When the folks at Academy Games asked me to write an article about the differences between their ‘Birth of America’ games 1812 Invasion of Canada and 1775 Rebellion and their new 878 Vikings, my first response was, “Well duh --Vikings!” I mean Vikings are way cooler than American Regulars, and Berserkers are off the chart compared to Canadian Loyalists. Plus, we have minis instead of cubes, so which game is going to be easier to talk your gaming group or your eleven-year-old niece or nephew into playing?

But, no, that wasn’t good enough. This article is for Game Trade Magazine, they said. It needs to focus on the gamey details, not just the theme, they said. Plus, it has to be 1,200 words. So, much chastened, I slumped back to my computer to knock out another 1,100 words, even though I know and you know it’s the Vikings that made you want to read this article in the first place. Fortunately, there’s plenty more that makes 878 Vikings a significantly different gaming experience from its elder siblings.

When you pop the lid on 878 Vikings, you’ll find that all the basics of the series are still here: an area-movement map, color-based factions with specialized combat dice, randomly ordered player turns organized into rounds, faction cards divided into movement and event cards, special treaty cards used to end the game, and the famous “fled units” rule that removes units from a battle only to allow them to return to the game during their next player turn.

Factions are one of the great elements of 1812 and 1775 because they keep players from wandering off for a bathroom break during another player’s turn, since every player must roll the dice for his faction, whether on offense or defense. Ingenious!  But, while the faction-specific dice and cards give the older games some differentiation between the various factions, playing the British or the Americans works much the same in both games. Not so in 878 Vikings. Here, the Vikings play completely differently than the English, and what works with one side will bring disaster for the other.

The Viking armies of the Ninth Century marauded across England almost at will, collecting plunder and extorting protection money from the locals. Since one of the first things the Vikings did upon landing was to buy or steal every horse in sight, their forces were fast-moving and hard-hitting, especially compared to the plodding, food-driven English. This characteristic of the Vikings is represented in the game by ‘leaders’. Not only do they have fearsome names like Ivar the Boneless, but leaders permit their armies to move and fight multiple times in their turn. Since they move separately from each other and from leaderless troops, armies with leaders are free to pick up and drop off units along their movement path. The downside? A leader who loses his army is permanently removed from the game (killed, captured, or off vacationing in Sicily). The English gain one leader, Alfred the Great, because he was, well, great.

878 Vikings utilizes map-based reinforcement rules, similar to those found in 1812 – The Invasion of Canada, which makes reinforcement areas a vital concern for each faction. For example, English control of London and York provide important reinforcements near the front lines each turn. Naturally, these areas become the target of great struggles between the English and the Vikings who want to deprive their enemies of new blood. 

In addition, every time the English defend an area with a city, they’ll call out the local peasant militia by drawing a ‘Fyrd’ card, which provides their army with up to five temporary units. Fyrd units are terrible fighters, but they soak up casualties and every once in a while score a hit. Fyrd units who flee a battle are eliminated instead, having gone home and hidden in the barn for the duration of the war, and any Fyrd units left at the end of a battle go back to farming rather than hanging around on the map.

The Vikings use a completely new system for reinforcements. Each turn, the first activated Viking player draws an Invasion card that (usually) provides him or her with a new leader and army (sometimes a very, very large army). This new army may enter along the English seacoast and immediately start wreaking some major havoc.

The event cards in 1812 and 1775 add period flavor, special capabilities, and some measure of uniqueness between the various factions.  We carry on that tradition with rebellions, archers, surprise attacks, Northumbrian Discord, the Mercian traitor Ceowulf, and many more. Then, 878 Vikings elevates the game by making some of the event cards playable on another player’s turn. Ambushed by a pack of patriotic West Saxons? Slap down a “Viking Forts” card and watch their smug smiles fade as you ignore the first hit in any attack. Tired of the Vikings threatening your weak coastal flanks? Play “Saxon Navy” to seal off a stretch of coastline from assault. Along with the variable Fyrd and the Invasion cards, the play of event cards as reaction cards makes 878 Vikings freewheeling and unpredictable, with players involved in the action during every faction’s turn.

Unlike the regular straight lines and rectangular areas on the maps in 1812 and 1775, the 878 Vikings map features an assortment of, sometimes, downright odd-looking shapes. That is not a mistake. While I love the look of the maps in 1775 and 1812, I’ve always felt less sense of the terrain features beyond coastlines. The result being that armies tend to whiz across the backwoods of Maine, just as readily as the well-trodden road networks of New England. When I created the map for 878 Vikings, I addressed this issue by adjusting the shape and size of map areas to channel movement along routes taken by real-life forces. The effect is that players naturally follow such famous roads as Watling Street and Foss Way, without needing to think about road movement rates or terrain penalties. 

So how does it play? The Vikings rage across England, winning battle after battle with their huge, leader-led armies and superior troops. But, every battle means casualties, and if the Vikings want to hold the land they conquer, they need to garrison it with troops. This means those massive armies gradually shrink to the point where they may be safely attacked by the English, and attack the English must. While they’re on the defensive for the most part, the English must play an active defense, seeking out and killing off Viking armies in order to eliminate their leaders.  They also need to wriggle behind Viking lines of control to liberate captured cities.  As in the real struggle between the Vikings and the English, Alfred may find himself reduced to a last bastion in the fens of southwestern Wessex, but still be able to strike back against an over-stretched Viking foe and claw back to recapture enough cities to eke out a win. 

Although it shares the basic design of the previous two games, 878 Vikings contains enough innovations to make it a new experience...plus, there are Vikings!

Dave Kimmel has been playing good board games since his mother accidentally bought the family Avalon Hill's 1776 for Christmas 1975.  He is currently seeking a publisher for Candyland: Plumpy Strikes Back.  At his day job, he traffics in new and used linguistic phenomena.