Miniature Board Games Worth the Price of Entry? Journeys in Middle Earth is Fabulous Part 1

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After weeks of research, and digging into various different miniatures games, I finally settled on something I had familiarity with – the Lord of the Rings. There are a TON of Lord of the Rings board games available right now, many of which have cool miniatures. You could argue that the miniatures in Lord of the Rings board games – not tabletop games, we should keep them separate – began with Lord of the Rings Risk, and have only gotten better since then. Journeys in Middle Earth is a fantastic, procedurally generated board game campaign that weaves familiar and unfamiliar characters from J.R.R. Tolkien’s works into a fun and engaging role playing game. The game utilizes an application that walks you through most aspects of the game, including searching areas, laying down terrain, tracking enemies and their damage, and so much more.

To be honest, the idea of an application based board game wasn’t that appealing to me, and I actually watched various reviews and videos on this game numerous times before saying, “That doesn’t look like it’s for me.” And that’s where this journey begins. How do you pick a good miniatures board game? Reviews are always a great start, but none of these games are cheap. I looked at a variety of games, but ultimately settled on picking one of 3 – ISS Vanguard, Wild Assent, and Journeys in Middle Earth. Obviously I picked the last of this list, but there was some thought into why I did.

For the longest time, Wild Assent was the game I really wanted to purchase. The miniatures looked great, and the battleground scenerios were pretty intriguing. The price of entry into this one, with a few expansions to really build out the collection, was about $379.99 USD via GameFound. Not a terrible price, but