Blood Rage A review of board games

They say wisdom comes with age. Not in Midgard. Here wisdom comes with rage. So, add the bottle to the bottle and get ready to drop it in the Robbery and Bloodthirsty Battle .

And don’t forget your horned helmet . Check out the full overview of Blood Rage board games below.

Blood rage

Incredible numbers - from different clans, to ships, to ...
Breathtaking art - Adrian Smith created with Blood Rage ...
Custom Clans - Players start with the same abilities, but ...

A brief overview of blood rage

Blood Rage is a card preparation, area control strategy game for two to four players. It takes place in three rounds of blood clotting, each of which consists of six phases.

To get started, prepare a draft card in the rest you will use and carefully choose what actions and powers you will need to meet your goals or deter opponents.

Then attack, rob and fight around the map, solve tasks and earn Glory points. Whoever has the most fame in the end is declared the winner. Just remember that sometimes the bravest way to get out of the battlefield is not necessarily in one piece ...

Variations and extensions

Blood Rage: The Gods of Asgard Expansion

With this expansion, the interest of the gods was aroused and they are not satisfied. At the beginning of the game, they take control of the various provinces on the map and impose their strict programs on the area.

Six deities are included in the box, but you will only use two per game, which will give you a lot of extra content before things are used again.

Blood Rage: The Gods of Asgard Expansion

For 2-4 players
60-90 minutes of play
Over 13 years old

Blood Rage: Mystical Midgards

We present clan upgrades and a new unit called Mystics that can be hired, so it’s hard to expand that extension. However, if you find it, a real treat awaits you. In addition to the new Mystic units, you will be able to share your special Mystic capabilities with your clan upgrades. When they start to lie to you, you will be basically unstoppable.

Blood Rage: A 5th player extension

No rewards for guessing what this extension does. The gameplay isn’t greatly affected, but the Ram tribe is represented, which means five people can now play Blood Rage together. The box contains an extra clan sheet and all the extra maps and miniatures you need.

Blood Rage: A 5th player extension

For 5 players
60-90 minutes of play
Over 13 years old

Unpacking blood rage

Blood Rage is a voluminous beast with all these Miniatures . Together you will get:

40 miniature clans (divided into 4 clans, with 8 warriors, 1 leader and 1 ship)
9 monstrous miniatures
44 plastic bases
1 game board
1 age certificate
1 sheet Valhalla
4 clan lists
102 cards
1 token doom
1 sage token
1 first player token
9 predatory tokens
8 Ragnarök chips
16 clan tokens
4 Markers of Glory

If you like minis, you’ll love Blood Rage. Not only are there a lot of them, but they all look insanely good. Well not just the big guys. Even the smaller warriors were very attentive to the details that were meant for them.

But the monsters are really fantastic. They do something bulky, but don’t skimp on the details. You can say that the game designers are very proud to have been as good as possible.

Also in your favor are mounting plastic bases in a variety of colors, so you can clearly see which units belong to which team.

The design also didn’t pull any punches. The artwork is brilliantly made and wonderfully revives this dark, blood-soaked world of Vikings. The game board is also beautiful and avoids the trap of relying only on blacks and grays to hit home that this is not a bright and summer affair.

I especially liked the clan leaves. They are not overweight in detail, but at once they give you a clear overview of your situation and available actions. It seems so simple to put them right, but it’s surprising how often they can get too complicated.

Finally, I would like to mention the overall smoothness of the production. It certainly looks great, and the theme is inspiring all the time. But the fantastically intuitive design struck me as making the game run so fast.

How to play Blood Rage

The goal of the game

Your goal is to be the player with the greatest fame at the end of the game. Fame can be gained in many ways, such as winning battles, robbing, completing quests, or dying a hero. Basically, who can be the worst Viking of all.

Fame is a typical system of winning points, in which players move their marker along the track on the outside of the board as they gain it through play. When the game is over, the one who has amassed the most fame wins.

Board

The board is divided into regions, provinces and villages. There are five villages in the region, with each village having only one miniature. There are nine regions divided into three provinces. Yggdrasil is a central province that has no village and can place any amount of miniatures there.

There are also fjords that sit between individual regions and can place ships there.

Setup

For starters, everyone chooses a clan letter. Despite the fact that they differ in appearance, all clans are the same. However, as you adapt and develop the power of your clan, you will adapt and evolve. This will be reflected on the clan list.

Rage is your currency in this game, as you already guessed, measured on the Rage Track. You also have Axes Track, which tells you how much fame you get for each victory in battle, and Horns, which dictates how many miniatures you can have on the board at the same time.

Also take eight warriors and a ship that will make up your initial clan.

Phases

There are six phases of the round and a total of three rounds. At the end of each round, you enter a new era, in between you destroy one of the provinces, shrink the map and concentrate the action. The phases are:

God's gift : Then the players draw cards in their hands for use in later rounds. They involve a whole range of powers and actions, such as upgrades for their units, monsters to add to their group of warriors, or missions.

To draw a card, the first player takes a deck of cards, picks one for his hand, and hands the deck to the next player. This continues until all players have six cards.

