878 Vikings - Viking Ships Stretch-Goal Expansion
over 9 years ago
– Thu, Apr 06, 2017 at 01:08:46 AM
Viking Ships have been unlocked.
This is a fun expansion option to add to your game play, since it offers the Vikings great coastal mobility. But beware, if the English burn your ships, your fleeing men will die!
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Introduction Ships were the key to Viking dominance during the Viking Age. It was important for an invading Viking army to protect the ships it left behind so that Viking supply lines, communication, and mobility stayed intact. The loss of their ships could devastate the Viking army’s morale and ability to continue raiding into England.
Ship Marker
Landing Ships When a Viking army invades, a Ship Marker is placed in the first Shire the army moves into. This Ship Marker remains in this Shire for the rest of the game and is only removed when burned by the English (see Burning Ships below).
Sailing Ships A Viking army may move from a Shire with a Ship Marker to another Shire with a Ship Marker, as if the two Shires were adjacent.
Viking players may not use Ship Movement as a way to move out of a coastal Shire Battle with a Command Order.
Burning Ships If the English regain control of a Shire with a Ship Marker, the Marker is removed from the map and the Vikings must remove two Units from the Fled Units area, if they can.
Miniature Viking Long Ships Add-Ons
Pewter Viking Long Ships that a fan assembled and painted.
Several people asked if we could offer Viking miniature ships as an Add-On. Unfortunately, we do not have the time to go through the entire manufacturing process for plastic miniatures. Then one of our pledge supporters recommended Valiant Enterprises, which specializes in lead-free pewter miniatures. They design and manufacture all of their products in Madison, WI! We contacted them and they have put together a special Vikings Long Ships pack for us! Included are 6 x ships and 6 x 25mm hex bases for $18.
The ships are 1 inch long and are 1/900th scale. They come unpainted and the sails need to be attached to the ship hulls.
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We want to thank Valiant Enterprises for their kind offer to customize this fine quality pack of pewter miniatures. We will be posting an Add-On option to the campaign page tomorrow. If you would like a set, we will have a limited supply of these ships, so please add $18 to your pledge level. Shipping is not affected for any country.
Valiant Enterprises was established in 1968 in the basement of the Arthur Neckermann home as a side business. The goal was to develop 54mm Military Miniatures Hobby kits that would be suitable for individuals at all levels of painting skills, from the beginner to the Grand Masters.
Today Valiant is run by a second generation with it’s primarily business focus in the field of contract casting. We cast both lead free pewter and polyurethane resins. Our clients come to us from the Toy, Hobby, Gift and Gaming industries. In recent years, thanks to the Internet forum sites and word of mouth, our reputation for providing Quality and Speed at a fair Price has opened up new opportunities outside of North America. To date, we have been involved in over 130 successful Kickstarter projects ranging from simple casting, master pattern reproduction to full-blown casting, packaging and fulfillment projects.
Viking Miniature Mold production completed
over 9 years ago
– Wed, Apr 05, 2017 at 09:22:22 PM
Game production update -
Many of you have asked us to post production updates for 878 Vikings. So we will be posting details as we receive them!
All molds for the unlocked miniatures, plus the Add-On Leaders and Buildings have been completed! Below are pictures of the final molds. Molds take the longest to manufacture, so they take precedence over the printed game components. Next in line are the game cards and then the map board.
Two Halves of the First Leader Mold - The left top half's holes fit onto the right bottom half's guide posts that are sticking up.
Here is pictured the second Leader Miniatures mold.
To keep the miniature Leader flagposts STRAIGHT, we manufactured a separate mold for the flags and flag arms for each Leader. This keeps the poles nice and straight, since they are molded from high impact ABS and are then glued to the PVC 100 bodies.
We want to thank you for supporting 878 Vikings. Please tell your friends about this great game and have a great week!
Uwe
Uwe Eickert Academy Games www.AcademyGames.com [email protected] 419-307-6531
Invading Viking Leaders
over 9 years ago
– Sun, Apr 02, 2017 at 11:21:15 PM
Below we will describe how Viking leaders invade and battle. This is a rules change from all of the previously published games in this series, which gives 878 Vikings a VERY unique feel - both strategically and tactically!
Each Round, player turn order is randomly determined by drawing a faction cube from the draw bag supplied with the game. The first (and only the first) Viking Player to take their Turn in a Round draws the top Invasion Card to reveal the Viking Leader that will be invading this Round.
The drawn card lists the invading Viking Leader, from which Sea he may invade from, and how many units are placed on the invasion card. In the examples in this Update, you play the black Viking Norsemen and it is your turn. You draw Ivar the Boneless and place 14 black Norsemen and 6 red Berserker miniatures onto Ivar's Invasion Card, which represents Ivar the Boneless's Army. (Please note that I am using old artwork. All cubes have been replaced with miniatures, so each cube should really be a miniature! But I wanted to post this update now, before all artwork has been updated, since we have so much interest in Viking Army movement and what makes '878 Vikings' so different from previous games like '1775 Rebellion'.) You can also place any of your fled units onto the new Invasion Card, if you wish, to make them part of Ivar's army.
