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https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/04/05/announcing-quest-for-mount-doom/
This is certainly surprising. Forgeworld is making a fairly traditional looking coop boardgame about lotr using the plastic fellowship minis as game pieces.

Huh, a genuinely new boardgame from GW? At first glance, it doesn't appear to be a reskin of any of their older boardgames (someone correct me if I'm wrong). And it appears to actually be intended to be sold as a boardgame rather than a cheap way to get a bunch of models.

A Game! A Game that it is not an excuse to sell miniatures! Like labyrinth of the necrons! Hurry, make a wish!

Not an excuse to sell minis, that's for sure, but it does get them some extra life out of the original plastic Fellowship (now in gold!).

It'll be interesting to see how the mechanics turn out, though I am a bit worried as this will be a Forge World production, who do not have the best track record when it comes to print materials.

That looks really underwhelming.

There's no designer name on the box, there's no art aside from photos from the movie productions, the board looks really uninspired and with squares and text that's going to be illegible. From the photo, the individual squares could easily have been made bigger without having to sacrifice the routes that are connecting them, and they could have made the text and names easier to read, with distinct illustrations to set them apart. Not this handful of muddled photographs, which fail to communicate with the players.

Worst of all, this appears to be nothing more than a thin re-theme of Talisman. There's very little creative effort put into this. From the looks of things, this is a roll and move game. You roll the die, move in one or the other direction, draw a card to determine what happens, - in short, very little player involvement and a lot of randomness. You might as well be playing yathzee with your grandmother.

So they ended their partnership with FFG to give us this junk? It's just outrageous.

 Zingraff wrote:
That looks really underwhelming.

There's no designer name on the box, there's no art aside from photos from the movie productions, the board looks really uninspired and with squares and text that's going to be illegible. From the photo, the individual squares could easily have been made bigger without having to sacrifice the routes that are connecting them, and they could have made the text and names easier to read, with distinct illustrations to set them apart. Not this handful of muddled photographs, which fail to communicate with the players.

Worst of all, this appears to be nothing more than a thin re-theme of Talisman. There's very little creative effort put into this. From the looks of things, this is a roll and move game. You roll the die, move in one or the other direction, draw a card to determine what happens, - in short, very little player involvement and a lot of randomness. You might as well be playing yathzee with your grandmother.

So they ended their partnership with FFG to give us this junk? It's just outrageous.

Oh, you’ve had a chance to try it? Tell us more.

 Zingraff wrote:
That looks really underwhelming.

There's no designer name on the box, there's no art aside from photos from the movie productions, the board looks really uninspired and with squares and text that's going to be illegible. From the photo, the individual squares could easily have been made bigger without having to sacrifice the routes that are connecting them, and they could have made the text and names easier to read, with distinct illustrations to set them apart. Not this handful of muddled photographs, which fail to communicate with the players.

Worst of all, this appears to be nothing more than a thin re-theme of Talisman. There's very little creative effort put into this. From the looks of things, this is a roll and move game. You roll the die, move in one or the other direction, draw a card to determine what happens, - in short, very little player involvement and a lot of randomness. You might as well be playing yathzee with your grandmother.

So they ended their partnership with FFG to give us this junk? It's just outrageous.

That's a lot of supposition and "outrage" over one pic and a small blurb article.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
That's a lot of supposition and "outrage" over one pic and a small blurb article.

The GW hate train has no brakes.

It's... a board with tiny pictures of locations linked by lines?

Would have been cooler with a map of Middle Earth.

It does have a map of Middle Earth.

It also has The One Ring; cool.

It's weird, look like there are Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn, but they didn't show their mini on the box?????

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
It does have a map of Middle Earth.

It also has The One Ring; cool.

It does indeed. Well, it would have been cool to have a colored map of Middle Earth so I can see it, too.

Nice to have a golden ring. The last one I had was grey. This one is real fancy by comparison.

 Zingraff wrote:
That looks really underwhelming.

