Norse dudes on a map
Lords of Ragnarok is a 1-4 player area control game, based off of Awaken Realms' previous release, Lords of Hellas. You will wage war against your rivals, build monuments and hunt monsters, with the blessings and assistance of your guardian Norse god. The campaign will launch on Gamefound on October 21.
You first select your Viking hero and take the associated army of minis, your priests, a drakkar ship and your player board. Your hero stats are authority, strength, and wisdom. Each turn starts with a Prayer action: if you have a priest on a drakkar, you can send him to one of the monuments to receive a bonus. Otherwise, you may take a rune if your hero is in a location with a forge and a rune token. Next comes the Hero Action phase: you may heal a wound, move your hero or your drakkar in up to two adjacent regions, perform a rune action by spending rune tokens (these allow you to control monsters, make alliances with other realms, or move your armies on the board), or perform an action from the action wheel at the centre of the map (recruit, build a temple, hunt a monster etc.).
When going on a monster hunt, your hero must be in the same location as the monster to initiate the battle. The monster has its own deck of attack cards and starts the fight by drawing two. The hero uses their Combat deck and draws as many cards as their wisdom level. The monster chooses one card to play and discards the other. The two numbers on the monster card signify its attack strength and its weakness. The hero responds to the attack by playing one of their cards, either as counter-attack or as defense. To wound the monster, the hero must play cards from their hand that match the monster's battle icons. The fight continues until either the hero has covered all the icons on the monster board, or the hero has received 4 wounds, or the monster deck has run out. If you manage to kill two monsters, you can then hunt for Loki, and if you defeat him, the game ends and you emerge victorious.
Combat can also take place between players, in which case they both use their Combat cards. Besides defeating Loki, the game can end in three more ways: a) when a player takes control of all regions in three lands on the map, b) when a player has five regions with built temples under their control, or c) when the conditions of three cards in the game have been met, players compare how many lands around the action wheel they have under their control, and the player with the most regions wins. The solo mode rules haven't been revealed yet, but they will have the signature of David Turczi.