You now also pull Ivar's Leader Stand, which will be placed and moved on the map. Ivar's Leader Stand represents the entire army on his Invasion Card.
All of your Leader Stands
move and battle during the Leader Phase before
Armies without Leader Stands move and battle in the
Movement and Battle Phases.
You decide that you want to invade northern England into Northumbria. You play a movement card that allows you to move up to two Armies and/or Leader Stands 4 shires each.
You move Ivar into Shire A (Durham) for his first move, where his invading army
immediately battles the English occupying the Shire. The
defending English roll their battle dice first with two Command results,
and decide not to retreat but to continue defending the Shire. You immediately eliminate both English with your first battle roll. (Note: Ahhh... hopefully the English learn quickly of the Viking wrath! :) You place a Viking Control Marker from the Victory Track
onto the city, designating that you control it. You also decide to remove 2 Norsemen
Units from Ivar’s Invasion Card and place them in Shire A. (As a Viking, you must always occupy a city to control it. If you lose or move your units out of a Shire, its control automatically reverts to the English.)
For Ivar's second move, you move his Leader Stand into Shire B where you decide to remove the Berserker occupying Shire B and place it on Ivar’s Invasion Card. Note: A Leader may drop off and pick up Units before he moves, as he moves, or after he moves. Unlike Armies without Leaders, that may not do this!
You then move Ivar into Shire C (Carlisle) for his third move, where he immediately
battles the English. He defeats the English but it requires
more than one Viking roll to defeat them. If a Viking Leader cannot defeat the English with one battle role, the battle costs his army one extra movement cost. Thus, this battle uses up Ivar’s
last move and he remains in Shire C. You place a Viking Control Marker on Carlisle in Shire C.
You have no other Leader Stands on the
map, so you can now move one of your Armies on the map that does not have a Leader.
As you see from this example, the large invading Viking armies remain off the map, on their individual Invasion Cards. This keeps the unit density low on the game board itself.
I hope that this example shows how powerful Vikings Leaders can be. They do not have to stop when they move into English occupied Shires. Instead, they immediately battle and can then move on to other Shires if they are victorious and have more moves available.
Manufacturing Update:
We are making good headway on manufacturing. Below the die company sent us a picture of the finished Miniature Building Molds.
Buildings Mold. Pictured are the Building Miniatures Add-On mold. Note: You already receive all building expansions with nice thick building tiles. We are offering these miniature buildings for those who like to add miniatures 'Bling' in their game.
We wish everyone a very good week. And thank you for your support! Academy Games Team.
878 Vikings Dice Re-Design
over 9 years ago
– Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 11:53:22 PM
We want to thank to all of our supporters for their great comments. Based on your input, we decided to re-design the '878 Vikings' Battle Dice! Please let us know what you think.
Crossed Swords and Axes = Hit, Running Man = Flee, Horn = Command Order, Blank = Do Nothing! :)
I would like to make everyone aware of Cytosis, a game being published by John Coveyou of Genius Games.
Cytosis is a fantastic worker placement and resource building game all based inside of a human cell!
As many of you know, Academy Games publishes historical games that are used in schools throughout America. So I am very impressed by the fun and intricate games that John has been publishing. Please click here to look at his very successful Kickstarter campaign, which has already unlocked many stretch goals. And thanks for supporting unique games such as ours!
Uwe Eickert Academy Games
878 Vikings - Event Cards Overview
over 9 years ago
– Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 01:04:24 AM
In '878 Vikings', each faction begins the game with their faction's cards 01 thru 12. These are comprised of seven Movement Cards and five Event Cards.
With all Event Cards having been unlocked, each faction now has 19 Cards, increasing the number of Event Cards from five to twelve. Experienced players will be able to choose which five of these twelve cards they want to have available for their faction. Now players may decide to employ defensive, offensive, pre-emptive, or other tactics!
Below we list Cards 08-13 for each faction:
Event Cards 08 for all factions. Red Border = Viking Berserkers, Black = Viking Norsemen, Blue = English Housecarls, Green = English Thegn.
On the top right side of each card are colored ribbons, which designate during whose turn the card can be played. Note: The bottom Thegn card has Black and Red ribbons, meaning that the English Thegn player can play this card during his opponent's turns!
Cards 14-19 are duplicates of cards 8-13. So if the Viking Berserker faction wants to be very mobile and raid coastal shires that they could not reach through land movement, they may choose Viking Ships Cards 13 and 19. But this limits them to only another 3 Event Cards, which could take away some of their battle capabilities, like the Viking Fort, Viking Terror and Viking Surprise Cards.
This variability adds a deck building element to the game with a lot of Fog of War, since your opponents to not know what strategic path you have taken. This builds paranoia!
