War of the Nine Realms First Impressions
War of the Nine Realms is a battle to the death…
…or at least until you fill your Cauldron with blood.
A tile-based tactical skirmish game based on the Realms of Norse Mythology. Each realm is comprised of unique Norse characters and their wondrous abilities. The game allows you to pit these against each other in a bid to claim total victory. The victors will reshape the World in their own form.
War of the Nine Realms Game Play
I played a 1v1 game with prototype components where the winner is either the last Ruler alive or fills their Blood Cauldron with the blood of their victims first.
Players take turns taking up to 9 actions which are mostly movement and attacking.
Each character has their own movement stat with terrain having an effect on movement. There are fields, forests and water causing a few interruptions as you clash head-on.
Attacking starts with Range and Visibility. The range is the number of hexes from the attacker to the defender with ‘Close’ attacks targetting into an adjacent hex.
Ranged Attacks require a clear line of visibility between the middle of the attacker’s hex to the middle of the targets. Mountains block LoS and defenders on the edge of first are visible, those deeper in are not.
To Attack, choose an attack for that character from their card and take the number of dice for that attack.
Roll the dice and set aside any 12s which count as automatic wounds but do not count towards the total. Players also get a chance to play Fate cards on both sides to adjust the total and make/force rerolls.
The defender takes wounds equal to the total divided by the target’s defence value plus wounds for each 12’s rolled. For each wound, add a wound token to that character and the attacker gains a point to their blood cauldron.
If the defending player has action points left over from their previous turn they can spend one to counter-attack, even a character that dies has the chance to counter-attack.
The game continues until one of the aforementioned win conditions is met.
Theme
I like Norse Mythology but I don’t know much about it beyond Thor films, Vikings TV Shows and Blood Rage.
This is very much a take based in reality, as real as any myth can be. I like it.
Setup
As I mentioned we played a 1v1 game so it was a small board, a few standees and player boards. At it was at a convention it was already set up but it didn’t look like it would be too much effort.
Components & Artwork
As I also mentioned earlier, it was prototype components. But everything looked OK and the stuff in the main game looks nice so we’re all good here.
The realistic style of art works well with the theme of the game.
Ease of Teaching & Accessibility
There are actually very few rules to teach with only movement and cover being anywhere near tricky. Acting on your opponent’s turn needs to be covered with care when teaching a new player.
As everything except for cards in hand is open information it is quite accessible. The cards are easy to teach pre-game.
War of the Nine Realms Summary
There are a lot of games similar to this with my favourite, and it’s a loose connection, Arcadia Quest. This is cartoony but it’s the only game I like really that has PvP combat until I play Starcadaia Quest 😀
War of the Nine Realms is good though! It has that realism that a lot of non-wargames lack. Again, it’s real within a mythical world so I just have to hope you know what I mean.
Combat feels right as I generally like a ‘roll-to-hit’ and a ‘roll-to-damage’ system and of course, Arcadia Quest has the exploding dice which is fun.
This has a mix of that with Critical 12’s causing a wound and the rest of the dice adding up to poke the odd wound here and there. Rolling a handful of dice is fun too.
If this sounds good check it out, I’ll like to give the full multiplayer game a go sometime.
Jesta ThaRogue
