The Sword of Valhall, Battle Report

Although I might have misread the instructions for The Swordof Valhall, the game process seemed a bit redundant. To the best of my knowledge, here is how the game progresses. You start on the first hex and roll a die. Your roll is tied to the associated outcome under the correct table for the Rune you happened to be on.

For most of the Rune tables you must roll a two to move to the next Hex. The outcome, depend on the Rune symbol you are sitting on, you may be told to add an artifact to your inventory, or remove one from your inventory, ECT. There are five outcomes for each of the Runes.

What I found was that I was either adding an inventory point or losing one. This went on for several rolls until I rolled a two and was able to move on the next Hex. Although every table had its unique actions, the add one or remove one was constant on all of the tables.

Like I have already mentioned, perhaps I need to go back and revisit the instructions. I will give this game another go and perhaps if I added some miniatures to represent the explorers the game might be more interesting.

The Sword of Valhalla

The Sword of Valhalla is a solo dungeon crawl game published by 8RadGames. The rules are very simple. You start with six inventory points and four explorers. The Artifact Track is used to keep track of the artifacts that you find along the way as you search for the prized Sword of Valhalla. Artifacts are sold when your inventory points run low. The four explorers represent four lives. If a turn starts with 0 explorers or inventory points you lose the game.

There are three actions for each turn: Roll, React, and Resolve. There are four rune symbols used on the map, for each turn you move one space on the map. You then roll one dice to roll against the rune symbol that matches the one you are on. You may use any one of the three actions to modify or change the result of your roll.

Actions Table
Action	Costs	Result
Nudge	1 Inventory Point	May move up or down 1 place for every inventory point spent
Re-roll	1 Inventory Point	Re-roll the result once per point spent
Camp	1 Inventory Point	Sell Artifacts from Artifact Track 1 Artifact buys 1 Inventory Point 2 Artifact buys 1 Explorer

There aren’t any games pieces, three dice are used instead. One is placed on the number six on the Artifacts table, one is used as a token representing one explorer, and the other with the number four up represents the four lives you start the game with. Instead you could use coins or buttons to present an explorer and the number of artifacts you currently have in your inventory.

                                                                

What is on the Docket this Weekend?

Not that I expect to get to all of these game this weekend, but I do want to give The Sword of Valhalla game a try. I also want to get a handle on The Malta Convey and Utopia Engine game rules. These two dice and pen and paper games look intriguing.

• The Sword of Valhalla, 1 person print and play dungeon crawl board game
• The Malta Convey, 1 person print and play WWII dice and pen and paper game
• Utopia Engine, 1 person print and play science fiction themed dice and pen and paper game