Blood Rage Raids and Pillages Kickstarter

Viking battle game Blood Rage, one of Polyhedron Collider’s games to look forward to in 2015, has hit Kickstarter. Not only did the game fund in minutes it looks like it’s going to be another Kickstarter smash hit.

Designed by Eric Lang and with some amazing miniatures from Studio McVey and artist Adrian Smith, Blood Rage is a game about Viking clans fighting over Ragnorak, the Viking apocalypse. I’m excited for this game just because of the pedigree of the people involved. Eric Lang is quickly becoming one of my favourite game designers because of his amazing back catalogue of work such as Warhammer 40,000 Conquest, X-Com and Marvel Dicemasters and Mike McVey is a bit of a childhood hero of mine, I marvelled at his work in White Dwarf every month during the 90’s.

One of the difficult aspects of Blood Rage’s early images was trying to work out exactly what kind of game it was. The inclusion of Studio McVey suggested a game involving highly detailed miniatures, but early images of the board suggested something more abstract. Thankfully we now know that we’re looking at a ‘dude’s on a map’ game of area control, think Risk or Game of Thrones but with more trolls. In fact A Game of Thrones the Board Game looks like a very good comparison because Blood Rage includes a very similar system of secretly choosing your commander before each battle.

There’s also an interesting take on death. Vikings want to die honourably in battle so having your best Viking warriors killed gains you victory points; it’s a fascinating concept that hopefully leads to more battles and less turtling.

There’s no need to worry about this Kickstarter funding, we’re less than 24 hours into the project and the game has already raised over $150,000! I think 2015 is shaping up to be the biggest year yet in Kickstarter funding, even if you ignore Exploding Kitties, Conan made an absolute mint and Thunderbirds is going bonkers.