Blood Rage - How To Play

hi welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith in this video we're going to learn the two to four player game blood rage designed by Eric lang and published by cool mini or not it's Ragnarok the end of the world but before your Viking clan can enter Valhalla victoriously you'll need to do battle conquer monsters and die a glorious death so join me at the table and let's learn how to play first lay out the game board which shows a land divided into nine provinces separated by borders provinces sharing the same colored border make up a region and there's three different regions with a separate province of a grissle alone in the middle here I've laid face down the pillage tokens and you'll notice all but one have black borders place the green bordered one face-up in a gristle and then shuffle and randomly place face up the remaining pillage tokens one in each province in the provided space now place Valhalla and the age track nearby these Ragnarok tokens represent the symbols of ongoing destruction at the end of the world in a four player game reveal one randomly and place it in the indicated province face down this province is considered destroyed and for gameplay purposes no longer exists so you can remove its pillage token in a three-player game reveal and destroy a second province and a third in a two-player game during the game more provinces will be destroyed so randomly deal another token face up into each matching space of the age track returning any unused ones to the box as a reminder of the province to fall next place this doom token on the province indicated by the topmost Ragnarok disc these are the gods gifts which you'll sort by their backs into three separate decks go through each and then return to the box any you find with a number here greater than the number of players at the table in this case we're setting up a two-player game so we'll remove all three and four numbered cards then shuffle each deck separately and place them on the matching God's gift spaces of the age track now each player takes a Viking Clan sheet and the figures that match the illustrations on it your ship is pretty obvious your leader will have a banner and the rest are warriors your warriors come in two different sculpts but they're treated the same for gameplay purposes any units that are not on the board like the ones we see here are considered to be in the players reserve if it's your first time playing you'll need to attach colored bases to the bottoms of each of your figures and the color should match the color in the background of the sigil found on your clan sheet your ship has a colored sail so no base is required for it and this will leave you with four extras that you should keep nearby aside from their appearances all plans start the game the same but as you play this will change each clan has four tokens place one on the sixth space of the rage track and the others on the first spaces of these tracks then place the glory marker of your color on the zero space of the glory track that frames the board you can now return any unchosen clans and their figures back to the box lastly put all the monster figures next to the board this saga token on the first God's gift deck and give the first player token to the player born furthest to the north and that's the setup in blood rage players will be trying to gain the most glory through battles pillaging questing and even dying the game is played over three rounds also known as ages that are divided into six phases each the rows of this sheet represent the three ages that you'll play and each row has the six phases listed so as you advance with the phases you move the saga token forward to help you keep track the first phase is God's gifts you'll take the deck here and deal 8 to each player returning any leftovers to the Box in ages 2 & 3 you may start this phase with a leftover card in hand if so place it facedown on your clan sheet so it doesn't accidentally get mixed in with the new cards you receive during this phase now players look at the cards they have in hand and choose one to keep placing it facedown in front of themself when everyone's ready you pass the remaining cards to the player on your left from the cards you receive you'll choose another and then pass again and you'll keep doing this until you have six new cards the two that you have remaining in your hand that you would normally pass you just return to the box unseen in a two-player game you follow the same procedure but instead you take two cards at a time before you pass but you still stop once you have six in hand either way you keep your collected cards a secret from the other players but you can of course look at them anytime you want now it's time for the action phase so we'll move the saga token at the start of this phase ensure that your rage token on the rage track is on the value that matches the current level of your rage stat which is this row here in later ages this could increase meaning that you'll start with more rage which is the currency of the game that you'll spend for many of your actions the action phase starts with the first player who will take a single action reducing their rage by any cost requirements and after taking a single action the next player in clockwise order chooses their action and so it continues around and around the table if you don't have enough rage for the action you want to take then you can't perform it and a player with zero rage cannot take actions on their turn even if that action has no cost as it says here no rage no actions so always complete any free actions before spending that last point if you have zero rage and through a game effect you gain some back you may then continue taking actions on your turn there are five different actions to choose from but remember on your turn you can only perform one of them then the next player goes when it comes back around to you you again have the option to choose any of those five actions you can also pass on your turn but if you have any rage left it immediately drops to zero and then you won't be able to take any more actions that round before we look at the five different actions though let's quickly take another look at the board within each province our three to five villages represented by these circles land figures cannot be placed anywhere except inside a village and each village can only hold one figure except for a gristle it has