We are proud to present the campaign of The Lord of the Ice Garden. It is a game by Krzysztof Wolicki that has had great success and it is already virtually sold out.

English version copies sold here will also include the rulebook in Italian.

Introduction

WELCOME TO MIDGAARD -- the battlefield of those from Earth consumed by the alluring pull of magic and power.

The Lord of the Ice Garden is a strategic board game for 1 to 4 players that lasts about 90 minutes. Players will use their influence and units to battle and dominate the regions of Midgaard. They do this with intent to collect resources, score points and complete their own asymmetric win conditions. However, because of limited magic, full-frontal conflict will not always be your best option. Withdrawals at key moments, resource management, strategic deception and tactical timing are all important elements of the game.

Why join this compaign?

• Because great is a game for gamers success and depth, presented here in its 2nd edition.
• Because his average rating on boardgamegeek is 8.02 and comments are extremely positive. Below you can find the video reviews by Tom Vasel (Dice Tower), Undead Viking and Board game Brawl.
  
• Because here you can pay less than the ordinary price (64.95 euro) and you will be sure to have a game copy (copies available are really limited).
• Because here you can have the game before (February) the ordinary distribution (March-April).
• Because The Lord of the Ice Garden is a strategic game with some innovative mechanics and with asymmetric win conditions.
  
• Because you can play this game even in the solo version.
• Because you can play this game with basic or advanced rules, according to the strategic complexity you prefer.
• Because with the Fidelity Program, for each purchase made giochistarter allows you to gain/increase a permanent discount linked on your account.
  
• Because here you can join to the "Faster Click" contest and win the game Tiny Epic Defenders, if you will be the faster participant to join the campaign.
  

The Game

The world of Midgaard, created by author Jaros?aw Grz?dowicz in The Lord of the Ice Garden novel series, is inhabited by a race very similar to humans, filled with magic and for a reason stuck at the cultural and technological level of medieval Viking world. The arrival of scientists from Earth disturbs its fragile balance. The power gained by controlling magic changes the scientists – they become possessed by the lust for making this world better. They become gods, who are willing to sacrifice any life, except for their own, of course, to accomplish their – great, according to them – ideas.

Players impersonate the scientists struggling for the domination over The Coast of Sails and also for staying on Midgaard, because soon after them another person arrives to this world: Vuko Drakkainen, highly trained agent, whose task is to find the members of scientific expedition and send them back to Earth — or as a last resort make them vanish. Will the players, as powerful gods, allow him to do it?

From the first turn, the players are tossed in the middle of war. They will feel the adrenaline, fear, pain and the heat of a battle. They will smell blood and sweat, hear the clash of arms and the moaning of wounded and dying.

Reviews

Here the reviews for the First edition of The Lord of teh Ice garden.

Rules

English rules for the 2nd edition are available here.

How to play

The game takes place on The Coast of Sails, which is divided into several regions. The main goal is fighting for the domination over those regions. A region is dominated by the player with the most influence in it. Dominating the region allows players to collect its resources (M-factor, gold, population), also to win victory points in specific turns, and to accomplish their own goals. Each player has unique winning conditions and special units. 

• Olaf Fjollsfinn – uses Ice Drakkars to seduce/kidnap six dwellers of The Coast of Sails to the Ice Garden. 

 Olaf Fjollsfinn`s units (painted).

• Passionaria Callo – sends nightmares on the controlled regions and tries to isolate them. She needs to isolate two of them. 

Passionaria Callo`s units (painted).

• Pier van Dyken – greedy collector of M-factor. When he dominates a region with a magical reserve, he may move it towards his headquarters, The Thorn. He needs to absorb four magical reserves. 

Pier van Dyken`s units (painted).

• Ulrike Freihoff – spreads her religion. When she dominates a region where she also has a special unit called The Enlightened One, she may build a Red Tower there. Six of those grant her victory. 

Ulrike Freihoff`s units (painted).

There is also Vuko, who came to evacuate the scientists and clean up their mess. Each turn he goes to the region, where the player with least reputation/morality (it decreases each time the player uses magic) has the most influence. Such a visit is nothing nice – Vuko kills one special unit of that player in this region and lowers his/her influence there. 

The Thorn and Vuko Drakkainen (painted).

The game may end in one of the three ways: 
• meeting the player's unique victory condition – the game ends and that player is the winner, 
• after specified number of turns game ends and the player with most victory points is the winner, 
• the Dead Snow token reaches the end of its track – each use of magic shakes the balance of Midgaard. If the players exceed the limit of changes that world and its gods can accept, the game ends and the winner is the player with the highest reputation. 

