Overview
The Hobbit, There and Back Again is a dice game full of adventure by Reiner Knizia for 1-4 players, each game lasting around 30 minutes.
The game comes with 4 adventure guides, 4 pens, 5 journey dice, 1 12 sided dice and bread, sword, pinecone and solo tokens.
It offers 8 different adventures based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit. You can play each part independently and it’s recommended to play in number order (you don’t want to get to Mordor before you’ve left The Shire!).
Set Up
Each player takes an adventure guide and a marker, then arrange bread and sword tokens in the centre of the table, grab the dice and your dice tray, and you’re ready to go.
It’s such a simple set up and brings you right into the adventure straight away. You don’t need to worry about reading an entire rule book before you can begin. There are four, well laid out, pages to read as a general overview, followed by turning to the rules of your adventure part (another two pages) and that’s it! You’re rolling dice and trekking across The Shire before you can say “I’m going on an adventure!”
I played this game as a two player so I will describe the rules as such.
In Part 1 of the adventure, you must connect The Dwarf guests and Gandalf to Bag End and feed them upon their arrival. They’re hungry don’t you know! Remember to gather swords on the way for the dangers ahead.
Gameplay - Dice
Choose a random first player (or follow the customs of Hobbits and Dwarves and allow the shortest player to be the first player). That first player rolls the 5 white journey dice into the middle of the table and chooses one to action. Player 2 will then take one, and so on until all dice have been played.
There are 3 white journey dice that allow you to draw different paths on your map. These paths are random and show different orientations. When you use one of these dice, copy and draw the path indicated on the dice, on your map, joining or crossing one of your existing paths, or starting from a Dwarf, Thorin or Gandalf space.
You may rotate or mirror the paths as you wish. You can never enter spaces that have a thick line bordering them.
The other 2 white journey dice allow you to collect resources, which are bread, swords and magical wizard hats. When you use these dice, you either collect matching tokens, or mark your scoresheet, depending on the adventure.
In Part 1, An Unexpected Journey, you want to make sure you’ve collected enough bread to feed the Dwarves, before they arrive at Bag End. The bread collected can be marked off on your scoresheet, but it’s never a bad idea to have extra supplies in the pantry.
If you choose a bread dice, collect a bread token or mark your scoresheet to indicate bread. If you choose a sword dice, collect a sword token.
If you choose a wizard hat dice, you receive the help from Gandalf. Immediately fill in 1 of the boxes that show a hat on your scoresheet for each hat you have gained. You can fill these in any order you choose.
Once you have filled all the boxes next to a magic action, you unlock it and must use it immediately. You can unlock handy pathways, gain bread tokens, or sword tokens.
If you choose a dice which shows two wizard hats, you cannot split them between two magic actions, they must be used on the same action. Be careful not to lose your hats!
I found the magic hats to be so useful, although easy to forget. They can really work to your advantage so be sure to grab them whilst they’re available.
Glory
Each adventure includes rewards for completing a task before the other players, indicated by points in a gold sunburst symbol. In Part 1, the first player to connect Gandalf or Thorin to Bag End scores the Glory points. All other players then fill the Glory symbol on their boards with a 0.
Who won?
Each adventure part has endgame conditions indicated by a green check mark and notes in the adventure rules.
For Part 1, the adventure ends immediately when a player connects all 12 Dwarves except Thorin to Bag End.
For Part 2, the adventure ends immediately when a player connects Bag End to Rivendell with their path.
When a player meets the endgame criteria, the adventure stops and all remaining dice in the middle are ignored. Each player then records their points and the highest score wins.
Summary
The Hobbit, There and Back Again is my first experience playing a role and write game, and I’ve fallen completely in love with it! It’s a beautiful, cosy design with just the right amount of thinking involved. If you love an easy set up too, this is definitely the game for you.
The idea of drawing on the game board is new to me, and I was really scared that using a pen wouldn’t feel the same as game components, but I was so wrong. I’ve so far played Parts 1 and 2 and am totally immersed in the world of hobbits, treacherous paths and lembas bread. Second breakfast anyone?
Scores
- Artwork - 4
- Complexity - 3
- Replayability - 4
- Interaction - 2
- Componant Quality - 4
- Overall score - 85%