There's no designer name on the box, there's no art aside from photos from the movie productions, the board looks really uninspired and with squares and text that's going to be illegible. From the photo, the individual squares could easily have been made bigger without having to sacrifice the routes that are connecting them, and they could have made the text and names easier to read, with distinct illustrations to set them apart. Not this handful of muddled photographs, which fail to communicate with the players.

Worst of all, this appears to be nothing more than a thin re-theme of Talisman. There's very little creative effort put into this. From the looks of things, this is a roll and move game. You roll the die, move in one or the other direction, draw a card to determine what happens, - in short, very little player involvement and a lot of randomness. You might as well be playing yathzee with your grandmother.

So they ended their partnership with FFG to give us this junk? It's just outrageous.

Let’s pick this apart a little.
As far as I am aware the only gw game ever to have the designers name on the cover was the second edition of bloodbowl so this is hardly a surprise. The text boxes are at least twice the width of a 25mm base. 5cm for one or two words seems plenty big enough. Much as I like art it is well known that gw only has the Lotr movie license and I count at least 40 different images in the board (a little more than a handful). The images communicate well enough with me that I recognize several of the locations even in this small blurry picture.
The game has a age rating of 8+ rather than the usual 12+ so it is clearly aimed at the younger market perhaps as a gateway drug to the more complex miniature game.
As for the deal with fantasy flight, no one even knows which side instigated the end of that deal as Fantasy flight is now trying its hand a making a wargame or two.
I have no idea how this game will turn out but as someone with young kids I may pick it up if early impressions are decent.

Chikout wrote:
Let’s pick this apart a little.
As far as I am aware the only gw game ever to have the designers name on the cover was the second edition of bloodbowl so this is hardly a surprise.

The reason I'm drawing attention to this, is that putting the name of the designer on the box, has been the industry standard for at least 15 years. It's what the majority of board gamers expect to see on a board game, and not putting a designer name on the box seems suspect.

Chikout wrote:
The text boxes are at least twice the width of a 25mm base. 5cm for one or two words seems plenty big enough. Much as I like art it is well known that gw only has the Lotr movie license and I count at least 40 different images in the board (a little more than a handful). The images communicate well enough with me that I recognize several of the locations even in this small blurry picture.

I don't know anything about your background, but I've been playing and collecting board games my entire life. I believe I can tell from the photo whether that board is going to work or not. I've seen enough game boards, and played many of them in dimly lit rooms. I believe I know what works, and what does not. What this boils down to is the application of engaging and functional design choices, and I'm not seeing any of that here.

Chikout wrote:
The game has a age rating of 8+ rather than the usual 12+ so it is clearly aimed at the younger market perhaps as a gateway drug to the more complex miniature game.
As for the deal with fantasy flight, no one even knows which side instigated the end of that deal as Fantasy flight is now trying its hand a making a wargame or two.
I have no idea how this game will turn out but as someone with young kids I may pick it up if early impressions are decent.

All right, so I've played Talisman several times, and while it's entertaining at times, it's not a great game. Compared to what you can buy these days, even for 8 year olds, it hasn't really aged well for a game designed in the '80s. Gameplay in Talisman is totally random and with few meaningful choices, which is contrary to contemporary game design. Talisman is bound to underwhelm most people with a minimum of experience and interest in board games.

As for whether this is a variant of Talisman or not, the description on the back of the box is already telling us almost as much. We're told you have to locate the ring first, then travel to Mount Doom. There are ways they could have made that interesting, but from the looks of it, I'm assuming they're using a die to dictate how far you move. And when you land on a square, I'm assuming you have to draw a card to see what happens, otherwise those stacks of "item" and "event" cards don't make a lot of sense.

If you've ever played Talisman, you'll recognize these game mechanics. In Talisman you wander around a board to gear up for the big boss fight, but to be able to face him, you need to find the titular talisman. As far as I can tell, this new game is sufficiently different from Talisman to be regarded as its own game, but the similarities are obvious enough to make the comparison. Also GW still holds the rights to Talisman, which I think lends credibility to my claim. In the '80s and early '90s, Talisman was such a big part of their brand, that they would publish WD articles about it in the early '90s.

