Viking Funeral

So in today post we will be looking at another one of the games I intend to do a case study of, and is yet again another of Rob Daviaus creations: Viking Funeral.

So as the images may suggest, VF (Viking Funeral) is certainly in a less serious tone that Risk Legacy, and as the images and name may suggest is about Vikings at a Funeral (who would of guessed). VF is a 2-player card game that uses a, preferably old and even damaged (balance is not important), pack of traditional cards. The cards represent individual Vikings and the gameplay revolves around the funeral of one of these Vikings (cards). It's not as morbid as it sounds.

The problem with Vikings (evidently) is they seem to like fights, even at Funerals. The gameplay (per funeral) starts with one player declaring their like or dislike for the dead card/viking, and the other player either agreeing (with the same coloured viking) or disagreeing (with a different coloured viking). If they disagree their is a fight (surprise, surprise). Fights revolve around players adding more allowed vikings (defenders allowed is same colour, aggressors is same suite), and the player with the highest total value (values of the cards) wins. The winner then gets to deal beatings equal to the remaining wounds of their last viking played (a vikings wounds is the number of symbols of that cards suit - damage taken, so an undamaged 7 has 7 wounds, and undamaged King has 2 wounds).

These wounds are represented by drawing over the suit symbols on the card - one for each bit of damage caused. you can be a bit more theatrical about this if you want a draw some more damage and the like. When a card runs out of wounds, its dead - kill it how you see fit (destroy it, have fun, etc...). The winner of a fight claims all the vikings into his/her mead-hall for scoring (if an agreement happens they go to the highest cards players mead hall)

For Viking Funeral theatrics are encouraged as they add to the creativity and add investment into the cards (sometimes you end up just wanting to kill a particular card, it gets odd like that but is strangely compelling...)

Image References

Viking Funeral Rulebook, Rob Daviau, 2012. Available at: http://media.wix.com/ugd/981066_8dabeacae2821153c6c7e9e10f807b47.pdf