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with a name like "Viking Fury" I had great hopes for this game. OK, so it's by the Ragnar Brothers who made the thematically correct yet thematically tedious "Blooming Gardens", this is about Vikings!!!!
Images (stylised, but fun) come to mind from that great movie "The Vikings", raiding parties, hacking, slashing, drinking, wenching, killing, lots of killing. Or even "The 13th Warrior". How can a game like this fail?? It's got the perfect theme....
So, what do you get as set up this game??
Components
A beautiful cloth map of Europe that even if you don't play the game, you can put this map on the wall such is its beauty, or use it as a tea-towel as a last resort.
A card representing your longship, great stuff!!!!
Little blocks representing your particular Viking faction. OK, so it's strategic level game, no Berserkers or Huscarls & so on, just "units" which represent warriors, traders, colonists, cannon-fodder or whatever else you need, hmmm......
Rune cards, with these things you not only affect the weather, but they can affect the game with quite dramatic effects, a little deck knowledge will go along way.
Treasure tokens set randomly at specified locations around Europe. Places to launch your raiders at, this catches the attention of the romantics, the glittering lure of Constantinople & Rome (& Paris??)
Furs, Skins & Ivory (Tusks) counters... What's this?? OK, so the Viking DID trade, any game at a strategic level I guess should take this into account....
Saga cards (1st, 2nd & 3rd era), which have not a single thing to do with Ragnarok, but rather being the first to "do something", be it "raid a section of the map" (Yayyy!!!), "trade with abstract locals / natives" (ah, that's what the goods counters are for, hmmm, okay....) or "colonize a section of the map" (ehh??? Where's the killing again??)
Victory
Winning is determined by who has the most number of points at the end of the game (& you can play for place, I dislike "playing for place" in games). What gets you the points is.
1) Raiding & Pillaging, it's a short term thing, but it warms the heart, it's what being a Viking (in games) is supposed to be about 
2) Trading, that's get you points too without risk.
3) Colonising, the latent "come home in the last furlong" points scorer, taking over an entire region will reap BIG dividends, try to at least dominate a region if you must share.
4) Completing the most sagas from one of the launch platforms of Norway, Sweden or Denmark (ah, the good old Leidang)
Now the game play
The Vikings had a 7 day week & that's the number of actions you get to do, 7, 1 thing a day. With this you can.....
a) Draw a Rune card (to a max of 3), well, you need the favours of Valhalla & this is how it is represented in the game, abstractly & randomly, but the card churn will be fairly high though.
b) Load up your longship with Raiders (yay) / Colonists (what??) or goods.
c) Set sail one region. As the map is nicely broken down into NSEW sections, sailing in the Southern Seas (when you get there) is quite good, sailing in the North is more perilous & while you can go past the maximum number of "Clear Sailing Days", it will cost you though Rune cards can have a positive or adverse affect on the weather.
d) Attack locals somewhere, excellent stuff!!!
e) Trade with locals somewhere, "tusks, furs, skins, all going cheap"
f) Settle / Colonise, move in & shove the locals out, handled with but a dice roll higher than the locals level required.
g) Return to the North (which ends your turn immediately)
Main restriction on a player is that you can not do something twice at the same place in one turn (ie, no raiding, trading & then settling all in a single 7 day period, so you have to be careful where you raid because someone might swoop in & then trade or settle your influence out of the zone)
Interaction between players is really minimal. Rune cards are the only way to overcome this (moving each others ships disagreeably or taking over a colony). So "multi-player" solitaire it is then, ah well, it's the way of the Eurogame so this should not suprise anyone.
Play continues until all the Saga cards are used & then there is a final 3 rounds with a summing up of the colony scores, the treasure/raiding tokens & the saga cards.
Post Game
Then, in the post game discussion, you look forlornly at that Viking helmet with the horns that you took off on turn 1 & the untouched cup of mead as you realise what this game should have really been called...
"Viking : Quartermaster & Colonist"
5/10 for the beautiful map & I won't be playing it again in a hurry.
Hope my first BGG review was not too torturous to read
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Quote: Images (stylised, but fun) come to mind from that great movie "The Vikings", raiding parties, hacking, slashing, drinking, wenching, killing, lots of killing. Or even "The 13th Warrior". How can a game like this fail?? It's got the perfect theme....
Vikings did more then indulge in an unending orgy of violence. I think this is one of the best designed games I have ever played particularly due to how the theme is implemented. I'm glad they didn't cop-out and make yet another pseudo war game.
Quote: So "multi-player" solitaire it is then, ah well, it's the way of the Eurogame so this should not suprise anyone.
It seems like many people define player interatction as either combat with other players or negotiation. I'm compelled to assume that you belong to one or both of these camps if you didn't see any player interaction in Viking Fury. Players are in perpetual competition for trading opprotunities, building settlements, plundering the resources of Europe and completing saga cards.
Quote: 5/10 for the beautiful map
And the map is the one thing that I dislike about the game. I initially thought it was cool, but I can't ever get the creases out of the cloth. While it provides cool wave effects in the ocean spaces, the pieces never stay put. Additionally trade goods and treasures cover city values and require a lot of fiddling with pieces to see how strong they are.
Your review is a good evaluation of the game rules, but as you said your opinion was marred by inappropriate expectations. The game is less about splitting heads and drinking mead and more about trying to set up a cooler Viking civilization than your opponents. As such it does a great job from both thematic and gameplay aspects. Though everytime I've played the player who did the best job splitting heads and plundering Europe won the game.
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Paul O'Connor
United States
San Marcos
California
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This is a case where reading the BGG comments mighty have saved you some trouble. At least a half dozen of them remark on the absence of "fury" from the game.