no village spaces because it can hold any nut of figures these bordered water areas are fjords which is where ship pieces are placed and they are considered part of both provinces that they touch so a ship in this space is considered part of any actions or effects that target either of these two provinces land figures can't enter fjords but any number of ships can be in any fewer let's also look again at the Viking clan sheet we saw the rage track and its stat line but there's also an axes value this tells you how many glory points you gain when winning a battle and horns limit how many figures you can have on the board at one time at the start of the game this is limited to four the strength of your units is shown inside of these red backed circles your leader has a strength of three your ship a strength of two and your warriors have a strength of one each so with that understood let's go back to the action phase and learn the five different actions all of which you'll find summarized here on the bottom of your clan sheet let's start with the option to invade this allows you to pay rage equal to a single figures strength to take it from your reserve and send it to an empty village on the board unless it's a ship in which case it goes to a fewer so a warrior with its strength of 1 would cost you one wage to invade with it where a ship with a strength of two would cost you two leaders although they have a strength of three invade for free which is printed right here so you don't forget so as an example the Raven clan for their action could choose to invade and take the leader from their reserve and deploy it to an empty village at no cost just remember you cannot have more units on the board than the current value of your horn stat and each figure counts as one regardless of its strength or size also because a castle has no village spaces you cannot invade there directly instead you have to invade to an outer province and then march into a Drasil as a later action so let's learn the March action next you'll pay one wage and then you pick one province moving any number of your figures there to any other single province you cannot move your chosen figures to two separate provinces but you can move them to a gristle or any other province not just ones that are adjacent ships however can't March so when you place them they'll stay in there fewer until they're destroyed now let's learn the upgrade action upgrades are the black bordered cards that you may have collected during the first phase as an action you can play one from your hand paying enrage the cost shown here you then place the card in one of the spaces on your clan sheet that matches the text shown here for example this is a clan upgrade you have space for three of them at one time and they provide benefits that affect your entire clan troop upgrades will specifically benefit either your leader warriors or ship and at most your clan sheet gives you room to have a single upgrade for each but when playing these upgrades if you have the corresponding figure in your reserve you immediately get to invade with it for free for example if you have an upgrade for your ship that you intend to play don't spend an action and two rage to invade with that ship - then later spend an action and to rage to upgrade it because you could have instead just paid the two rage for the upgrade as that lets you invade with the upgraded unit for free you also have two spaces for playing monster upgrades just pay the cost shown here then collect the matching figure and attach it to one of your extra bases you may then immediately invade with that monster for free during the game you will treat monsters exactly like all other figures under your control and ones like this one with a large base still only take up one village space although you are limited to the number of spaces on your sheet for upgrades you can always discard an old upgrade to gain a new one also be sure to read the full text of an upgrade some will allow you to upgrade for free so it will cost nothing when playing it from your hand which is the case with this upgrade if it says it invades for free it still has the strength value here which is used when it fights but you don't pay that cost when putting this figure onto the board another action you can instead take on your turn is questing this is free it costs you no rage you just take a quest from your hand and place it facedown on your clan sheet quests are the green bordered cards that you may have in your and and I typically place them face down here and remember although this action costs you no rage you cannot take any actions if you have zero rage so be sure if you want to play quests you do so before spending your final rage point the last action you can take is to pillage and this also costs no rage first you'll choose a province with a face-up pillage token and at least one of your figures in it or adjacent in a few word then there's a call to battle starting with the player to your left and continuing clockwise all players including yourself may bring one figure from the adjacent space into the targeted province as long as there is room moving figures this way does not cost any rage even players with no rage who can normally take no actions can bring their adjacent units into the battle and participate in other words they can't initiate a pillage but they can join one in progress in this example the Raven player initiated the pillage and the Wolf Clan brought a warrior in now it's back to the Raven clan and they could decline moving a figure in it'll go back to the wolf clan and they might bring this one over to the province even though the Raven clan just skipped bringing an additional unit into the province it's back to their turn and they can still choose to bring a unit in if they want to just remember ships can't be moved so one in a different feud couldn't suddenly be brought over to this battle you will go around the table multiple times in this call to battle until all the villages in the province have been occupied or all players have passed now each player participating in the pillage chooses one card in their hand to put facedown unless you don't have any cards left in which case you don't have to do this once everyone's ready then all the players reveal you can play any card but only the red bordered ones provide a benefit in battle all others can be ignored these will increase your strength in a fight based on