Viking Raiders

I met Morten Billcliff, the designer behind Viking Raiders, at UKGE after being drawn in with the promise of a free badge for completing a raid (which I got, and my minion now has - of course - claimed that badge).

He was so keen that we produce some photos for Viking Raiders, I left UKGE with a copy of Viking Raiders and the special edition central and per-player mats that you also pick up!

Theme Matters

Viking Raiders plays heavily on it's theme of being a Viking Chief who's aim is to amass the most land, loot and navy - the the key "take that" element being to raid other players camps and potentially steal what they have.

Throwing in the odd Ragnarok in there really keeps you on your toes as well (as I found to my chagrin when playing against my minion).

Shooting on a (fake) fur rug with a off-side orange tinted light was designed to evoke the sense of sitting next to an open fire while the scattering of coins and viking jewellery brought the game into their world while highlighting the colourful and bright box art.

I also wanted to create the feeling of slight chaos when it came to the loot, and just how much loot a chief could claim as their own.

But raiding is the main draw of this game - the feeling of having an opponent trying to claim your loot while your warriors line up to protect your hard gotten gains.

During my conversations with Morten he identified the types of cards he'd like to see lined up, and the preferences he had for how they were presented. With this, we gave a sense of a line of warriors, protecting the Chief's gold from the on coming raid.

It was also important to really emphasise the colours, Viking Raiders is a surprisingly bright and colourful game given it's focused on pillaging and raiding!

A Little Behind The Scenes

As usually we played the game a number of times to really get a feel for how it played, though our little Dachshund was more interested in the test shoots rather than anything else!

My daughter was more than impressed when Ragnarok completely turned the tables on my near win! I was not! 🤣