I posted this as a reply in Nigglybits, but some here may be
interested as well.


I got a chance to play the new Ragnar Brothers game, Viking Fury, this
past week.  I enjoyed it quite a bit, as did the others at the table,
I think.  The game clocked in at about 2.5 hours, but that included
teaching the rules and a slow start for the first few turns as we
figured out our options.  


It's one of those "action point allocation games,"  with so many per
turn to use.  You load up stuff onto your longship at a home base
(crew or goods to trade, depending on your plans), and then you sail
out to ports, similar to Hansa (but no arrows to limit your
direction), to do actions at them -  trade, raid or settle.   Those
second two are "battle" actions that involve rolling dice, so there is
a good dose of luck.  But, having more crew increases your chances of
success up to a point, as do action cards that add to the dice rolls.
The Rune (action) cards are another luck element in the game.  They
essentially "break" rules.  None seemed to be too powerful and they
added a lot of flavor to the game.


There are lots of ways to score, some coming during the game
and others at the end, including some bonuses that can cause big
swings in points.  Being our first game, this was hard to predict.  


The only thing close to combat between players is in a few of
the Rune cards.  The combat is between players and the ports.  It's
actually a game of tactical planning and setting yourself up to swoop
into a port ready to do an action there before another player.  You
can easily see what a player is capable of doing on his turn, but you
can't be totally sure because of the action cards.  There are some
other really cool mechanisms in the game that involve the movement,
and also the Saga cards, which each have a goal to be completed on
them.  The Saga cards drive the game along in a really clever way.


There's a lot more to the game than I'm describing here.  If I get the
time, I'm planning to write up a full session report with more detail.


I will warn the parakeets that this game is like the other
self-published Ragnar games - a cloth board, plain ugly art, cardboard
chits and some colored cubes.  It ain't real purty but it gets the job
done.  

-- 


Susan Rozmiarek
http://www.rozmiarek.info