Action phase : This forms the bulk of the game and is when you release all the restrained rage you were sitting on.

Players exchange actions. Every action costs rage. When every player goes down in a rage or when every province is robbed, the phase ends. Actions you can take include invading empty villages, marching your units from one province to another, upgrading your skills with the help of a map, starting a search on one of your maps, or plundering a province.

You can start and complete tasks at the same stage with the following actions. Each awards a prize, which they later pick up in a circle.

To successfully kidnap the province, you must fight and defeat all the other clans in it. If you do this successfully, you will be nicely rewarded in Clan or Glory upgrades. When declaring loot, however, other players have the option to send units from neighboring provinces to prevent you from doing so.

To solve the battle, each player must create a value of power. They do this by adding up the value of the power of their units sent into battle and playing cards. The cards they play can also offer special abilities. Whoever ends up with the highest value of power wins and gets a kidnapping reward. The losers move all their numbers to Valhalla.

Discard phase : Discard all unused cards except those that can be stored in the next round.

Search phase : Get rewards for all tasks completed.

Ragnarök phase : The landscape marked in the Ragnarök slot is destroyed. All numbers in the province are removed to Valhalla and Glory is awarded to the owners.

Release the Valhalla phase : All numbers in Valhalla are returned to the owners.

Next age…

When all the phases are completed, you progress to the next age and start again from the first phase. As the ages go by, the rewards are greater. But so do your opponents. All the more worrying because the available territory is smaller ...

When you reach the end of the third age, the one furthest away on the Glory track wins.

Your first Blood Rage game

in the rules , it is recommended that in your first game of Blood Rage you only deal eight cards in the God-given phase of the first age and not a draft, as no one will know what each card is doing.

I think this is a good suggestion as no one will be aware of what each card is doing and it can be a bit confusing. After you reach the second age and play the whole round, most of the main concepts should be clear and the phase can continue as usual.

Also pay attention to the rules for fjords. They sit between two provinces, but act as part of both. For example, if someone attacks any province, there are any ships in the neighboring Fjord in that attack.

One rule to remember is that the action phase ends not only when everyone has run out of rage. It ends even if the whole province has been plundered. This is worth considering as it can mean that the action phase stops abruptly without achieving everything you wanted.

Advantages disadvantages

Advantages:

Multilevel strategy
In-depth phase of card preparation
Fantastic production value and cool miniatures
No randomization

Weaknesses:

It’s hard to introduce new players

Blood Rage is equipped with strategy, that’s for sure. This is much more than just a simple game of controlling the Risk Zone , where you fight to take over land and destroy opposing units. Because in Viking culture, dying can actually be a good thing. In fact, it could form the entire basis of your winning strategy by collecting Glory points for you and forcing opponents to consume available cards.

This adds a whole new level of thinking to the game. For the first time, you will focus on the basics of using each mechanic to your advantage. However, in several campaigns, you will still discover potential ways to add up Glory points or undermine enemies.

I loved this aspect of Blood Rage, especially since before I opened the box, I was expecting just one more game in style with an area of control. This is absolutely not it and you can get completely lost in it. But that doesn’t mean it’s easier for fans of lighter games to be alienated by excessive complexity.

The aspect of card preparation is also an outstanding feature. In many ways, your predictability and planning will win or lose the game at this stage. You really need to think carefully about what your opponents are likely to try to do, what it is, and weigh down the cards that are most valuable to you as you surround the group. It can be a real joy when playing in the action phase. Less when you see your plans crumbling around you.

A small drawback of all this strategy, however, is that introducing new players is a challenge. Great for playing the same players multiple times. However, you will find that it can be quite easy to outsmart a newcomer to Blood Rage if everyone else is well acquainted with its operation. Of course, this could be said for most games, but only three opportunities to draw cards have a big impact on the game, as it has little chance of changing things.

In the end, it is worth mentioning that there is little random selection in the game, which is a big plus for strategy lovers. No dice to be seen while deck moving also has no effect on the game. Instead, the results are in the decision-making. A refreshing aspect for those in the risk camp.

TL; DR

Blood Rage is an extremely strategic mix of card preparation and surface control, with so much throat cutting and burning spot you can shake a pointed, bloody stick at.

This is a fantastically designed game that works wonderfully smoothly. This means that while you will need a lot of strategy and a few transitions to play well, even those who prefer lighter strategy games will not feel out of place.

Oh, and he also has some beautiful miniatures.

Conclusion: a verdict?

I’m a big Blood Rage fan. It is bloody, chaotic and flies around pieces of meat everywhere. But combined with some brilliant mechanics, it connected them seamlessly and created an extremely playful strategy game.

For veteran strategy players, they will know most of the key features, but will gain a lot from their use. The map-making phase is a real opportunity to express strategic strength, with anticipation and other guesswork of opponents ’actions paying off immensely.

However, the intuitiveness and sleek design of Blood Rage means that it is not unattainable even for those with less experience. If you ask me, it could be a great way to help lighter fans of strategy games explore something with a little more depth without scaring them.

The last word, however, should be devoted to miniatures. They are evil.

Blood rage