Blood Rage Review
Eric Lang and Guillotine Games proudly present Blood Rage, a game of glorious Viking battle for 2-4 players that lasts 60-90 minutes. While this game was released for retail sale in November of 2015, it was widely available before then due to its Kickstarter, which nearly hit the million dollar mark.
Ragnarok has come. Your Nordic clan must fight and die gloriously to take its place in Valhalla at Odin’s side.
It’s very difficult to find anyone posting anything negative on the internet about this game—believe me, I looked—but even the most critically acclaimed games might not demand a spot on every shelf. Let’s take a look and find out if it belongs on yours.
Gameplay
How do you play the game? Is it a fun experience? How much interaction is there between the players? Is there very much luck involved? Will it take forever to to learn and teach?
Blood Rage is played over a series of three ages, each with six phases characterized by advancing the game in a different way. At the end of the third age, final scores are calculated, and the player with the most glory is the winner. Glory is scored in many different ways—by winning battles, by advancing your faction’s capabilities, by completing quests, and sometimes even when your units die a glorious death.
But first, let’s start from the start. Each player chooses a clan, and then collects all pieces associated with it—including a leader mini, a ship mini, eight warrior minis, and four leftover colored bases used to distinguish any allies you recruit. Tokens on your faction board keep track of four different values—the amount of rage you generate at the beginning of each turn, the amount of glory you score for winning a battle, and the total number of units you can have on the board at once. Those three are referred to as your clan’s “stats.” The fourth value is your current amount of rage, which is spent as the primary resource throughout the game.
Don’t worry. We’ll get to the part where everyone starts killing each other in a minute.
The game board is, intentionally, very simple. Eight provinces, separated into three regions, surround the central province—Yggdrasil. Each province is assigned a random tile, which will grant a stat bonus to the first clan that wins a battle there each turn. Yggdrasil always bears the same tile, which increases each of the victor’s stats by one, making it quite desirable. Fjords are featured in the water areas where two regions intersect, and are considered adjacent to the two provinces at that border—ships here can participate in battles at both provinces.
As the final part of the setup, a number of provinces are destroyed by the fires of Ragnarok itself, causing the board to shrink in a fashion that scales to the number of players. This isn’t the last time we’ll see this element. One new non-Yggdrasil province—and all units present there—are obliterated at the end of each round.
Each age follows the same sequence of steps, which flow quite naturally, and this progression is marked with a Saga Token. First, players are dealt eight cards, whose power levels vary depending on the current age. These cards are drafted in typical fashion until each player ends up with six cards. The remaining cards are returned to the box, and players keep their own cards secret from other players. These cards can employ a variety of powerful effects—from increasing strength in battle, to recruiting new monsters or allies, to upgrading your clan’s units, and even charging you with quests that can be completed to score glory towards the end of each round.
Some of the battle cards are very strong, with enough punch to potentially double your presence in a fight.
After the card draft comes the action phase, and this phase is the game’s main course. Each player, in order, selects and executes one of five different possible actions, paying any Rage costs necessary. The actions are: invade, march, upgrade, quest, and pillage.
To invade, select a unit in your reserve, and place it in an available slot on the game board—a Village for most units, but ships invade into the fjord spaces. It’s important to note that Yggdrasil has no Villages, so your units cannot directly invade it. Once you’ve placed your unit, you must pay rage equal to that unit’s strength in battle. For example, a ship’s strength is two, so two rage must be paid to deploy it.
To march, select a single province where your units are present, and you may move any number of them to another province (provided that province has enough free Villages to accommodate your marching units). Ships, alas, cannot march.
Upgrading is simple—just pay an upgrade’s rage cost in hand, and play it in its appropriate slot on your faction board. Upgrades offer ongoing benefits for your units or clans, or they can allow you to recruit special allies. Whenever you spend rage to upgrade a specific unit, or to play an upgrade card that allows you to access an ally, you may immediately invade with one of those units for free.
