Vi-kingmaker

A Friday night before an evening shift allows me a little freedom regarding bed times so when Sam sent out a call for four potential gamers to play Viking 878, then I was happy to accept.

Ian and Steve were the invading Vikings while Sam and I were the defending Saxons and the game starts in 865 when the first invasion hit English shores. Ian and Steve went further south than is historically accurate, sensing that East Anglia was full of easy pickings. And they were right. The Viking hordes cut a swathe down through London and on to Winchester.

Sam and I looked on grimly as city after city fell and our sources of reinforcements dried up. The local fighters, who only appear when defending a city shire, were pretty useless. They either ran away or just gawped at the battle, motionless.

The turning point in the battle was, I think, Oxford. Perhaps roused by my observation that Radiohead came from there, I rolled five hits and suddenly sent the Vikings packing. News of the defeat must have spread, since the Vikings seemed to put up less of a defence than before.

Ian and Steve’s late excursion into Northumbria threatened to tip the game in their favour again, but during round five King Alfred popped up and the end-game trigger was activated – both Viking tribes playing their treaty cards. All Sam and I had to do was reduce the number of Viking-held cities to below nine and that would count as a victory to the Saxons. And we did it! Sam played a card that meant his “running away” dice rolls became “active in battle” dice rolls, and his victories were decisive in reducing the Viking Occupation to acceptable levels and no doubt the two factions went on to live together in harmony.

With history firmly rewritten, I set off home at a late (by my standards) half past ten. I strode down a busy Gloucester Road when a young woman took me by the arm and walked with me, saying that we’d met that day on Redland Road and said something about e-scooters and inflatables. I had been on Redland Road, but I was oblivious to any inflatable. Must have been someone else, and she unlinked arms and went back to her friend.

But Vikings 878 was good. It’s a bit fire-fighty, with not much long term strategy. At least, not how we played it. When ever Sam or I put an army in the way as a blocking tactic, the Vikings just walked around it.

*             *              *

Narrator changes to Sam...

Before Andrew - or Steve, or even the fictional vikings - had even arrived, Ian and I had tried out Whirling Witchcraft, the game of demented Wiccans trying to explode each other's cauldrons. It's really simple - each round you create a new potion, and then use all your ingredients to brew potions - which is basically turning them into other ingredients, like Splendor eating itself. The somewhat dickish catch is that everything you brew goes to your neighbour, and if they don't have room for the ingredients on their 'workbench' you get points, and first to five points wins. 

Apart from three 'arcana' abilities, that's the entire game, and it took Ian about thirteen minutes to cause my cauldron to explode, at which point we set up the Vikings board, and Andrew and Steve arrived...

We also played some games after Andrew left, being as it was a Friday and all. Ian won both games of Spicy, surviving many challenges simply by virtue of being truthful.

Then we rounded out the evening with Cross Clues, where we might have done a little better (was it 13?) but we ran out of time! And likewise, the evening came to a close as well. Good stuff - I very much enjoyed 878: Vikings, which conjured plenty of conversations as well as battles.