Blood Rage is a game about the Ragnarok and vikings fighting to earn their place in Valhalla. It combines a number of different game mechanics and is a great mix of game styles. It also allows players to use a number of different strategies and still compete.
How Does it Play
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| The Wolf Clan Player Board |
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| A Battle Card, Clan Upgrade Card and Quest Card |
The cards a player picks here are very important because your clan will become very different from the other players as you add upgrades and what you try to do will be affected by what quests you take. It is important that you pick cards which work well together and that you try to play the later phases in a way that maximises the bonuses you get from your cards. It is also important players choose a range of cards, too many battle cards and they may find themselves left behind on upgrades and without being able to score Glory from quests.
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| The Blood Rage board |
The actions are simple and all described on the clan boards so they are easy to remember.
The first is Invade, which lets you place more troops onto the board. Models must be in one of the village spaces except for Yggdrasil which has no villages and there is no limit to the number of models in the region.
The second action is March. This allows player to move from one region to another. Since players can't invade Yggdrasil this is the only way to get models there.
Upgrade lets player play one of the upgrade cards that they drafted from their hands into one of the upgrade slots on their clan board.
Quests allows players to play a quest card from their hand and commit to a quest. At the end of the Age if the player has completed the quest they earn Glory based on the number on the card.
Finally players can Pillage. This allows players to earn rewards from a region. When a player declares a pillage action any players in neighbouring region can take it in turns to move one model at a time into the region. Once this has happened a battle happens. Each player picks a battle card from their hand and revels it at the same time, the number from the card is added to the strength on the models the player has in the region and the highest total is the winner. The winner gets a reward based on the token in the region, which is then flipped to show the region has already been pillaged, and any models from losers are sent to Valhalla.
Once all players have run out of Rage the Age ends. Players then score Glory from their quests and one region on the board is destroyed. The region that will be destroyed is known in advance and players can earn Glory by having models killed when it is so it is a valid strategy to have models purposely killed in this way. Any models in Valhalla are returned to their players and the next Age's cards are shuffled and drafted and a new round starts. At the end of the third Age final Glory is added up and the player with the most wins.
The Good
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| 3 Monsters in grey and the clan warriors in brown with coloured bases to match their clan |
They are probably the best miniatures I have received in any game and easily on par with models being put out for games like Warhammer, Warmahordes or Malifaux. Even better they are all single piece and don't need any putting together.
Miniatures aside the artwork of the game is beautiful, everything is really well done and the production is throughout.
Game play wise it does not disappoint. The mix of game mechanics makes it very interesting. Card drafting and hand management play a part, so does area control and a battle mechanic which isn't completely random and determined by dice.
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| Each Clan comes with two different warriors, a Leader and a Longboat |
The game is fairly easy to teach and the clan boards have all the actions and costs detailed on them as a reminder. It is still a slightly heavier game so not something I would teach to non-gamers but it is easy to learn for gamers. It also offers plenty of strategy so should keep people engaged. I also found it fits into a good time scale, it is maybe 1-1.5 hours and that feels about right for the game play. Any longer and it might start to outstay it's welcome and any less and you'd feel like it was cut short before you could really get going.
The Bad
There is not a lot about this game that I don't like to be fair and most are only minor things. One issue is the amount of stuff you get in the box...which is weird to be a negative. The issue is it can be hard to store it all, without expansions there is no spare room in the box, with expansions you would need either separate boxes or a customer organiser to keep everything together. That said, the boxes and inserts that come with the game work well if you are not planning on adding expansions.
The second negative is that if you are losing it can start to snowball a bit. Since players keep models on the board if they are alive at the end of an age a player that ends with a lot fewer models can be at a massive disadvantage for the next age. This isn't too bad and you can come back from it, like I said you can win by losing battles, so by picking cards in the later ages that don't need more models or just changing your strategies you can come back.
Finally is the price. I didn't get the Kickstarter edition so picked up a retail copy when it was released. It is expensive and it is clear why because of the models you get. I don't regret paying what I did for the game because it is one of my favourite games. I don't think I would try and buy a Kickstarter edition now because they are REALLY expensive and while I would like the extras you get I don't think it is worth the price I have seen them going for online.
Blood Rage was widely praised as one of the best games of 2015 and I can see why. It has a great combination of game play and really cool miniatures and everyone I have played it with has really enjoyed it.
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