INITIATIVE PHASE: During the initiative phase players decide how many action tokens they will have for the current turn and also determine the player order during the Planning Phase. Moreover, they can initiate scoring of the regions by moving their initiative tokens. In the advanced mode they also determine the order of action fields resolution.

PLANNING PHASE: Players, one by one in the order determined in the Initiative Phase, place their action tokens on selected action fields.

ACTION PHASE: 

Players perform actions in the action fields, in the order determined by the placement of tokens.

• Viper Nest – player receives one token of any resource. They can also exchange resources.

• Influence – player may sacrifice up to two population tokens to place as many influence tokens on the region(s) where they already have at least one influence

• Move – player may sacrifice up to two gold tokens to make as many moves of their influence tokens and/or special units to the adjacent region(s)

• Voracious Mountain – player may sacrifice population to move any number of their influence tokens and/or special units from one region to any other region

• Raven Shadow – player may raise his/her reputation or use a magic token to get rid of the disadvantageous token of contact with Vuko.

• Magic – allows the player to do any of the three actions: translocate the M-factor, summon special units of the given level, add a new ability to the special unit. Each of those actions results in moving the Dead Snow token up on its track and decreasing the player's reputation.

• Activation (automatic field) – after resolving the actions players may activate the abilities of their special units. The order of activation of given abilities is strictly determined. After the activation the situation on the board may change drastically.

• Vuko Drakkainen (automatic field) – each turn Vuko must go to another region. Its figure is placed in the region, where the most immoral player has the most influence. That player receives a conact token decreasing his/her influence, and also loses one special unit in this region (provided he/she had any). In the advanced mode players will be able to equip Vuko with more abilities, that will be triggered in specific moments of the game. 

DOMINATION PHASE: Players collect victory points and resources from the regions, and accomplish their unique goals.

Game Contents

Here the representation of the components included in the box of the game. Additionally all copies purchased here on giochistarter have also included the Italian rulebook.

Shipment an Payment

Payment. You can pay with credit cards, Paypal or by Bank wire transfer. Payments must be made within 10 days from the date of the order or the order will be canceled.

Shipment. Shipping to Italy costs 3.73 euro. For USA, Canada, EU countries and other other world Countries shipping cost will be shown after clicking "Proceed to checkout” button on the cart. Shop shipping cost depends by order size and it's shown on Shipping cost page.

It’s possible pick-up your copy for free at our stand in Modena Play (Italy) or our pickup point in Rome.

Games will be delivered approximately on February-March 2016. 

Note: We strongly suggest to specify a telephone number in your profile. This helps a lot the game delivery. We will use the address specified in your GS account profile at the shipping date: this means you can change it as you wish whitin the date of shipment.

Important Notes

Production. Rarely can occur a production delay out of our control and by our actions. For example there may be a technical problem with the tipography, a delay of a supplier, or a problem with the publisher which is directly printing the game (for example when we made an Italian version of an English game).

These facts should be taken into account. Anyway we will notify you promptly if something like that were to happen.

Contents. Game specifications and contents are indicative and can be changed during final production.

Progect pages. Sometime can be there some little variances on the different language project pages on Giochistarter (Italian, French, English, Spanish, German). In that case, refer to the project English page.

Shipments. Depending on the game, we ship by Postal service, Postal service insured or by Courier (UPS/GLS/Bartolini/SDA).

Shipments made by Courier or by Postal service insured can be tracked and are insured. Shipments made by Postal service (not insured) can not be traced and, although it rarely does, it can happen that they delay or are lost. We recommend to those who want to avoid any problem to use the insured option or an alternative method, if available.

We reserve the right to separate the contents of an order in different shipments or to merge the contents of different orders in the same shipment to improve shipment delivery speed and logistic managment. If that happens, there will not be any additional cost for the customer or right to any refund.

Shipments insurance doesn't cover any external damage to the box.

If the game will not be delivered because of your mistake (wrong address, recipient repeatedly absent, do not pick up the package after the passage of the courier, etc.), you will have to pay an additional shipping cost to re-send you the game. This cost will also include the return costs of the game. Otherwise, if we made an error, we will send it again to you at our expense.
If the game gone lost without any fault, we will reship it only if you took insurance option or Courier service.

If you live out of the European Community, customs taxes could be added. This usually doesn't happen for boardgames. Check your Country legislation to be sure about that, ad this aspect is not a our responsability.

We will no longer accept complaints related to this campaign after 12 months of its term.