Say hello to my not-all-that-little friend.
Questing is also simple. Just choose a quest card in your hand, and play it face down in front of you, announcing you are committing to that quest. This action does not cost any rage at all, and will allow you to score glory towards the end of the phase if those objectives are met.
Pillage is the final action, which initiates a battle at a province, and also costs no rage. If you successfully pillage a province for the first time each round, you receive the benefits noted on that province’s tile, which will either increase one of your faction’s stats, or score a set amount of glory. To determine the outcome of the battle, take the following three steps.
First, sound the call to battle. In turn order, one unit at a time, each player may move units from adjacent provinces into that province, so long as there are sufficient spaces among the contested province’s villages. This movement costs no rage, but it’s important to remember that ships cannot move. If no other players move into the province, and your attack is unopposed, then just skip to the end and score the bonus on the tile (but do not score any glory).
Next, all players with one or more units present in the battle must select a single card from their hand (if able), and play it face down in front of them. These cards are revealed simultaneously. Any red battle cards played will increase their players’ strength in the battle by the designated value. Other cards usually have no effect.
Finally, determine the winner and resolve the battle. The player with the highest strength value is the winner. If there is a tie for the highest, then all players lose. Losing players send all of their units present to Valhalla, including ships in adjacent Fjords. If the player that initiated the Pillage wins, he or she receives the bonus noted on the province’s tile. The winner then scores Glory equal to his Axes stat’s value—a minimum of three points—which takes into consideration any increase to this stat earned during the battle.
Here, the brown clan has a leader (3 strength) and two warriors (1 strength each). Red has a warrior, and includes the ship (2 strength) in the adjacent fjord into the battle. Each player plays their card face down, revealing them at the same time, and adding the bonus to their army. The result is that brown has five total strength, while red ends up with six. All brown units are sent to Valhalla, and red wins the battle.
These are all the actions that a player can take during this phase. It’s important to note that a player with zero remaining Rage cannot take any action (other than to move units during a call to battle at the beginning of an opponent’s pillage). The action phase is over once all players have consecutively passed.
The rest of the phases in the age are very straightforward. Players discard down to one card in hand, then players reveal their quest cards and score the rewards if they’ve met the requirements. The forewarned province marked by the revealed chit now falls to the fires of Ragnarok. Each unit present in that province is sent to Valhalla and scores an amount of Glory that increases as the ages progress. Finally, all units in Valhalla are returned to their owners’ reserves, and can be deployed again next turn.
Play proceeds in this fashion until the end of the third age, when final scoring commences. Each stat track that has been advanced to a “legendary” level will score a significant amount of glory for its controller. For example, if a clan’s Axes track has been advanced to its maximum, that player scores an additional twenty glory at the end of the game. If that track had been advanced to either of the previous two slots, it would be worth ten points.
Good luck. Hope you scored enough points to join Odin in Valhalla. If not, enjoy the remainder of Ragnarok, sucker!
In spite of its relatively broad appeal, I can’t say it’s for everyone. In fact, if you’ve read the previous paragraph and the back of the box, and you’re still not interested, I’d wager Blood Rage won’t be a fun 60-90 minutes for you. You can likely skip it and rest assured that you’ve made the right choice sticking to Splendor and Agricola.
And, yes. Odin will silently be judging you for your lack of fortitude. Begone please.
Still curious? Chances are you’ll enjoy yourself. In fact, you’ll enjoy yourself quite a bit. Blood Rage has the slow fire for simmering tension, and also the dynamic elements necessary to build moments dramatic enough to make you squirm. The incremental nature of gameplay is like an auction; each action taken to progress the game state is like a bid. As you commit more of your resources and units to the board, you slowly narrow your options for your future turns, and the intensity gets thicker and thicker. The battle can start at any time, ready or not, as soon as someone decides to take a pillage action at that province. Then, it’s down to the wire. Simultaneously selected cards can provide unforeseen bonuses, turning deterministic battle into a bombastic showdown. Blood Rage’s gameplay plots a course through different extremes of tension, offering an entertaining enough experience to reach beyond the walls of its genre.
