Blood Rage and something else.

DK invited the collective over to play Blood Rage by Cool min. He had spent the last 4 months or so painting the playing pieces to a sickeningly high standard! Pictures below don't do them justice - I am very jealous of DK's skill with a brush - especially at the moment when I am not feeling it and the barbarians I've started don't look as I have planned. 

We had watched a play through on YouTube which gave us a fair idea of how to play and strategies to follow. 

The board just about ready to go ....

The minis on the board ..... The first age was pretty good for myself and Steedo with us going out on an early lead using Quests to gain glory points (victory points). Snake-eyes had a mare which he didn't really recover from - but this was down to working out what cards you need for what particular strategy you go for to gain glory points. The second age saw DK move into second place and Snake-eyes improve his situation some what. Steedo move further ahead and wrecked my plans ... Aided by some poor card playing by good myself .... I think the only way I got any points was in the Final Ragnarok phase of the age.... It wasn't good. 

The final age shown below - with the battle for Yidrissil in the insert. This is the final of the 3 phases and one where Steedo made the rest of us look like incompetents .... I made a couple of errors in the round while trying to achieve my quests - but I think I could have taken Yidrissil if I'd thrown in my giant and not got my hero killed (needed 4 in Valhalla before the end of the turn - which triggers Ragnarok). My giant would have allowed me to raise all stats twice!

Steedo won with 143, DK 113, me 88 and Snake-eyes on 62 on the board below. 

Overall Blood Rage was a good game with many different strategies to win and lots of choices to be made in the game. The first of which is at the start of each Age you are dealt 8 cards each. From these you pick a card and then pass the remaining on the next player, repeating until each player has 6 cards    This is done at the start of each age. The challenge is to think about which plan to follow - Quests (you need troops in a certain area), unit upgrades - made your troops better, or combat - winning  battles. 

Certainly a game I want to play again ......

Talking of which I didn't want to Blood Rage again that evening, so we played Santorini ... Mean to be a quick game .... But we had some brain burn on it (what I was trying to avoid but not playing Blood Rage again). 

DK had painted this game as well - he can't help himself! The object is to get your little person to the top of a tower without a dome on the top. The characters were based on the Greek gods and had special powers to break the basic rules. The first two games were quick wins for DK and me. The third game was close but another win to DK and myself - this made Snake-eyes and Steedo want a fourth game ... Which they managed to win! A nice challenging team game which we all liked eventually. 

A good evening so a big thanks to DK for hosting - need to play Blood Rage again sooner rather than later .... But I'd like to play Risk -Europe sometime soon as well.

Morts