Ragnarok: Age of Wolves Bonus Material - Barrowlands Playset Material - Part 2!

Last week I gave you the first installment of extras to turn Ragnarok: Age of Wolves into a new "Playset" called  Ragnarok: Into the Barrowlands!

But Ragnarok: Age of Wolves is a straight-up skirmish game, allowing two or more players to field sizable forces of 10 to 40 or more figures each, and scrap over a, more or less open, battlefield. Ragnarok: Into the Barrowlands is a different way of playing the same game - which is why I like to refer to it as a new Playset. Same game, but with a different setting and a different style, and some rules to facilitate a game of Competitive Viking Tomb Robbing Extraordinaire!

Each player controls a much smaller group, making their way from one of several entrances into the bowels of the barrowlands, seeking gold, treasures, ancient weapons of power and, of course, Glory! Ragnarok: Into the Barrowlands uses the same rules as R:AW, but adds elements that make the skirmish action of R:AW work a bit more like a board game in which the draugar are the main peril! But only a fool would discount the possibility of attack by other tomb-robbers who, after all, are after the same things you are! 

One of the board-game elements we have added to Raganrok: Into the Barrowlands is the Barrow Deck! Each turn, every Warband draws two cards from the Barrow Deck. The Barrow Deck stocks the barrows around the warbands with everything from hoards of gold to rising hordes of draugar, as well as traps and other elements that warband members can acquire, avoid, or overcome to progress in their quest for Glory - which we measure in the game with the term Victory Points!

There are types of cards in the Barrow Deck, but all have descriptive text on the left side, and mechanical text (what the card DOES in game) on the right side. Some say "Play Immediately" at the top of the right side, which means that each player plays these in whatever order they wish, in the Draw Phase, in Order of Initiative.

Play Immediately cards include things like: Dead Rising, which causes a number of resting (and now restless) draugar to take notice of the nearby living warbands. "A Fine Sword" is another, more beneficial "Play Immediately" card, and deposits a good sword in a nearby Tomb or or Skull Pile, just waiting to be recovered and equipped to a hero if the pesky tomb guardians can just be gotten out of the way.

Wait! You ask - what is a Tomb? Or a Skull Pile?  

I made tombs out of crafts sticks and plasticard (I'll do a How-to on that at a later time, but you can see one in the pic below). They are distributed more or less evenly throughout the barrows before the game begins.

Tombs are locations that spawn draugar, and act as repositories for items (like the Fine Sword) or artifacts like a Firebrand - a magic flaming sword that acts as its own light source, counts as a magical fire attack, and dispels certain magical darkness effects. They also act as terrain just as in R:AW. 

Skull Piles are placed when a Skull Pile card is drawn from the Barrow Deck, and they provide another place for Draugar to spawn. Did we mention that there were a lot of draugar in the Barrowlands?  I had some scatter terrain bones tiles in my collection, so I used them as a few skull piles that were in place at the beginning of play. I also made skull pile tokens to distribute around the Barrows when a ccard came up, and will show you how easy it is to make THEM in another How-To.

There are 80 cards in the Barrow Deck. I left a couple of cards blank in case you want to add a custom card or two! If you do, please share them with the rest of us in the comments for this articie. We would love to see them!

I have tossed out some hints about how the game plays. But have not gone into the full turn structure, etc. The Cheat Sheet from last week covers the basics of that, but another attachment (Rules of Play) gives you al the new rules you need to play Ragnarok: Into the Barrowlands. Together with a copy of Ragnarok: Age of Wolves, you have everything you need to play either "playset". The War Deck is an extremely handy play aid, that gives you all the spells, runes, and many of the characters and followers in the warbands. Other characters you can find in other posts on D-Infinity.net.

I will be posting the stat cards for the new warband members and leaders next week!