This is all brought together beautifully by the theme. While I wouldn’t say that Blood Rage is a terribly immersive game, the setting lends its context to the strategies present in the game, and enhances them to the point of excellence. Sure, pillaging and crushing the enemy scores points…and so do dying gloriously in battle and maneuvering for opportunistic advantage. These strategies don’t always pan out in other games, but Lang has designed them to be very viable here. What I’m saying is, it’s the end of the world, and you’re a Viking. How can that not be fun?
While Blood Rage manages to maintain its tension and fun throughout its duration, the game’s drag factor isn’t negligible. A cycle of phases played over a series of rounds is the formula for gameplay that plods along. For a game with such high energy and intensity, it loses some of that momentum in the transition from phase to phase. I’m wearing my horned helmet screaming, “Rarrrrrrr!” and then I have to stop, refer to the turn sequence, and then scream “Rarrrrrr!” about something else.
That’s kind of a lot of screaming “Rarrrrr!” Story of my life, right?
That said, Blood Rage manages to smoothly fit an awful lot of game into its time on the table. Plenty of things happen, and they’re all worth every second your group spends on them. Designer Eric Lang trims in all the right places, presenting a final game that’s perfectly portioned. For a game with this many good things going on, Blood Rage excels at being much shorter than it could have been.
Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a gateway game. If you bring this one home to the in-laws, you’ll likely have to take some extra time to explain the step-by-step process of drafting, among other things. In fact, in a vacuum, there are quite a lot of rules, and this is reflected in the slightly-hefty manual.
For gamers with any amount of seasoning, however, don’t despair. You’ll pick this one up in no time.
The interactive depth here goes beyond what I expected when I started my first game. Armies, battles, try and win, beat your opponents—got it. Then I had a tactical epiphany, and a whole world of new paths to victory or defeat opened before me.
Blood Rage is a game of increments. By that, I mean that each individual action a player takes is typically quite small. One warrior is deployed. Some units move from one province to an adjacent one. An upgrade card is played. A quest card is laid. The action phase unfolds with a deliberately slow march, one step at a time, and countering your opponents is absolutely critical.
In higher player-count sessions, cross-table negotiation opens up another angle of interaction. While Blood Rage is a free-for-all game on paper, the power of the ceasefire is real.
Overall, Blood Rage gets full marks in this category from me. Nothing bad to say about it here at all.
Depth
How much strategy is involved? Is there a sense of variety and balance? Does the game play well no matter how many players there are? How long does it take to play?
The strategy starts off strong with the draft at the beginning of each round. Players select the six cards they wish to keep for the round, and they can offer a variety of different benefits. Drafting battle and upgrade cards means you could have an easier time winning in a fight, while quest cards offer substantial rewards for aiming at different angles. Sculpting your hand one card at a time adds a strong layer of strategic depth right out of the gates.
Then comes the action phase, where players advance their position on the table step by step. The incremental nature of this phase, combined with the option to start a battle in any province at any time as an action, makes this a cerebral experience that allows clever players to eke out an advantage over their opponents. Units are deployed and cards are played one at a time in a fashion that’s almost reminiscent of a round of betting in poker, where your chips are the soldiers and resources that you stand to lose if you don’t win the pot.
It’s pretty sayisfying to lay a Troll on the table and say “I’m all in.”
The thing I admire most about Blood Rage’s strategic value is the fact that there are truly multiple ways to score victory points. Most area control games feel like everyone wants the same thing. In fact, that’s sort of part of their definition, and there’s nothing wrong with that. “Fighting over the same thing” is well-established as a reasonable premise for a game. Blood Rage takes this and expands upon it, somehow finding design space to add real value to doing other things without adding any extra rules weight. Winning battles is certainly rewarding, but it can also be just as rewarding to lose battles and die gloriously as well if you’ve played your cards right.
