Sell me on Blood Rage.

I know some of you folks have played/owned the game after Gencon. I think it was Charles that said something along the lines of "No longer need CitOW". That alone is high praise... and a bit hard to believe honestly. I love CitOW but my current situation of extremely limited game time means it will not being seeing the table more than once a year if that. However the one group I do get to play games with maybe once every three months or so could possibly be into Blood Rage after taking a quick look.

What makes the game good and do you see a group who plays pretty much primarily Spartatcus (not a horrible problem to have but it'd be nice to branch out) wanting to try it out, if CitOW was a bit too nerdy-Warhammery for them?

I think it was Charles that said something along the lines of "No longer need CitOW".

He also said that after he played Patchwork, so beware.

I'll give you my one game initial impression. I'm a huge fan of Chaos and Kemet but haven't ever played Spartacus. Blood Rage was definitely easier to explain and flowed smoother with less downtime than either of those games. Some similarities with Chaos for sure with area majority playing a big part of it. The minis are awesome for what thats worth too. Ran a 4 player game with all of us basically new in about 2 hours. The card drafting to start the round is pretty cool in that you want everything and can see ways to get most of the cards to work, its just a matter of what your opponents will do if you allow them to use those cards instead. Either placing a dude, moving dudes, or basically calling a battle, pillage, an area for some combo of upgrades or points. Each of the 5-7 areas or so that are on the board can hold bt. 3-6 guys with the center spot a huge free for all. Most of the turns felt kinda like Chaos where you look at the incentives and odds of your enemies going into that area and whether you can dominate, er pillage, it before they do. Unlike Chaos each faction starts identical and can get unique monsters through the drafting. Otherwise the factions grow based on stat boosts in guys, power, or VPs from battle.

Lots of ways to generate points in this game. Battles, dying in Ragnorak (sp), questing, maxing out stats, etc. Honestly I was fascinated with the game at first but by the end of it I felt the game was a little...dry. To me it lacked flavor and felt almost crunchy in that you get points in so many ways, forcing me to do some calculation of whether I'm better off possibly getting 5 points one way or getting 2 points for sure another way. The unique monsters are pretty cool and allow some interesting tactics each round. I didn't have to focus so much on understanding what the other players were likely to do as in Chaos or Kemet. I also didn't feel like my choice of upgrades and battle cards made my faction as unique as the tiles and creatures in Kemet. But there was still a good deal of interaction and remembering things about the opponents, like that guy gets 10 points when his ship dies so he probably won't play a strong battle card in this zone when I fight his ship. Stuff like that is the core upgrade type, get more points for doing something or constantly pillage areas that have already been pillaged. Fun word.

I'd play it again. I'd rather play Chaos or Kemet as you can probably guess. Maybe the expansion stuff adds more depth to it, no idea. But after one play of the base game I quickly decided against buying it myself and it seems like half of the games I own are dudes on a map type. It is easy to teach, plays in 3 rounds, gives you alot of decisions on how to maximize your points, and looks good. It has upgrades like Kemet, battle cards like Kemet, and area majority like Chaos. Pretty sure the other guys liked the game more than I did and I destroyed them that game too. I do want to play it again but for now I don't want to own it.