Let's Talk Knizia's LotR Expansions

Michael Barnes wrote: I have always suspected that Battlefields was never really finished. It just doesn't feel completely integrated to me, and the whole thing with the flowcharts feels very prototype-y. Remember that this was an expansion that came out WAY after the others, kind of out of nowhere. I've always suspected that Knizia never really felt like it was done, and eventually it just got published anyway- probably due to contractual obligation.

Years ago, before the publication of Battlefields, but after the release of Friends and Foes and Sauron, Reiner mentioned in a BoardGameSpeak interview that he had done work on a third expansion but decided to leave it in its drawer because he didn't think it quite worked.

Unlike the base game and the other expansions, Battlefields was not developed by Kosmos. I've wondered in the past whether Battlefields came about because someone at Fantasy Flight heard that same interview and specifically requested Knizia's "lost" Lord of the Rings expansion.

Or maybe Battlefields is completely different from the "lost" expansion. Someone should ask Reiner.

That has to be it. The other expansions- even Sauron- are so refined and so exquisitely developed, and Battlefields is not. I can totally see how he toyed with incorporating this stuff, wasn't really feeling it, and shelved it. And I can totally see FFG saying "let's print that!"

Playing with it again recently, I didn't dislike it as much as when it first came out but it's still definitely the weakest element of the entire set. If it were just a LITTLE more obscured that the "battles" are flowcharts, it would have helped.

Also:

The scenario boards in the base game and Friends and Foes have lots of text on them. However, Knizia has said that it was not possible to put text on the Battlefields boards because, unlike the base game and the other expansions, Battlefields was a combined French/German/English edition.

If Battlefields had place names or chapter titles on the flowcharts, maybe the relationship between gameplay and the books' narrative would have been apparent. My understanding is that Battlefields needed more character tokens, too, so that you weren't required to do stuff like field Boromir in battles that transpire long after his death.

The production run on Battlefields was much lower than the other Lord of the Rings stuff, so such luxuries as English-language boards with explanatory text, or an appropriate selection of characters for each battlefield were probably not possible, economically.