Blood Rage is also a somewhat unforgiving game, favoring tight play and good choices. There are no training wheels to save sloppy players. Glory is awarded to players who succeed in doing what they intend to do, and overcome their opponents’ efforts to thwart them. Unhedged failure can have fairly harsh consequences. The game doesn’t feature much in the way of catchup mechanics, but I don’t believe it suffers from this at all. Savvy decisions and strategizing in Blood Rage can mitigate the smaller defeats, even to the point that the outcome is desirable.
For its length and weight, Blood Rage is a smash hit in strategy.
Combat is deterministic, meaning that each element present in a battle contributes a flat number, and the winner is the player with the highest number. This sounds like it’s clearly the most boring way to determine a winner in combat, but Blood Rage manages to make it interesting. First off, each player plays a single card from his or her hand face down, then they reveal them simultaneously. Some of these cards can increase their army’s strength—quite significantly, in fact—in a fashion similar to Kemet or Cosmic Encounter. Secondly, each battle starts with a call to arms, where units in adjacent provinces may move for free into the fray. Your opponents might respond by bringing in their warriors, or pass up the opportunity so as not to disrupt their own plans. You have no way of knowing until the time comes, and this makes things very interesting.
No telling what could happen at the annual high-stakes Yggdrasil potluck.
The only time I feel luck is even present at all in this game is during the card draft. Sometimes, you just get the cards you’re looking for. However, this is mostly mitigated by the nature of drafting.
While luck is necessary in many games to create an element of uncertainty, Blood Rage accomplishes the same thing artificially, and preserves the integrity of its mechanics with very little random influence.
Players start the game symmetrically—mechanically equal clans, no presence on the board—so there’s no real danger of the balance being upset there. From there, clans can be upgraded beyond that base symmetry, but must spend a card, an action, and often resources to do so. While many of these upgrades are fantastic, they are far from game-breaking, and do not seem to upset the scales at all.
No complaints from me here.
During setup, a scaling number of provinces are, essentially, annihilated. Large circular tiles depicting what appears to be a burning cluster of fireballs descend upon the map, shrinking it to whatever size is intended for the play group. This mechanism is simple, thematic, and effective.
Look and Feel
Is the game aesthetically pleasing? Are the components made out of quality material, or do they feel cheap? Is the rulebook well-designed and easy to read? How well is theme integrated into the game?
Let’s get the obvious statement out of the way: the minis are spectacular. Period. They’re detailed, gorgeous, and will undoubtedly be the subject of much ogling when they hit the table. They really look like they’re ready to just walk right off the board. I’m reminded of Warhammer’s quality, with no assembly required. Kudos to Cool Mini or Not for their work here.
From there, we shift gears to the rest of the components, where the art is acceptable. The font selection bothers me a bit, and I feel like there are some missed opportunities to add more flavor across the game board, but overall there aren’t any fatal flaws. The worst is the Valhalla board, which looks like the front of my sister’s lunch box from 1989, but even that is totally fine for a game component. Overall, I found nothing too objectionable, and I’d call most of it pretty good. I found the box art to be borderline excellent, in fact.
Just try to tell me I’m wrong about that lunch box.
While the artwork is good, it’s fairly unremarkable. While “good but unremarkable” is fine for most games, the other components were upstaged by the fantastic miniatures, and that contrast hurts Blood Rage a bit in this category.
The miniatures, of course, are above and beyond expectation here. Every little detail survived the upgrade to a durable, quality plastic that looks and feels great.
Seriously. I don’t even have anything smarmy to say here. Nice work, guys.
I’d also like to take a moment to thank the production team for really taking the time to give the consumer a good way to actually safely store the minis in the box. Inside the game box itself are a pair of smaller, plain cardboard boxes. These boxes snugly house sets of thin plastic inlays, made specifically to fit the figurines and minimize movement in transit. Guillotine Games could have easily thrown us to the wolves, and heard few complaints for it if any, but they went the extra mile to look out for us. Bravo.
