Content Deep Dive! Shamans, Ragnarok, Solo and playthroughs!
over 2 years ago
– Fri, May 20, 2022 at 03:41:31 AM
Hello everyone,
I'd like to start off with a huge THANK YOU to everyone. We're about half way through the project and the support we've received is tremendous!
We're excited to have the opportunity to produce games for all of you and Tiny Epic Vikings is a special one indeed. It's even being called the "The Best Tiny Epic Yet" by Jesse Anderson of Quackalope!
In today's update we're going to dive deeper into the expansion content and solo play, as well as take a look at playthroughs at various player counts! Enjoy!
The DELUXE content, known as the Shamans mini expansion, introduces a couple of fun and meaningful twists to the game in the way of new Vikings cards: Shamans, new gods, and new Cairn tokens! With the DELUXE content, players will have even more control over the fury of the gods!
The Shamans, these 6 new Viking cards are shuffled into the deck with the other clan leaders but they bring with them a whole new kind of power! Each Shaman has two runes on their card instead of a single rune. This makes playing a Shaman particularly helpful for achieving the bonus actions/battle boosts of your other Vikings!
The other benefit of having two runes is that when a Shaman is killed in battle and goes to Valhalla, the fury of the matching god is increased by 2! Shamans also offer unique actions that boost the fury of the gods. All this can be very helpful in changing the power order of the gods to suit your needs!
Loki and Hel are the 2 new gods offered with the DELUXE content. Loki, in true Loki fashion, mixes things up by swapping the settlers of one island with another! While Hel can be exploited to reduce the fury of certain gods! Watch out!
Cairn tokens are added to each favor card during setup and are awarded to players who initiate battles. When you start a battle and select a favor card with a cairn token on it, you gain that token immediately. It does not matter if you win or lose the battle. Cairn tokens are limited and once they are all claimed, they're gone for the rest of the game.
Cairn tokens offer players a one time use as a wild rune type of their choice! So, if you're short a rune to trigger a Viking's bonus action, you can spend a cairn token in place of the missing rune and still perform the action!
Ragnarok brings two major new elements to Tiny Epic Vikings, Giants and Valkyries! It also comes with some awesome new Gods, new Vikings and a new game board!
The first major element introduced are the Giants! Or, Jötnar! The Giants are everywhere and are attacking the gods!
The Giants bring a new scoring condition to the game, they make it more difficult to control islands, and they weaken the gods. There are 9 Giants total and each have a hidden victory point value printed on the bottom of their token. During setup, each island will receive a randomly selected Giant. Players will score additional victory points at the end of the game for each Giant they are able to slay.
To slay a Giant, you must have 3 settlers and a Valkyrie on an island with the Giant you're attacking and then as your action for the turn, you play a Viking card face up and declare you are battling the Giant. Your Valkyrie will survive this attack, but your settlers will not... so be prepared for other Viking clans to see the opportunity left in the aftermath and sail ashore to take the island from you!
Player's will be unable to build Temples on islands that have a Giant, and Giants that are not slain will decrease the god fury matching the island rune it is on.
The next major element introduced are the Valkyries! These winged warriors swoop in when Vikings go to Valhalla and are there to assist in the battle against the Giants!
Each player receives a new Valkyrie mat and 3 Valkyrie tokens, each corresponding with the different rune types. When one of your clan leaders dies in battle, based on the rune type of that card, you will get to a place the matching Valkyrie anywhere on the board.
Not only are Valkyries needed for slaying Giants, they also boost the Explore and Harvest actions increasing the mobility of your settlers and providing additional resources!
6 Valkyrie Viking Cards and 6 Giant Slayer Viking Cards to power up your clan leader deck.
Valkyrie Clan Leaders are unique in that their bonus actions are triggered by the number of Valkyrie tokens you have in play instead of Runes and they bring a lot of mobility to your units! Also, if you battle a Giant with a Valkyrie Clan Leader, then a Valkyrie token is not required to be present on the island.
Giant Slayer Clan Leaders are unique in that they are able to taunt Giants to move them around and fewer settlers are killed when you battle a Giant with one of them!
Also included is a brand new game board to mix up your strategy
6 new gods to shower with glory!
SOLO Play!
Playing Tiny Epic Vikings solo feels very much like playing the multiplayer game. On the reverse side of the clan mats are unique solo enemy clans with varying levels of difficulty. The goal of the game remains the same; score the most victory points from your runes based on how furious the gods are. The solo enemy will perform actions, just like you, by playing Clan Leaders. Except, certain action types will trigger special bonus actions that are unique to the different solo clans. Something else unique about the solo enemy is that their resource track provides them special abilities once their associated resources pass certain marked spaces.
Join us next Thursday May 26th at 10am PST for a live solo playthrough of Tiny Epic Vikings!
Missed a previous live playthrough!? Watch them below:
2 player playthrough
3 player playthrough
4 player playthrough
Thank you again everyone for your support and I will see you in the comments!
Sincerely,
Michael