It's not simply a reskin of Talisman, although it looks like it has a lot of similarities.

If you zoom in it says you get 9 plastic fellowship miniatures and 9 character cards, which makes sense since all of them came on the same sprue. Also says 40 item cards, 35 event cards, 42 Eye of Sauron cards.

Looks like each space has a corresponding place on the board perimeter for a card and event & item cards have the same back, likely shuffled together and placed one on each space. Paths are marked with a 1, a 2 and a few 3s. Pure speculation, but I'd guess those numbers are movement cost, you roll a die and you can move along up to that many paths, either collecting the cards for each area or just the one you end on. Again, pure speculation, but seems likely. If so, it's only slightly more interesting than rolling a die and moving that many spaces left or right, but at least there's a bit of decision making if so.

I'd assume you all run around the board till one person finds the ring card, then you need to get it to the end point without having it taken from you.

It almost looks more like an LotR themed cross between Talisman or Key to the Kingdom and Fireball Island, without the marbles and vacuform or transforming board (ie without all the stuff that made those games fun). Which would be ironic, since a redo of Fireball Island just launched on KS yesterday

 Zingraff wrote:

Chikout wrote:
Let’s pick this apart a little.
As far as I am aware the only gw game ever to have the designers name on the cover was the second edition of bloodbowl so this is hardly a surprise.

The reason I'm drawing attention to this, is that putting the name of the designer on the box, has been the industry standard for at least 15 years. It's what the majority of board gamers expect to see on a board game, and not putting a designer name on the box seems suspect.

Chikout wrote:
The text boxes are at least twice the width of a 25mm base. 5cm for one or two words seems plenty big enough. Much as I like art it is well known that gw only has the Lotr movie license and I count at least 40 different images in the board (a little more than a handful). The images communicate well enough with me that I recognize several of the locations even in this small blurry picture.

I don't know anything about your background, but I've been playing and collecting board games my entire life. I believe I can tell from the photo whether that board is going to work or not. I've seen enough game boards, and played many of them in dimly lit rooms. I believe I know what works, and what does not. What this boils down to is the application of engaging and functional design choices, and I'm not seeing any of that here.

Chikout wrote:
The game has a age rating of 8+ rather than the usual 12+ so it is clearly aimed at the younger market perhaps as a gateway drug to the more complex miniature game.
As for the deal with fantasy flight, no one even knows which side instigated the end of that deal as Fantasy flight is now trying its hand a making a wargame or two.
I have no idea how this game will turn out but as someone with young kids I may pick it up if early impressions are decent.

All right, so I've played Talisman several times, and while it's entertaining at times, it's not a great game. Compared to what you can buy these days, even for 8 year olds, it hasn't really aged well for a game designed in the '80s. Gameplay in Talisman is totally random and with few meaningful choices, which is contrary to contemporary game design. Talisman is bound to underwhelm most people with a minimum of experience and interest in board games.

As for whether this is a variant of Talisman or not, the description on the back of the box is already telling us almost as much. We're told you have to locate the ring first, then travel to Mount Doom. There are ways they could have made that interesting, but from the looks of it, I'm assuming they're using a die to dictate how far you move. And when you land on a square, I'm assuming you have to draw a card to see what happens, otherwise those stacks of "item" and "event" cards don't make a lot of sense.

If you've ever played Talisman, you'll recognize these game mechanics. In Talisman you wander around a board to gear up for the big boss fight, but to be able to face him, you need to find the titular talisman. As far as I can tell, this new game is sufficiently different from Talisman to be regarded as its own game, but the similarities are obvious enough to make the comparison. Also GW still holds the rights to Talisman, which I think lends credibility to my claim. In the '80s and early '90s, Talisman was such a big part of their brand, that they would publish WD articles about it in the early '90s.

So everything you said is pure guesswork based off of a grainy image of the back of the box. Fair enough

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

So everything you said is pure guesswork based off of a grainy image of the back of the box. Fair enough

It's an educated guess, yes. This is how I'm interpreting the released photos and what little knowledge we have at this point.

