Blood Rage rules refresher

Read the refresher

Your goal is to have the most Glory when the world ends after the third Age. You earn it by winning battles, pillaging provinces, completing quests, and having your figures die in Ragnarok, all while pushing your clan's stats as high as you can.

For setup, each player starts with their Leader, eight Warriors, and one Ship in their reserve beside their clan sheet. Keep your two spare small bases and two large bases nearby for any Monsters you recruit. Put your Glory marker on zero. On your clan sheet, put a clan token on the first spot of each stat, so everyone starts with six Rage, three Axes, and four Horns. Put your last clan token on six on the Rage Track. On the board, the green bordered Pillage token goes face up on Yggdrasil in the center. The other eight are shuffled and placed face up on the outer provinces. Shuffle the Ragnarok tokens and put one text side up on each of the three Ragnarok spots on the Age Track. Put the Doom token on the province named by the First Age token. Then randomly take more Ragnarok tokens and place them destroyed side up on the provinces they name. That is one province with four players, two with three players, and three with two players. Nobody can ever enter those provinces. Return the rest of the tokens to the box. Split the cards into the three Age decks by their backs. With three players, remove the cards marked four plus. With two players, remove both the three plus and the four plus cards. Put the Monster figures beside the board, and the Saga token on the first spot of the Age Track. The first player is whoever was born furthest north.

Here's how play flows. The game lasts three Ages, and each Age has six phases in order. First is Gods' Gifts, where you draft cards. Next is Action, the heart of the game. Then come Discard, Quest, and Ragnarok, where a province is destroyed. Last is Release Valhalla, where dead figures come home. In the Action phase, players take turns clockwise from the first player. Each turn you take exactly one action and pay its Rage cost. There are five actions: Invade, March, Upgrade, Quest, and Pillage. You can repeat the same action on different turns. After each Age, flip every Pillage token back to its reward side. They stay on the same provinces. Then the first player token passes left.

Now the details, starting with the draft. In the second and third Ages, first set any card you kept from the last Age face down on your clan sheet. Deal eight cards to each player and discard the leftovers unseen. Pick one card, place it face down on your clan sheet, and pass the rest to your left. Repeat until everyone has picked six. The final two cards are discarded unseen. In a two player game, you pick two cards at a time instead of one, three times over, and then discard the last two. The cards come in three types. Red cards are Battle cards, which add strength in battle. Green cards are Quests. Black cards are Upgrades.

In the Action phase, everyone starts with Rage equal to their Rage stat. If an action costs more Rage than you have, you can't take it. Once you hit zero Rage, you can't take any action at all, not even a free one. You can still react, for example by joining a battle someone else started. You may choose to pass, but passing throws away all your remaining Rage. The Action phase ends as soon as everyone is at zero Rage, or when every province that isn't destroyed has been pillaged, even if players still have Rage.

Some board basics before the actions. Each province holds one figure per village, and villages range from three to five per province. Yggdrasil has no villages, so it holds any number of figures, and it is adjacent to every province. Fjords sit between pairs of outer provinces and support both of them. Anything that affects a province also affects its supporting fjord, and a fjord holds any number of Ships. Figure strength starts at three for your Leader, two for your Ship, and one for each Warrior.

To Invade, pay Rage equal to a figure's strength and place it from your reserve into any empty village in any outer province. Your Leader invades for free. Ships can only invade into a fjord. You can never invade directly into Yggdrasil. You also can't invade if the number of your figures on the board already equals your Horns stat. Figures in Valhalla don't count toward that limit.

To March, pay one Rage. Move any number of your figures from one province into empty villages of one other province, anywhere on the map. The two don't need to be adjacent. You can't march from a fjord, and Ships never move. Marching is generally how you get into Yggdrasil.

To Upgrade, pay Rage equal to the card's strength and place it in a matching slot on your clan sheet. You have one slot each for Warriors, Leader, and Ship, two slots for Monsters, and three for Clan upgrades. If the slot is full, discard the old card to make room. Upgrades are permanent. Two upgrades in different slots that give the same kind of benefit both work. Leaders and Ships always keep the abilities printed on your clan sheet, even when upgraded. When you play a Leader, Warrior, or Ship upgrade, you may immediately invade with that figure for free if it's in your reserve. When you play a Monster, attach your base to the figure and put it in your reserve. You may immediately invade with it for free. A Monster counts as one of your figures, and it dies and returns like any other. You can have only two Monsters. If you replace one, the old figure goes back to the box.

