Review: Unboxing The Hobbit boxed game

New box smell time… *breathes in deep*. After pouring over White Dwarf for a week looking at the new models for the Hobbit, I finally crumbled and rushed out to feed my plastic crack habit. Read on to  see what’s in the box.

When you open the box, you’re greeted with the usual plastic frames, books, bases and dice. It feels kinda empty though. Some of the sprues are half size, so it kinda leaves gaps in the box. On top of this the box isn’t as deep as Warhammer 40,000 Dark Vengeance. 

However, once you’ve whipped it all out of the box it makes a lot of sense and it’s impressive to see how much stuff they actually have crammed on to the sprues. The quality of the models is stunning. When I read in White Dwarf that they’ve had to buy a smaller machining tool for the finer details, I thought it sounded like marketing speak and I was skeptical but boy was I wrong. When you consider Bilbo’s head is just a couple of mm wide it’s incredible when you see the likeness of Martin Freeman in a such a tiny model. These are great models despite being 1 or 2 piece push fits. I think the sculptors have excelled themselves. 

The sprue breakdown is as follows:

1x Good Sprue (Dwarves, Gandalf, Bilbo)

1x Goblin King Sprue (King, Throne, Scribe, Captain, Grinnah)

2x Goblin Sprues. Both these sprues are identical.

2x Goblin Town Sprues. Both these sprues are identical.

Good (small) sprue front.

Good sprue back.

Goblin King (large) sprue front.

Goblin King sprue back.

Both Goblin (small) sprues showing both sides. 

Both Goblin Town (large) sprues showing both sides. 

I bought the limited edition game which includes Radagast the Brown. He gets his own A4 colour rules sheet. This is the same format as the Interrogator Chaplain from Dark Vengeance, small individual sprue and separate rules. It will be interesting to see if this special edition sells out or not. 

The literature included in the game is the usual mini rule book, A4 starter booklet, play sheet and assembly guides. The mini rulebook is 112 pages and full colour. It contains all the rules and missions you need to play the strategy battle game. It does not include points values for the models included in the game. 

The Journey Begins Here booklet is full colour and as you read through it it explains and walks you through the game mechanics. It also includes Goblin Town specific missions which are fought on a 2ft x 2ft area and you use the Goblin Town terrain in different set ups (like space hulk). 

The guide includes some great photos from the film. It also includes all the stats for all the models in the game. It does not include points values though. It does mention if you add the Bill, Bert and Tom the Trolls to the Goblin force in the box it’s roughly 750pts which is the usual size force for a game. 

Just like Dark Vengeance, The Hobbit includes no material for painters. It doesn’t even list the paints you need. White Dwarfdidn’t include painting tutorials, just a very basic list of paints, which if I’m honest proved extremely useful when I bought the game because I could work out what paints I own and what I needed. Suffice to say, I bought lots of different shades of brown mainly. If you want Hobbit painting guides you can buy them for the iPad from GW. Failing that keep checking Tale of Painters (bookmark us, follow us on Facebook, join our blog roll etc) because I will be posting detailed tutorials starting with Bilbo Baggins really soon. 

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