Raids - The most confusing Viking game I have ever played, yes I have only played this one but I stand by this statement! Why? Well if you can wait read through the blog and if not skip to final thoughts and see!
Now for the boring stuff!
Players: 2 - 4
Age: 12+
Time: 40 minutes
What do you get inside the box?
No, the game does not come with a Viking helmet, no there is no actual longboat and raiding and pillaging is sold separately. Not quite but there some nice little pieces inside the box.
You get a game board and let us face it you are going to need one to play on. Yes, I am sure you need the game board now but down that mead and pay attention to what I am writing you fool!
You get some sexy little Viking meeples, I mean look at them, they are awesome!
The metal coins! Oh, how I nearly wet myself with excitement when I saw these and felt them. They are cool and if you do not agree then you are a moron. Yes, I am in an insulting mood today, deal with it, numb nuts.
There are 4 Viking longboat playing boards you will use to store your sexy little Viking meeples and other stuff you collect along the way.
There are 4 Viking longboat meeples that you will use to move around the board and commit all your Viking crimes with.
64 (pretty sure it was 64) voyage tiles that will allow you to stop and do different stuff! Maybe you will fight a monster, maybe you will raid a village! Who knows!
Several harbor tiles that you will use to score at the end of each voyage!
That is everything you get inside this box to play the game, guess what? That is all you need to play the game, oh and friends! Do you have any? I hope so or why did you bother getting this game? Fool!
How do you set this game up?
Simply by following the instructions in the rulebook, and it does explain the set-up. Does it explain them well? No does it F**k! Talk about writing a rulebook to confuse the people trying to play the game, All of us were reading it and just scratching our heads!
My only conclusion for the incredibly hard to understand rulebook is that it was written in Viking runes and then translated poorly into English. It is the only logical explanation, trust me, ask Spock he will agree with me on this one.
Now unlike all the other reviews I have done and posted the actual set up this is more of a how we believe you set up the game and could be wrong! Think of it like a maybe guide haha.
1: Place the world board as they like to call it (it is a god damn gameboard people) in the middle of the table.
2: Each player needs to pick a longboat board and take the matching longboat meeple. Now I am going to add that in a two-player game you need to take another set and this is a ghost ship! This is important and for some unknown reason, this is on the last page of the rule book and not mentioned anywhere else! Update! It does but underneath the image of how to set the board up that really you only look at and not read, place this under the text of the game set up, where people are actually reading.
3: Place the Viking meeples in the middle of the "world board" and take up a lot of space for no reason, or just place them at the side.
4: Place all the coins to one side, simple.
5: Collect all the voyage tiles and arrange them into the numbers on the back of the card, these are 1, 2, 3, and 4. Now I am combing rules here because the rulebook is not efficient. Basically, shuffle each pile (not together!) of these voyage tiles and place them in 4 different piles next to the "world board (yes I am mocking this)". These need to be face down! Now shuffle the grey backed harbor tiles and shuffle these and place them face down. Now take 3 of the pile and place them face up below the 2, 3, and 4 voyage tile stacks.
6: Take the voyage tiles with the 1 on their back and start placing them face up one after the other around the "world board". You start with the space located after the harbor starting tile which we have not placed on the board yet, you do that next.... Why? It would make more sense to put this down and then tell you to do the last step....
7: Now we take the starting harbor tile (it is the one with the red back) and place this on the starting spot.
8: Pick a player to go first at random, well no s**t because this game will not tell you otherwise. Once you have picked you need to do the following. The player who is going last places their longboat meeple at the harbor on the space marked 1, then continue doing this until the starting player is on the highest value space (4 players would mean they are on space 4). In the two-player version the ghost ship always starts last so will always take space 1.
9: Now take some Viking meeples! There is a chart that shows you how many players to what position they start to how many they take for example in a 2 player game the first player takes only 1 and the second player takes 2. The ghost ship in the two-player mode does not take any, or so I believe! It says to place these in an empty shield space and only 1 Viking can take a shield space, we believe this means if a space contains 2 shields you can place 2 Vikings... Could be wrong, who knows!
10: Now finally on each of the 3 village spaces on the "world board" you place a Viking meeple for each player. Also on the voyage tile that is called visit (see the crappy rulebook which one this is) place 3 more Viking meeples.
That is the set-up you are now good to go. We can now move on to how to win the game, how to play the game and what my final thoughts are....
How to win this game?
After 4 voyages, that means 1 full turn around the "world board" the player with the most Victory Points (VP) wins the game! Now in the game they are called Glory Points but I went for VP as we all know VP.
How do you play this game?
Before I start I want to point out that I am explaining how I believe you play the game based on how I read the rules. I could be wrong and probably am but this is what I believe;
On each voyage you always perform two actions;
At the start of your turn, you take a tile.
Then you move aka navigate but I am going to call it move.
Of course, at the start of any voyage you can not take a tile you just move because you are all in the harbor.
For this I will say we start at the move section, the player who is the furthest away always goes first. Now if another ship is in front of you (including the ghost ship in two-player mode) you must remove any unoccupied voyage tiles. You then must move to any voyage tile you wish however you must either stop in the tile before the village or the one after! No further than that, this means you can not skip halfway around the board, or so I think!
You can though skip to the end.... but all other players get to continue like normal.
That is how you move, of course, there are some voyage tiles with special rules that hinder this or give you stuff but we will cover that later.