To Quest, place a Quest card face down on your clan sheet. It costs nothing, but you still need at least one Rage. There's no limit on how many quests you commit to, duplicates each score separately, and failing a quest costs you nothing.

To Pillage, choose a province that has at least one of your figures in it or in its supporting fjord, and that hasn't been pillaged this Age. It costs no Rage. First comes the call to battle. Starting with the player on your left and going clockwise, each player, you included, may move one figure from an adjacent province into an empty village there, for free. This continues around the table until the villages are full or nobody wants to add more. Ships can't join this way. If no enemy figures are in the province or its fjord, you simply pillage it and gain no battle Glory. Otherwise, everyone with figures there, including Ships in the supporting fjord, fights.

In the battle, each participant secretly chooses one card from their hand, if they have any, and everyone reveals at once. A Battle card adds its strength bonus and its ability. An Upgrade or Quest card adds nothing. Add that to the total strength of your figures in the battle. Some Battle cards show their bonus on a solid white disc and can be played after the reveal. The pillager gets the first chance, then it goes clockwise until nobody wants to play more. Highest total wins, and on a tie everyone loses. If a card destroys all your figures during the battle, you are still in it and can win on your card's strength alone. The winner discards the cards they played, while losers take theirs back into their hands. Every loser's figures in the battle go to Valhalla, including those in the fjord. The winner gains Glory equal to their Axes stat, whether or not they started the pillage. If the pillager won, they take the province's reward and flip its token. Otherwise the province stays open and anyone can try again later.

The pillage rewards are simple. Some provinces raise one stat by one step: Rage, Axes, or Horns. Others give five Glory. Yggdrasil raises all three stats. A Rage increase doesn't give you more Rage now; it takes effect next Age. An Axes increase applies immediately, including the Glory for that very battle.

After the Action phase comes Discard. Discard your hand down to one card to carry into the next Age, and in the third Age discard everything. In the Quest phase, reveal all your committed quests. For each one you fulfilled, gain its Glory and raise any one clan stat by one step. Then discard them all. Most quests ask for the most strength in a province, counting your figures there plus any in its supporting fjord, and a tie fails. In Ragnarok, flip the current Ragnarok token onto its province, destroying it forever. Every figure in that province and its supporting fjord goes to Valhalla. Each one earns its owner two Glory in the first Age, three in the second, and four in the third. Then move the Doom token to the next Age's doomed province. Finally, in Release Valhalla, all figures in Valhalla return to their owners' reserves. Figures on the board stay where they are.

The game ends after the Release Valhalla phase of the third Age. Then add your legendary stat bonuses. For each clan stat raised to the fourth or fifth step, gain ten Glory. For each stat raised to the last step, gain twenty Glory instead. The clan with the most Glory wins.

A turn, played out

It is the second Age, deep in the Action phase, and you have 3 Rage left. Your Leader and 1 Warrior stand in a four village province on the northern edge. Your Ship sits in the fjord that supports it. A second Warrior of yours waits in Yggdrasil. The blue player, on your left, has 1 Warrior in that same northern province and another in Yggdrasil. So the province has 1 empty village, and its Pillage token still shows 5 Glory. You think about invading another Warrior for 1 Rage. But your Horns stat is 4, and you already have 4 figures on the board, so you cannot. Marching would cost 1 Rage. Instead you pillage the northern province, which costs nothing, because your figures are there and it has not been pillaged this Age. The call to battle starts with blue, on your left. Blue moves the Warrior from Yggdrasil into the last empty village for free, since Yggdrasil is adjacent to every province. Now the villages are full. When the call comes back to you, your own Warrior in Yggdrasil has nowhere to go. An enemy is present, so there is a battle. Your side counts 3 for the Leader, 1 for the Warrior, and 2 for the Ship in the fjord, which fights too. That makes 6. Blue has 2 Warriors, so 2. You each pick a card in secret and reveal together. Blue shows a Battle card with a bonus of 4, reaching 6. Without a card you would tie, and everyone would lose. But you reveal a Battle card with a bonus of 2, for 8. Nobody has a white disc card to add, so you win. You discard your card. Blue takes theirs back into hand, and both blue Warriors go to Valhalla. You gain Glory equal to your Axes, still 3. Because you started the pillage, you also take the 5 Glory reward and flip the token. Your marker moves from 20 to 28. You still have 3 Rage, and blue takes the next turn.