Vikings

 Another Decision Games mini game, this time "Vikings" which covers various adventures undertaken by the sea faring Nordic warrior/settlers. Tim was going to run this on one of our weekly game sessions but wanted a run through first, so Russell and I pitched up to play test it. It is designed as a solo game but works perfectly well with a GM and player team. 

The map is a stylised point-to-point map of dark ages Europe. Unusually for a Viking game, this is a strategic game and the map goes all the way from the Black Sea to North America! 

Even more unusually, it is structured as s series of "Sagas", which encompass a range of different objectives.  These are drawn randomly and generally involve settling/pillaging various areas and also include some Quests. You have to complete all the objectives within a set number of turns as determined by how many "voyage" cards are allocated to that Saga. Like other DG games in this series the number of actual voyage cards can vary during the mission depending on what happens. 

The Saga gives you starting levels of gold, Edda points (favour of the gods) and other resources. You have to draw a Jarl to lead the expedition, and the Saga ends when you achieve your objectives, run out of voyage cards or you don't have any Jarls left! 

For our first Saga we drew one which required us to establish two settlements, or which one had to be in Vinland (America). The Saga included one quest, which unfortunately was in Constantinople! Not much chance of doing both, so we set off towards America via Iceland. We'd drawn Harald as our Jarl, who was good at fighting, but an average sailor.. Really we needed Leif Erickson for our transatlantic voyage. 

We just had enough gold to buy some ships and men, but we needed to get more en route as settlements cost  money to establish. You can get money by sailing to a trade centre and trading, or by winning battles and pillaging. Given Haralds skills, you can guess which we went for... 

There are only six settlemen counters, we started with two and we needed to place two more. The reverse side is the "pillage" marker, and you can't settle a pillaged area in the course of the same Saga. 

We actually managed to sail to Iceland and settle it, which was a good start. For sea yoyages you move half a D6 spaces, and dont want to be stuck at sea. We  got lucky and made it in one go to Iceland, defeated the natives and built our settlement with the gold we'd looted from them. 

The trip to Greenland didn't go well, we lost a unit on the way, but we did manage to land and pillage the area as there weren't any enemies to fight. 

We made it to Vinland but met hostile natives and lost another unit, leaving just Harald and his bodyguard! We had enough gold to build the settlement, but there wasn't a hope of getting to Constantinople in the remaining time, so we called it there. We'd failed the Saga so lost an Edda point. 

You can string the Sagas together as a campaign , so your gold, settlements and Edda points carry over. 

The next Saga required us to undertake two quest AND the establish a new Kingdom! This in turn required us to conquer and settle a fortress, a warrior kingdom and a traditional centre. Nothing difficult then... at least we got a lot of gold to start. 

Fortunately some locations combine characteristics, so both Novgorod and Paris combine being trade centres and fortresses. East or West? In the end we decided to do a Ragnar Lothbrooke and attack Paris, followed by an assault on Wessex for the 'warrior kingdom'. 

We had enough gold to buy ships, a couple of infantry and a berserker. This time Harald sailed via Ireland and pillaged it, then landed in Normandy and pillaged that too. 

The it was onto Paris and a hug battle for Paris, and in which Harald was killed! Disaster! However had kept an earlier voyage card which let us draw a new one, Leif Ericsson! Leif appeared in Denmark and we used the loot from Paris to raise a new fleet and army, leaving Haralds survivors to hold Paris. Good job too as  French army tried to retake the city. We held it. 

Leif meanwhile sailed over the North Sea and landed in Scotland. 

Th Great Viking Army marched South and defeated Alfred! Wessex was occupied. Now we just had the matter of those two Quests. One was in southern Spain, the other in Vinland. We'd earlier drawn an event which revealed the Spanish one to be "runes", although it wasn't completed. If we could complete the other one, they would both count as successful and the runes get shuffled back into the deck. 

Leaving a garrison in Wessex, Leif sailed north again. Luckily for us, Leif is a good sailor and gets an extra move. Despite this, we still had to move seven sea spaces all the way across the Atlantic. 

Leif lost all his accompanying units en route, but thankfully we still had our earlier settlement established so we didn't have to fight our way ashore and he made it to Vinland with time to spare. This automatically satisfied the other quest, so the Saga succeeded.  Phew. 

What a clever game,there is a lot more to it than I've outlined with lots of period flavour, but hopefully that gives an idea of it.

We ran these two Sagas again later in the week with more players, and with a bit more experience and more canny play, managed to win them both, although once again the casualties among the Huscarls were horrific.