The Hobbit Card Game
2-5
12+
30
Relive the epic struggle of good versus evil in Middle-earth with The Hobbit Card Game, Martin Wallace’s fast-paced, standalone, trick-taking card game for 2-5 players.
Win hands and use the cards you’ve won to deal damage to opponents, or heal allies and help them with extra cards. Cards can be imbued with the powers of evil or good, and your character's alignment determines how each power effects them. Each character assigns cards differently, so use your skills wisely! Fight the forces of evil as Gandalf, Thorin, or Bilbo, or smash the hopes of the heroes as Smaug the dragon or Bolg, the goblin leader.
images © Fantasy Flight Games
User Reviews (1)
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This is a neat game that plays quickly and adjusts well to different numbers of players. Each player takes a character (or two if there are only 2 players: the player playing the good side will play with Bilbo and Thorin).
Game play
Depending on the number of players, they will be dealt a different amount of cards. These cards can be yellow, green, red, blue and purple and have numbers from 1-12. They can also have symbols such as a white star, an orc helmet or a brown pipe.
In each turn, the first player (Thorin in the first turn or the one who won the trick the turn before) plays a card. The other players have to play cards of the same color, if possible; the highest card of that color wins the trick. However, purple cards always win (they are trumps). This is basically how the game play goes; it is quite simple and common in traditional card games. The most interesting part of the game comes next. The player who won the trick has to deal the cards obtained. The characters in this game grant different abilities to the players controlling them:
– Gandalf and Smaug have the same ability: they can assign one card to each player, including themselves, but may also choose to discard any cards they want.
– Bilbo must assign one card to himself, one to another player, and discard the rest.
– Bolg assigns one card to another player and discard the rest.
– Thorin (poor thing) has to shuffle all the card and randomly assign one card to each player.
What’s the point of this? Well, this is where the symbols in the card come into play. The white star allows players in the good side to either do one point of damage to a character in the evil side or heal one point of damage from any character in the good side. The orc helmets do the same with characters in the evil side. The pipes allow players to receive an additional card per pipe symbol if a second round took place.
When all the characters run out of cards, the first round ends. If the winning conditions are met, the game ends. If not, another round is played.
My opinion
It is really easy to explain and very quick to play. From my experience, it is common to play more than once, changing characters each time and then summing up the number of victories, regardless of the side in which each player was. There is quite a great deal of player interaction and team work, and a lot of thinking: which card should you use? is it good for your time that you win the trick given the ability from your character? Thorin’s ability adds some randomness but players should be able to work together and take advantage of it in those occasions where the damage could be minimized and any outcome would work.
The drawings on the cards are beautiful and reflect characters/object/other stuff from the book. However, the same drawings are associated with different numbers and different colors and they are not really relevant during game play (except for the fact that characters from the good side usually grant white stars and viceversa). Other than that, this is a really good game for the price for those who love merchandising from Tolkien’s creations.
What I like the most is how small it is. You can carry it around and play almost anywhere while you wait for a friend, for food, for an appointment, whenever you want to, just take it out of your pocket!