As I’ve mentioned previously, Blood Rage borrows many familiar elements from other games—card drafting, area control, etc. If you’re learning the game from the manual and you already understand these concepts, you might find certain passages tedious, but it’s okay to skip big chunks of literature. If you’re a newer gamer in the same boat, you’ll find that the manual is laid out beautifully, and effectively serves its role both as a teacher and a reference guide.
Yesssss, diagrams! Huzzah!
I actually had a moment in my first game of Blood Rage where I grew a deep respect for the rules manual. I had watched a video to learn the premise, and dove right in. I felt mostly comfortable with the rules, but—as is usually the case—I quickly found I had some very specific questions that the video didn’t address. If you successfully pillage a province with an Axes tile, do you score that extra point of glory for that same victory? Does pillaging a Rage tile immediately grant you one point of rage to spend? Do you score glory for winning an unopposed battle?
I was able to find the answer to each of my questions in a matter of moments, and I attribute that entirely to intuitive formatting and concise wording. After spending so much time wrestling with rulebooks over the years, I can’t even say how much this is appreciated.
Blood Rage is a solid thematic experience, where the marriage between setting and mechanics is so seamless that I honestly can’t be sure whether the design is bottom-up or top-down. This is a hallmark of many of my favorite games, and I love to see it out there.
As the huge fiery Ragnarok tiles consume provinces one by one, a powerful do-or-die atmosphere is created. We’re all gonna die anyways, so let’s make it worth something. This is backed up by a few mechanics that reward players for their units dying at certain times, and it all ties in together beautifully with the theme. This thematic balance makes me want to stick my chin out and let loose a guttural growl when it comes time for battle, and I love that.
The sky is literally falling. Let’s rumble.
Designer Eric Lang really paid close attention to the names he gave to various mechanical entities, and this improves the game’s thematic value even further. Resources aren’t called gold, they’re called rage. Instead a turn marker, it’s called a Saga Token. Instead of ports, we have fjords. In fact, even among the draftable cards, there are certain running themes that roughly line up with the characters of the Norse pantheon. Thor’s cards seek glory, while Loki’s are geared towards scheming and Tyr’s increase your strength in battle. Blood Rage had a thematic goal in mind at its inception, and it accomplished this goal. The theme is rich and omnipresent, and this elevates the entire game to the next level.
Unfortunately, Blood Rage absolutely missed the mark on Norse mythology—both in the details and in the spirit. I’d even go so far as to call it a total historical bust.
Learn 2 Norse, plz.
Let me offer a disclaimer here. My interest in Norse mythology is just a hobby, and I’m far from a scholar on the matter. I’m little more than a Wikipedia jockey, in fact, but I am somewhat enthusiastic about this particular body of culture, and have been for many years. If I’m mistaken in any of my statements here, I’d love to hear more in the comments.
Even with my limited knowledge of Norse myth, my eyebrows immediately shot up upon my first examination of the components. The names chosen for the provinces are practically laughable. “Angerboda” is the name of a giant sorceress, not a place. As far as I can tell, “Anolang” and “Myrkulor” are entirely fabricated. Several of the other names on the map can be found among Norse culture or myths, but a majority of them are dramatically out of context. I feel like the design team picked a bunch of Norse words that they liked off of a list, and slapped them on a map with the intent of making it look good.
With even slightly more studious research, they would have found that the Norse cosmology absolutely accommodated their game board and it wasn’t necessary to bastardize the body of culture. There are actually three classifications among worlds in the cosmos, which would have fit the three regions perfectly. Innangard is the inner ring of worlds, like Asgard and Alfheim, that are ruled by order and civilization. Utgarde is the outer ring, in which one might find Jotunheim and Niflheim, where creatures of free will roam in chaos. Then Midgard—also known as Manheim, which actually is already one of the regions in the game—is the realm of men, between the two. Among these regions, there are nine worlds—quite close to the number of eight non-Yggdrasil provinces. I felt like this was a big missed opportunity to actually adhere to the theme’s literary origins.