Then the player who is the furthest behind gets to go next, and they follow the steps above.
Once all players have had a turn this means they should now start their next turn with a voyage tile that they can collect. The voyage tiles are split into different sections the first section are placed on your longboat board and take up space.
Weapons
Sails
Mjollnir
Pennants
Goods
These ones are placed next to the longboat board and take no space;
Rune
Port
Monsters
These last two never leave the board
Visit
Pillage
Weapon tile: There are two of these;
Single-headed axe = Lowers monsters strength by 1
Double-headed axe = Lowers monsters strength by 2
Sails tile: There are two of these;
Single sail = You gain 1 Viking meeple at the end of the voyage
Twin sails = You gain 2 Viking meeple at the end of the voyage
Are you seeing a pattern here?
Mjollnir tile: Once again there are two;
Single = Gain 1 VP for each Viking meeple on your longboat board at the end of the game
Double = Gain 2 VP for each Viking meeple on your longboat board at the end of the game
Crazy, did not see that coming...
Pennants tile: Only one!
Pennant = Just gives you victory points at the end of the game based on the number at the top of the tile
Goods tile: Several different ones but all do the same;
Goods = Gain VP points at the end of the game based on the number shown on the tile, the catch is you must have sold them at a port before the game ends
Rune tile: Many but all do the same;
Rune = Score VP based on the number of runes you have at the end of the game. If you have 5 and collect more you start a new stack!
1 rune = 1 VP
2 rune = 3 VP
3 rune = 6 VP
4 rune = 10 VP
4 rune = 15 VP
Not to bad!
Port tile: Two versions;
Single port = Sell one good on your longboat, place the goods and port at the side of your longboat board, also gain 1 Viking meeple
Double port = Sell two goods on your longboat, place the goods and port at the side of your longboat board, also gain 1 Viking meeple
Monster tile: Different ones but all do the same;
Monster = The number at the top is the strength of the monster, discard that many Viking meeples to defeat it. You can pass a monster without fighting but must discard 1 Viking meeple to do so! Keep in mind weapons lower the strength of the monster and if you defeat one they are worth the number shown in VP instead!
Visit tile: Easy;
Visit = Firstly you can never stop on one of these and must always pass it! The first player to pass gains 2 Viking meeples and the next player to pass gains 1
Pillage tile: Also very easy;
Pillage = Firstly you can never stop on one of these and must always pass it! The first player to pass gains a 3 coin and the next player to pass gains a 1 coin
That is the point of the voyage tiles, I will mention it is worth putting the Viking meeples and Coins on the tiles so that when you pass you remember to pick them up!
The village spaces on the game.... Now we played it when the first person passed that space they collected ALL the Viking meeples in the village. Not sure if this is correct but the rules are a little unclear on this.
When all ships have finished the first voyage you need to look at the harbor and score coins based on the end conditions (the first one is always the first person to arrive scores 6 and so on). Some of the harbors mean that you score the most victory points for the player with the most goods and so on.
Now you need to put the next set of voyage tiles on the "world board" and then replace the harbor tile with the one that was below the voyage tiles.
Once you have done that the furthest back player starts and it all starts again, this happens for 4 turns (once all voyage tile stacks have been placed and the last voyage around the "world board" took place) and then it is the end of the game and you add up your VP and see who wins, coins count as VP points too.
There is a rule where you can end your turn on a space occupied by another players longboat meeple and you start combat. This is beyond pointless due to the nature of how you resolve combat in this game. You start the fight by discarding a meeple and they must either flee or fight back, if they flee they move to another voyage tile. If you fight you must lose two Viking meeples and then attack with two that you discard. Basically, it means that if you have fewer Vikings on your longboat you will lose the battle so you might as well flee, however, if you are attacked and have fewer Vikings once again just flee. It is the worse element of this game.
The ghost ship in two-player mode basically only moves from village to village and does not collect anything or fight anything. It is a puppet moving around. It still follows the rules if last it discards the tiles between itself and the next player.
That should cover how to play the game! Or at least how I think you play the game. Is it just me or is the rulebook confusing? I mean I play a lot of board games and this is the first one I have really struggled with.
Final thoughts!
What the hell is wrong with this game! I want it to be fun but it seems they forgot to add the fun element to it! Wow, it is bad, no wait it is not bad but it is not good either it is somewhere in between!
The raiding other ships AKA pointless fighting another player is beyond pointless. Just count your Viking meeples and know straight away that you will either win or lose there is no random chance, why there was not a dice rolling element here I will never understand. Do these people hate dice??
The two-player variant, I can see why you need it but at the same time, I wish the ghost ship did more.
Yes, there are tactics to the game like making sure you screw over a player by moving past a tile they need knowing they will lose it. Or attacking them knowing you will win and force them off a tile you want or they might just need. It just does not feel worthwhile, at no point did I have that feeling where I was excited about my next move.
The rulebook just hinders the game more than it actually helps it, I really struggled with this rulebook, it hurt me.
There are some good points, it does not last long, the metal coins and that's it, I honestly think that is all I can say about the good points.
It was just a confusing game, we played it twice and both times we played it wrong! Or maybe we did, who bloody knows with this game, I am still confused by it, yes I will play it again because I want to understand the game but it already feels like a chore.
I can not for once say go buy it, maybe see if someone you know bought it and try it. You might understand the game and be able to explain it to me!
5/10
