Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth is the latest board game/app game hybrid from Fantasy Flight Games. In order to play the board game, players must download the free app from Fantasy Flight Games. The game itself plays a lot like Fantasy Flight's Cthulhu games, particularly Mansions of Madness but with some important differences. The box is massive, and contains mountains of tiles, tokens, cards, and minis. Players choose which characters to play as, such as Aragorn, Bilbo, Gimli, Legolas, and others. Each character has a card sheet with states, such as how much physical damage and fear that character can stand. It also states the characters stats for different skills. Players prepare their individual skill decks by taking a number of cards for the character, a number of cards for their role (captain, burglar, etc..), a number of basic cards, and a number of Weakness cards (cards that just take up space in your hand). The app directs the players to place starting tiles, either for an exploration mission or a combat mission. During the players phase they can take actions with their characters such as moving, attacking, or interacting with features on the app/game board. Then there is the shadow phase, where new monsters spawn, move and attack. Additional unhappy things can happen during the shadow phase as well. Finally, during the rally phase, players can manipulate their decks. Throughout the game, players must engage in skill checks. This is where their stats come in. In Mansions of Madness and other Cthulhu games players roll the number of dice on their stats. Here, players draw cards from their deck in the hopes that one or more of the cards will have successes that will allow them to pass the test. Each game is a chapter in a longer campaign, and players win individual games if they complete the requirements of the chapter.Lord of the Rings: Journeys in middle Earth is a fun and engaging game that really blends the digital storytelling with the cardboard experience quite well. The various monster minis are really cool, and there is undoubtedly a huge toy box factor in this game. As stated above, the game really draws heavily from Mansions of Madness, which was the first Fantasy Flight Games' game to use an app in this way. It really is a great story-telling devise. The card skill deck is an interesting twist, and one feels almost as though they added this instead of dice just to be a little different and not copy the Mansions of Madness experience too much. (It kind of reminds me of the token dropping system from Runebound, 3rd Edition.) Personally, I prefer the dice system, but I do appreciate the what the skill deck brings to the game. I do have somme complaints, however. The game only comes with one campaign. This is an issue for a few reasons. Somewhere down the line Fantasy Flight Games will undoubtedly produce expansions. Regardless of whether the new campaigns are free or not, it will still cost more money to access them. Also, and this is the biggie, there is no stand along scenario mode. I'm not in the mood for a campaign all the time, especially when I want to introduce this game to new people. Some stand alone scenarios would have really been appropriate. Perhaps in the coming the months they will produce them, and hopefully at some will be free of charge. Some may ask if you need this game if you already have Mansions of Madness, or if you're thinking of buying them both. The answer is, I believe, not really. They are very similar in a lot of ways, and I guess it is a matter of which IP you prefer. Personally, I prefer Mansions of Madness because I love the Lovecraftian theme. All told, however, Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth is a fun board game experience that is sure to delight fans of the books and movies, and there's a good game there regardless of the IP.The Discriminating Gamer