My next complaint starts with the blurb on the back of the box, which is only confirmed throughout the manual. “Ragnarok has come! The end of the world is upon us. But we are Vikings! This is no time for despair. It is time for glory! Death is nothing to fear, for the glory of battle will earn you an eternal place in Valhalla at Odin’s side!”
This is flat out inconsistent with the source material in two significant ways. First, Valhalla is the mead hall in Asgard where the dead go to await Ragnarok. The rooster Gullinkambi crows to signify the final battle has come, and all the chosen warriors emerge from the halls to take up arms and fight for Asgard. The second bit of information that this blurb ignores is that Odin dies during Ragnarok. Fenrir—incidentally, one of Loki’s three beastly offspring—takes a bite out of him. Maybe that place at his side won’t be quite as eternal as you thought?
But he promised! Wahhhh
I really hate to seem like I’m nitpicking, as Blood Rage is a fantastic game. These may seem like very minor grievances, and it’s certainly as simple as breathing to overlook them and have a good time playing. It’s just a game, right? However, Norse myth is the source of actual legitimate animist, neopagan, and pantheist religions with quite a lot of modern-day constituents. This doesn’t mean we have to walk on eggshells to avoid offending them, but Norse myth is a body of culture with so many inspiring names, events, and concepts. A little extra consideration towards accuracy would have cost nothing, and resulted in just as good of a game.
Value
Is it a game you can play over and over? Are there expansions available for the game, and if so, are they necessary? Does the amount of the content in the box justify the price?
I do feel like there’s a bit of missed design space in Blood Rage that could hurt its replay value. While the drafted cards allow upgrades that ultimately sculpt each clan into a different entity, I think that variable player powers could have been very beneficial. If each clan had its own unique capabilities out of the gates, I would be more inclined to play over and over until I had experienced every angle of the game. Without that, the core game’s replay value may be hurting in the long run. Expansions may be needed to keep things interesting.
Even so, I expect Blood Rage has the strength to stick around. Every time I’ve finished a game, I would have gladly played another round on the spot, and I haven’t stopped desperately wanting to play since I opened the box for the first time.
I think a lot of its replay strength can be attributed to the experience it provides. There’s just so much happening, and it scratches so many different itches. Blood Rage’s versatility makes the game one I’m glad to suggest at nearly any gathering, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.
The first expansion simply adds the option and components for a fifth player. At $24, it’s a bit of a jaw-dropper, but don’t forget that it includes ten more of those high-quality miniatures.
The other two expansions—Gods of Asgard and Mystics of Midgard—are already in the hands of the kickstarters, and will hit shelves on December 12th of 2015. This is less than three weeks after the core game released, so there won’t be much of a wait to add more on to the game.
Mystics of Midgard adds a new type of unit—the mystic, whose strength is 2 and can invade at no rage cost. Clan upgrades can be drafted to allow access Mystics, and each of those upgrade cards will grant the mystics a special ability. In fact, multiple mystic cards can be built into your clan, and each of your mystics has the abilities of all your mystic cards.
Gods of Asgard adds the influence of the Norse pantheon to the table. Two Gods appear at the beginning of the game, attached to two different provinces (don’t worry, built-in safeties assure that these provinces won’t be immediately destroyed by Ragnarok, so you’ll get full mileage out of them). Each God changes the rules of the game in that province in a unique and flavorful way. For example, Thor grants two glory for each enemy unit killed in that province. New Gods are distributed each turn, adding an entire new tactical angle to the game.
While I haven’t personally played with any of the expansions yet, they’ve certainly caught my interest. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what they have to offer.
To those that do hesitate at Blood Rage’s hefty price tag, I urge you to reconsider for two reasons.
