I’m a sucker for “Dark Ages” history. The Roman evacuation of Britain, the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, the Norman invasion – the people, the stories, and the myths of this period are more fascinating than anything Hollywood came dream up.
And so when Battle Ravens hit Kickstarter, it didn’t take much convincing for me to back the project. I received the game a couple of weeks ago and was able to get in a couple of games with my daughter recently. The game is advertised as ages 14+, though my daughter (Soon to be twelve.) had no issues picking up the rules and was soon developing her own strategy.
Battle Ravens is a two-player game. Each player controls an army, either Norman, Scottish, Anglo-Saxon, or Norse. There is no difference in the armies in the basic game with each army being composed of bondi, hirdmen, and thralls. The bondi are the common warriors while the hirdmen are better trained and equipped and as such each hirdmen is worth two bondi. Together, your bondi and hirdmen form a shield wall, a common infantry formation.
Your army also contains three thralls to represent skirmishers tossing javelins and the such over the shield wall. Each thrall allows you to re-roll a dice each turn.
The board is composed of two sides, each with six squares. You place your bondi and hirdmen in your squares while your opponent does the same. The goal is to break your opponent’s shield wall by taking over three of your opponent’s squares at which point you claim victory. You can place your soldiers however you wish with the only restraint being you can have no more than nine soldiers per square.
Round tokens called Ravens are used to determine how many actions you can take in each square. Actions allow you to either move bondi and hirdmen to different squares to reinforce weak links in your shield wall or to attack the enemy in the opposite square.
Six-sided dice are used to attack. Each Raven token allows you one d6 roll and you can decide how many Ravens you want to activate on your turn. You can go all out and use all of your Ravens for a single large attack or break up into multiple attacks. Your opponent can use her Ravens to block any successful attacks.
The dice mechanic is basic and quick – a result of 1 – 3 is a failure, a 4 -5 is one success, and a 6 is two successes. Each successful attack that is not defended results in the loss of bondi or hirdmen.
Losing a square results in the loss of a Raven and a thrall, so the task becomes more difficult as your shield wall begins to break. Once you lose three squares, you are defeated!
Each army comes with a set of cards. You are issued five random cards at the start of the game. Each card can only be played at certain times and once a card is played, it is out of the game regardless of the outcome. The cards add a bit of flavor to each army. For example, the Norman army has cards allowing mounted hirdmen to move more than one square.
We enjoyed Battle Ravens quite a bit and it will see a lot of game action at our table.