I've been playing and collecting board games since my early childhood, and I'm usually quite adept at deciphering what a game is about, based on a photo of it's components, and in particular, the board.

I reckon this new game is based on Talisman, because of the similarities between the two. I've already addressed most of them, but it comes down to how gameplay is described in the new game, and how the majority of the components appears to be essentially the same. I expect they have tweaked it, and introduced new mechanics, while simultaneously streamlining other elements of the new game, but as far as I can tell, it's highly likely this new game is redesign of Talisman.

Okay so the model are from 2005 Mine of Moira box set

In this case I would actually have preferred if it was a "GW Boardgame" so I could get some discount on LOTR miniatures

I actually may be one of the few LoTR players that doesn't already own the fellowship so this is an auto buy for me!

This is indeed underwhelming. Will the price be higher than 20€?

At one of the last LotR tournaments I participated in a GW store, they gave this fellowship sprues away for free.

I can't possibly comment on the game play, except from the tiny blurbs we've seen.

BUT...

1. You're against the other players?
So Frodo has to do what he can to stop others getting the ring and taking it to mount doom instead of him? Kinda makes zero sense.

2. Although the board has a sepia map, it looks so drab and uninspiring to play on.

Not convinced to have any interest in this unless I knew a heck of a lot more about the gameplay.

 Zingraff wrote:

The reason I'm drawing attention to this, is that putting the name of the designer on the box, has been the industry standard for at least 15 years. It's what the majority of board gamers expect to see on a board game, and not putting a designer name on the box seems suspect.

I don't think I have ever looked for a designer name on a boardgame box.

I certainly wouldn't expect to see it on anything made by a games company rather than an individual.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
1. You're against the other players?
So Frodo has to do what he can to stop others getting the ring and taking it to mount doom instead of him? Kinda makes zero sense.

It makes plenty of sense from a Middle-Earth lore perspective, though the choice of using the Fellowship (apart from Boromir) as the representatives of it does not. I guess they really wanted a way to reuse that plastic frame. I'm definitely not the demographic for this game, but I'd probably have picked it up if they'd made new miniatures for generic representatives of the Free Peoples (Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, Gondorians, Rohirrim, Dunedain, Beornings, etc), though I understand that the flop potential for this would be enough to put them off doing that much work for it.

Ah, well. I'm glad they're doing something with the license, and I hope it signals more board game style releases in the future.

GW doesn't credit their writers individually any more.

 Zingraff wrote:
I've seen enough game boards, and played many of them in dimly lit rooms. I believe I know what works, and what does not.

How dimly lit, though? If you could give us an estimate of the lumens involved, it would probably help us gauge whether your analysis of a game you've never seen or played is incisive or a bunch of BLAARRRGH.

Thanks, ace.

 gorgon wrote:

 Zingraff wrote:
I've seen enough game boards, and played many of them in dimly lit rooms. I believe I know what works, and what does not.

How dimly lit, though? If you could give us an estimate of the lumens involved, it would probably help us gauge whether your analysis of a game you've never seen or played is incisive or a bunch of BLAARRRGH.

Thanks, ace.

I've seen a few lightbulbs in my time, so I'm clearly qualified to judge a boardgame based solely on a blurry box render, and I'm giving this one a solid three and a half fingers in the ring.

 insaniak wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

 Zingraff wrote:
I've seen enough game boards, and played many of them in dimly lit rooms. I believe I know what works, and what does not.

How dimly lit, though? If you could give us an estimate of the lumens involved, it would probably help us gauge whether your analysis of a game you've never seen or played is incisive or a bunch of BLAARRRGH.

Thanks, ace.

I've seen a few lightbulbs in my time, so I'm clearly qualified to judge a boardgame based solely on a blurry box render, and I'm giving this one a solid three and a half fingers in the ring.

Well...okay then. I think we're done here.

An actual board game? Instead of a cardboard box encasing old models they are trying to get rid of (Scouts, necrons, etc)? Interesting.