the number found here inside of the white ring and others will include a special effect if there is a conflict between effects note that cancel effects happen first then discards and then everything else so if these were played thoris premise II would resolve first which cancels all text that means hime dells watch which would normally discard cards won't happen the its effect has been canceled some battle cards like these show a solid white circle these can be played after battle cards are first revealed to boost a player's strength the pillaging player has the first chance to use one and then you go clockwise around the table to see if others want to as well a player can even put out a second one of these if it comes back around to them but otherwise you continue until all players have passed now players add together the strength from all of their cards and figures in the battle including any ships in the adjacent feud so here the wolf clan would get three points from its leader one point from each of its warriors and an additional point from the battle card that they played for a total of six the serpent clan gets one point from each of its two warriors two points from its ship and three points from its battle card for a total of seven the player with the most strength wins if there's a time for the greatest strength all players lose all losers in the battle destroy their figures and send them to Valhalla however they take any battle cards they played back into their hand if there is a winner in the battle they lose any battle card they played and instead return it to the box if and only if the winner of the battle is the player who started it they also gain the pillage token reward most like this one will show a clan stat symbol so you then increase that's that buy one on your Viking clan sheet there is one pillage reward that shows a number five inside of a blue diamond this is the symbol for glory points so if you initiate a pillage here and you win you gain five points which you would show on the score track when the pillage reward is collected you then flip the token over to show that this province cannot be pillaged again during this age if the pillaging player did not win the battle then the token benefit was not gained by anyone and this would be left face up so the province could be pillaged again later in this round finally if there was a winner of the battle whether they started the pillaging or not they will gain glory points equal to the current level of their axes stat which is shown here so in this case the Raven player would gain four additional points if you pillage a province and there are no other opponents there and none answer the call to battle the pillaging comes to a swift and tested conclusion you gain the pillage reward but no glory points from battle because there wasn't a battle remember there are no limits to the number of figures that can be in a gristle and every province is adjacent to it so during a call to battle lots of figures can and probably will join into the fight because this pillage reward increases all of your clan stats by one and those are all of the actions players will continue taking them until either all of the villages have been pillaged or all of the players are out of rage now it's the discard phase if any player has cards left they get rid of all of them but one at the end of the Third Age you don't keep any next up it's the quest phase each player reveals the quest they placed facedown on the board and if they completed the quest as listed here they gain these points in glory and raise any one of their clan stats by one though it's worth mentioning a clan stat can never be raised higher than the final position on each track many quests like this one will require you to have the most strength in a province of a region to check total the strength of all your figures in one of the provinces of that region including ships in adjacent fjords tying your opponent is not enough you must have the higher amount in this case the Raven clan has a total of two plus one for three and their opponent only has a strength of two so they did succeed in the quest next is the Ragnarok phase so take the token found in this space and place it facedown in the indicated province this province is now destroyed and out of the game so you can remove its pillage token all figures there including adjacent ships are then sent to Valhalla but death from Ragnarok is glorious for each figure destroyed in this way give its controlling player glory equal to the value shown here which will increase in each of the ages then move the doom token to the province showing on the Ragnarok token of the next age this again for warns the inevitable destruction of that province and finally we have the release Valhalla phase here all figures including monsters are returned to their controlling players reserve where they can be used again in the following age any figures still on the board remain there at the end of an age flip all pillage tokens so their reward side is showing but keeping them in the same provinces then pass the first player token to the next player in clockwise order and move the saga token to the first phase in the next age which begins again with God's gifts this time the cards will provide players with access to even stronger battle effects quests and upgrades once the Third Age is completed the world has come to an end and so has the game the players now gained 10 glory for each of their stat tokens that made it into one of these 2 columns and 20 glory for each token that made it into the final column the player with the most glory wins and in the very unlikely event of a tie the tied players share the victory and that's everything you need to know to play blood rage there's also some expansions that allow you to add a fifth player some new gameplay elements and additional figures but I'll leave that for you to discover on your own if you have any questions about anything that you saw here don't hesitate to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance but until the next episode thanks for watching you Oh

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 441,708

Keywords: Cool Mini Or Not, Learn To Play, Blood Rage, Learn How To Play, Instructions, Tabletop, Card Games, Watch It Played, Rules, How To Play, Board Games, Game Rules, Learn

Id: EkvmTFUGiyQ

Length: 19min 30sec (1170 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2015