I agree with you that the game does what it does fairly well, but that what it does is not something I'm particularly eager to do. The facts of the Vikings may conflict with the legend, but like Carelton Young said at the end of the The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
For all that I may yet tumble to the new Asmodee edition, as it just looks so damn good (and I love the theme of "Hollywood" Vikings, at least) ... has anyone heard if there is just the slightest bit more conflict in the new edition?
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Stven Carlberg
United States
Atlanta
Georgia
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For what little this comment may be worth to anybody who's worried about the horns on his Viking helmet, what made me bail out early from my one try at Viking Fury was this: You make your little plans, you move your boats and guys where they need to go to do something, and then.... You roll dice to find out whether your plans worked?!? And if they don't, you get nothing, and start all over?!?
A game where something my opponents do to undercut me I understand. A game where nothing I want to do works unless I happen to roll higher than a 3 leaves me cold.
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Will DeMorris
United States
El Paso
Texas
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Quote: A game where something my opponents do to undercut me I understand. A game where nothing I want to do works unless I happen to roll higher than a 3 leaves me cold.
I agree with you up to a point. If there's no way to mitigate the odds in my favor and its a pure crapshoot, I'm out. But if the rules give me ways to even out the odds in my favor I'll give the game a chance.
-Will
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Paul Mackie
Australia
Sydney
NSW
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Having participated in the same game game as Mijjy, I'm inclined to agree with most of his review and add a few further observations, some of which have already be drawn out here by others:
1. When Pat (game owner) explained the complexities of sea movement, my initial thought was that it seemed unnecessarily complicated and burdensome. However on playing, my experience was that this was not the case, and in fact this was an interesting aspect of turn planning. But given the rate that we accumulated and played Rune cards, I think the cost to change the wind modifier was rather cheap, and could probably be two cards instead of one.
2. Quote: ...You make your little plans, you move your boats and guys where they need to go to do something, and then.... You roll dice to find out whether your plans worked?!? And if they don't, you get nothing, and start all over?!? ...
Like ssmooth, I too found the dice-rolling aspect of conquest a real downer. I lost far too many opportunities on dice rolls than I should have given the weight of overwhelming force, and would like to see an alternative or modified raiding/settlement system, in which the strength of units on one’s longship is the main determinant of success rather than a dice roll. Eg., remove one die pip required for each surplus unit on board the longship (or something similar). The point is that a massively overwhelming force should win, even if the losses are heavy. At present, a mediocre force (of 3 units) is no less likely to be successful in a given turn than an advanced longship full to the brim with 7 Viking units, which just doesn’t feel quite right to me.
3. I’m not all that enthusiastic about the way points are accumulated, which are weighted heavily in favour of colonising than anything else. There is an exponential (or is it geometric?) progression in the value of settlements as others nearby become occupied. I would have preferred to see these values capped more reasonably in favour of adding more weight to the completion of Sagas, which would have the effect of increasing the competitive pressure in the game. However, I concede that the current weighting of points is arguably just as legitimate and a reflection of what the designers intended. New players simply need to be aware of this when they start playing - that a set of three 4-val settlements is actually worth more than earning the Saga majorities for all three nations (36 points versus 30).
Despite these criticisms, I’d be happy to play this again. I’d be even happier if there was a consensus house rule on eliminating, or at least reducing, the influence of the dice-roll gods of Ragnarok…
(Remarks also posted as part of a session report on www.themineshaftgap.com.)
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Torsten Meckel-Hartmann
Germany
Kaltenkirchen
Schleswig-Holstein
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"But given the rate that we accumulated and played Rune cards, I think the cost to change the wind modifier was rather cheap, and could probably be two cards instead of one."
Did you use the rule that you can only gain Rune cards in the wintering box? In our first game we missed that, so we too had a very high turning rate for our Rune deck. After that it was O.K., but we were only two players, so game experience may vary.
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Aaron Gelb
United States
El Segundo
California
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Right..however they did call the game Viking Fury. Maybe they were furious in their negotiation skills? All some of us are saying is.. the title is a bit misleading. Viking Fury should be about the fury of Vikings...if its not then it could have been called "Lords of the North" or "Lords of the Sea" or "Viking _____"
Quote: Images (stylised, but fun) come to mind from that great movie "The Vikings", raiding parties, hacking, slashing, drinking, wenching, killing, lots of killing. Or even "The 13th Warrior". How can a game like this fail?? It's got the perfect theme....
[q="rayito2702"]
Vikings did more then indulge in an unending orgy of violence. I think this is one of the best designed games I have ever played particularly due to how the theme is implemented. I'm glad they didn't cop-out and make yet another pseudo war game.
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Chris Fawcett
United States
St. Louis
Missouri
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ssmooth wrote: For what little this comment may be worth to anybody who's worried about the horns on his Viking helmet, what made me bail out early from my one try at Viking Fury was this: You make your little plans, you move your boats and guys where they need to go to do something, and then.... You roll dice to find out whether your plans worked?!? And if they don't, you get nothing, and start all over?!?
A game where something my opponents do to undercut me I understand. A game where nothing I want to do works unless I happen to roll higher than a 3 leaves me cold.
If you're used to playing games where there is no random factor (very, very few of these, in fact), then you might not like the fact there are three dice in this game. But there they are, you know how many faces on each die, and you always know what you're rolling for/against. This is a game about understanding and dealing with that risk. Oddities may happen, but by and large, this game rewards those willing to take calculated risks.
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Chris Fawcett
United States
St. Louis
Missouri
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metor2 wrote: Did you use the rule that you can only gain Rune cards in the wintering box?
I believe the rule is that you can only gain Rune cards in a Home Country port (Sweden, Norway, or Denmark).
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