The Hobbit: There and Back Again

• Designer: Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: Office Dog
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 min
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4axeQsb
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The Hobbit: There & Back Again is a competitive adventure game in which players draft dice to make pathways, collect resources, and perform actions that help them to reach their chapter goal. In more detail, each of the players has their own adventure board book open to the same chapter of the game, and they play in turn order starting with the shortest player. That player rolls all of the dice, then selects one, then the next player selects one, and so on until all dice have been chosen, at which point the next player rolls all the dice once again.

With your chosen dice, you use a dry-erase pen to mark the current chapter of your book, drafting a path to evade trolls, battle goblins, solve riddles, and pen the best conclusion to each chapter. The game takes players through the eight most iconic challenges faced by Bilbo and the Dwarves in The Hobbit, such as overcoming trolls, goblins, wargs, and giant spiders; reclaiming the treasure of the dwarves; and defeating the dragon Smaug. In the end, you want to complete the most rewarding journey to The Lonely Mountain.

The Hobbit: There & Back Again includes a solo mode, as well as a way to increase the game’s difficulty, whether for some players to balance different skills levels or for everyone to increase the challenge.

Each player has a dry-erase book which has 8 different game boards in it – each open double fold of the book.  The group essentially picks one to play, and everyone uses the same board.  Though I suppose you could maybe play it as a campaign – it’s not meant to be one; simply a collection of eight different scenarios that take you through the story of the Hobbit.

There is an interesting dice system used here; the starting player rolls N+1 dice, and then gets first choice to select a die and use it on his board.  Then players go around clockwise each choosing a die to use.  When the turn gets back to the start player, there will be one die left, and the start player must also choose this one and use it.  Play continues clockwise with the next player now taking all the dice and rolling them, thus becoming the new start player.  It’s a nice way to keep the game flowing around the board.  

There are a lot of things which need to be connected in the game, so many of the sides are simply pathways that are transcribed to your board.  There are also things you need for your adventure, swords and bread – and when you choose these dice, you actually take physical chits for them.  (Sure, they probably could have also been things you mark off on your board… but you get chits).   The last option are magician hats; you do mark these off on your board, and when you get enough of them, they turn into bonus actions or other things.

Interestingly, each one has its own rules and quirks – and as a result, each plays out quite differently.  Further, there are ways to add in advanced rules to some of the maps to make them more difficult – further increasing the variety in play provided by the game.

For the first game, “The Unexpected Party”, you are trying to get your dwarves to all meet at the Hobbit house at the bottom.  While you’re doing this, you can get bonus points for getting Gandalf and Thorin to the party; but you’ll then likely be taking away from the number of Dwarves you get to attend.  The game ends when any player has connected all 12 Dwarves to the Hobbit house, and at that moment, players score for all the things they have accomplished to that point. 

The second scenario “Roast Mutton” is a race to use paths to connect Bag End to Rivendell. You’ll need swords along the way to defeat the Trolls, and you’ll want to consider taking circuitous routes to avoid the danger spaces (or take big VP penalties for going through them).

And, then there are six more scenarios as you play through the game; no need to go over them here. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, read the book (or I guess watch the movies).

My thoughts on the game

It’s a pretty clever idea to use the story of the Hobbit and base a roll-and-write game around it.  And, rather than trying to tie everything into a single game; which sounds honestly pretty impossible given the complexity of the story – Herr Knizia has instead picked out 8 different plot points and made a game out of each.

Sure, they all use the same general roll-and-write mechanic, but yet, each feels different due to the varying board layouts and rules for each.  Are all the games good? Welp, I think it depends who you ask.  Our diehard LOTR fans loved every part of it.  I am not a Tolkien fan-boy, so I wasn’t blinded by my love of all things Middle Earth – and I will admit that I found some of the pages to be much better than others.  A few of them felt very linear (or at least having a best path), and those games were won by the player(s) fortunate enough to have the right path dice available when their turn came around.  In a way, this might be a weakness of having the game rely so much upon the story/plotline – certain chapters of the game simply have to end in certain ways in order to make sense with the story, but I think that in turn limits the player choice or agency at times. 

Though, as each game only takes maybe 20 minutes, even if there was a bummer of a board, it didn’t take long… and despite those minor disappointments, the game was still interesting enough that we wanted to see what the next challenge was.  Having played through the whole book (over the course of a few game sessions), I did enjoy the experience overall, though I’ll admit that I’m not likely to want to repeat it start to finish again.  It was a fun ride, and I did get 8 games out of it, which is more than I can say about a lot of other games.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Steph H, Erik Arneson
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4axeQsb