First, the components are incredible, and absolutely worth every penny. I consider myself fairly pragmatic when it comes to components. Puerto Rico is good enough for me. Fancy isn’t necessary, and I honestly scowl a bit when I find out how much more I’m paying for aesthetics. That said, the miniatures have a true wow-factor. They’re stunning, and this has value beyond the pleasure of looking at something pretty. When those minis come out of the box, everyone at the table snaps to attention. They become engaged and invested before the game even starts.
I started loving the game right about the time I met this bruiser.
Secondly, the game itself is just worth it. If you’re just starting to build your collection, Blood Rage fills several niches on your shelf on account of its diverse mechanics. If you’re a grizzled veteran, I can’t think of a single thing I could possibly tell you to dissuade you from picking this up. This isn’t the type of game to just collect dust. It’s the kind that demands to be played often enough to more than pay for itself.
Conclusion
I’m forced to agree with the general consensus—Blood Rage is an absolutely fantastic game.
Eric Lang has grown even more as a designer since his previous releases, and has brought us the game we always wanted Chaos in the Old World to be. Blood Rage is a guys-on-a-map game, yes, but its spirit and depth surpass much of what we’ve seen in the genre to date, and I believe it has the diversity and power to cross boundaries as an ambassador between gamer demographics.
Blood Rage isn’t perfect. Some of the visual design is a bit off, and it’s far from an inexpensive game. Though not particularly complicated, it is definitely complex, so it does require a certain analytical approach to play that not every game group would be interested in. A bit of missed design space could have been used to improve replay value, but the game is strong enough to hold on its own even without the help of expansions.
Blood Rage’s theme is excellent, and is beautifully bonded with its mechanics to provide players with a flavorful and fun experience. Sadly, the thematic elements failed to accurately capture the details and essence of Norse culture and mythology, but this lack of consistency with the source material has no impact on Blood Rage’s stellar gameplay.
The best part about this game is its intensity. The nature of the action phase causes the whole board to rise to a boil, then release all at once when a player decides to start a battle. Blood Rage’s roller coaster of tension provides for a gripping, engaging experience, from the very start of the game to the bitter bloody end.
Looking for a medium-weight, highly interactive and tactical game for 2-4 players? You can’t go wrong with Blood Rage.
Verdict
YOU WILL LIKE THIS GAME IF…
- You’ve ever liked any miniatures war game. Ever.
- You enjoy interactive games that take you to the edge of your seat
- You like Chaos in the Old World, but wish it were more streamlined
- You usually stick to simpler Euro-style games, but you’d be open to broadening your horizons
- You’re looking for a game where luck isn’t a factor in combat
- Hot minis totally do it for you
- You enjoy medium-weight strategy games—not necessarily just war games—with multiple routes to victory
- You’re interested in pillaging the World Tree with your good buddy the Dwarf King
YOU WON’T LIKE THIS GAME IF…
- You don’t like miniature war games, and you’re not open to trying one out
- You’re a true stickler for details in Norse mythology
- You still haven’t finished cutting your teeth on gateway games
- You and your group shy away from games that are too intense
- You tend to prefer party and family games
- You prefer games that require less focus, and are more forgiving when you make a miscalculation
- Your village was burned by Vikings, and you hold a bit of a grudge
About the Author
Mike Mihealsick
Mike is the founder and a senior analyst at his web service, Coalition Game Studios. The Coalition works to provide tabletop designers and small studios with professional playtesting and quality assurance. Apart from that, he is a paramedic and pro-circuit gamer, has an 8-pound dog named Ser Gregor Clegane, and he has been to all six continents that aren't covered with ice all year.
Comments
you’re wrong about that lunchbox.
Bifröst, the rainbow bridge to asgard is a part of norse lore. or do you think rainbows are only for girls and queers? grow up son
I don’t think that was the implication at all. He’s just saying that the art in general has an antiquated style, and I kind of agree. :p No need to get riled up about it.