and share our thoughts.
Players take turns moving the heroes around the tomb, killing each orc and troll they meet. Each wave a card is played to determine the current list of foes added to the mix, some quite deadly. The box comes with a single troll and I saw at least one cart that forced you to fight two of them, thankfully it kept on in a holding area until the other is defeated but things can get pretty harry. Thankfully in our playthrough this card didn’t come up.
When playing we opted for three players, two to field the Fellowship and one for the Orcs and Troll. The cards were mostly in favor of the Fellowship and were able to prevent a majority of the forces from overwhelming us, things got a bit hectic when the Cave Troll was first unleashed but working together we were able to remove the threat. The combat system was very similar to that of Warhammer Underworlds in that attackers rolled a certain number of dice and defenders rolled their defense dice, subtracting the defense die from the attacks.
We found the game easy to pick up, the models very easy to build and the pacing to be quite quick. For those that play the Lord of the Rings Strategy Game may want to pick this up for the decreased cost of getting the minis here. Likewise fans of the films will want to collect these miniatures for their collection.