Academy Games | 878 Vikings Invasion of England 2nd Edition | Board Game | Ages 12+ | 2 to 4 Players | 60 to 120 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

The massive invading Vikings under the command of their leaders is a size-able force to reckon with.

In this Battle, I was rolling my maximum dice, including 2 dice for the Housecarl units and 3 dice for the Thegn units, but the dice gods didn’t smile on me.There are also special event cards that can be played on your opponent's turn, reflecting various historical events such as the conversion of some Vikings to Christianity or the infighting between various English kingdoms. We shall be reviewing books, miniatures\toy soldiers, MiniFigs and of course games, plus interviews, model making and AARs!

It never feels grand or epic in scope, and you rarely feel clever about something you did unless you had the luck of drawing a useful card. No Berserker or Norsemen troops will begin on the map, as they have not begun to invade England yet. Almost all of the reviews on Board Game Quest are from review copies of a game provided by the publisher. We grant five years guarantee from date of purchase on our products with defects, which can be traced back to insufficient or defective processing. If the English regain control of a shire, the Viking Control token is removed and placed back on the track along the bottom of the board.

The core of the gameplay is driven by the cards played by the active faction, which will either be an event card or a movement card. Each faction rolls the number of dice corresponding to the number of units they have in battle (up to a max of number of dice they have available). If units from both sides remain in the Shire, the attacking factions simultaneously roll their Battle Dice. A Wargamers Needful Things is a one stop blog for Wargamers, Military Minifig collectors, Toy Soldier collectors and military history obsessives.

If the English players are defending, they draw a Fyrd card and bring that many Fyrd units into play in the shire where the battle occurs. Moving units to non-city spaces also has the added benefit of allowing you to command-decision there, since you may only command-decision to a Shire already occupied by your units. For each Command, that faction may move one of its own units from the battle to any adjacent Shire that contains units of its side. However, in 878: Vikings, the random draw of who goes next doesn’t happen until one faction completes their turn. The controlling Viking player then can play a Movement card (see previous Action Point for details) and move not only this army with the Leader but any number of allowed armies the appropriate amount of spaces, as shown on the played Movement card.It is fairly easy to reach your max, especially if you control Wessex for the first Rounds of the game. The Battle mechanic used in 878: Vikings is really very simple, and simple is not a bad thing in this instance. Speaking of combat, I do like that each faction has custom dice, not just different in color but in the symbols and number of those symbols. It is this discussion space with your other team member that allows this fast-paced game to breathe and enhances the overall experience. The Round pawn is placed on space 1 of the Round track at the top of the board and the Black (Norsemen) Turn cube is placed on the first Turn space.