The Game
Blood Rage proved to be a very successful Kickstarter campaign – maybe thanks to miniatures used or the some of the proven mechanic of its predecessor – Midgard. Nevertheless, it occupies very high place on Boardgamegeek now.
In this game each player controls their own Viking clan, warriors, leader, and ship. What is interesting, the Ragnarök has come, and it’s the end of the world – really, and epic scenario for a wargame! So it is also last chance for Vikings to go down in a blaze of glory and secure their place in Valhalla. What you can do? Invade and pillage land for rewards, crush your opponents in epic battles, fulfill quests, increase your clan’s stats, or even die gloriously either in battle or from Ragnarök. All this grants glory points which in the end will decide who the winner is.
Sounds like a fun – let us then check it!
The play
So we played in following set-up:
- Kuba G – Wolf clan (blue)
- Kuba J – Bear clan (brown)
- Konrad – Raven clan (gold)
- Michal – Serpent clan (red)
The final scores were:
- Kuba J – Bear clan (brown) – 125
- Michal – Serpent clan (red) – 118
- Konrad – Raven clan (gold) – 110
- Kuba G – Wolf clan (blue) – 77
Unfortunately, we were not very kind to the owner and our host 😦
Summary
Blood Rage proved to be a very good and successful re-implementation of Midgard game. The mechanics are straightforward, battles quick and effective, the replayability of the game quite high and the quality of the miniatures very satisfactory. I especially like the mechanics where even fallen troops can bring you glory and points! We spent very exciting evening and will for sure come back in the future to that title!
The Boardgames Chronicle 
I’m not a great fan of the Blood Rage – i don’t like the idea that instead winning combats you must kill as many own warrirors as you can, but besides that it’s a solid game. Unexpectadly i’ve won, despite that after 2 rounds i was the last. At start I was in bit better condition than Konrad and Michal, who tried it for the first time. I’ve played that once before and knew that you can gain tons of points by dying often (Loki’s cards, Valhalla expeditions), so in the first round i’ve invested in discount to rage purchases and adding extra warrior each invasion/deployment, later got the Loki’s card and could earn extra points. Game can be quite chaotic, sometimes it’s difficult to make plans. At the end of the first round situation allowed me to unexpectadly conquer and loot the Yggdrassil with a single common warrior . How guys allowed me to do that? 2 of them could join(Konrad passed earlier) and defeat me, but they both had just 1 last rage and twice this round i’ve been using card allowing stealing rage from the victorious. If they defeated me they wouldn’t be able to move anymore and i would conquer the Yggdrassil next round anyway. Only a draw and total annihilation could prevent me from winning at the tree. Michal decided not to join and Kuba G. stood against me hoping for a draw. He expected me to pick the card that allows stealing rage, but i picked other modifier that gave attack and extra clan stat improvement. I’ve won the yggdrassil after not so great round- nice . 2nd round was nothing special to me. In the final round i had great luck- Michal contested Kuba G. in the doomed sector, Michal was the underdog with 5 points weaker attack, so Kuba G. didn’t want to spend his best attack cards-unlike Michal. At the end of their combat it appeared they have a draw- that opened me a chance to invade that province with Giant and extra warrior(just 1 spot left for Konrad). That was crucial mistake by Kuba. If he won that, he would probably win the game, but he decided he may need stronger attack later. With me and my giant controlling province i could slowly play expedition cards(2x Valhalla for 11 points each) and plan my actions, Winning those expeditions and final combated in the doomed province gave me few clan stat improvements whch secured 2×20 pts for them at the end. In the final round from the last spot with some 40 pts i jumped to rank 1 with 125 – totally unexpected. If not a draw in a single combat the end result would be much different.
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I am a big fan of Blood Rage, I love area control and I love Vikings!
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Great to hear – this was our first encounter with that game and we will for sure play more. If you like vikings, I recommend 878 VIkings: https://theboardgameschronicle.com/2019/06/21/eng-vikings-conquering-england/
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