Viking Vanguard Pokies
Stunning graphics are just one highlight of the Viking Vanguard video pokie, which looks like it has been inspired by Game of Thrones, with dragons, warriors and wolves stalking the 6 reels. Yes, that’s right, rather than the standard 5 reels, this game has 6 of them, and sees the symbols arranged in 4 rows, while 60 paylines run from left to right across them.
Set against some wintery mountains, complete with a sinister-looking castle in the background and gently falling snow, Viking Vanguard by WMS Gaming is arguably one of the best-designed pokies available, and to complement the dramatic appearance, there’s some bonus treats such as a wild symbol that fills an entire reel on every spin, scatter awards and a free spins bonus round where even more wilds can appear.
In normal play, wins are created by any 3 or more identical symbols running on adjacent reels across an active payline from the left side, and the amount won will be a multiple of the bet per line. All 60 lines are in play, and there’s a low limit of 0.30 to get the reels spinning, although free Viking Vanguard video pokie games can be tried out at many casinos. High rollers can raise their stakes to a maximum of 90.00 per spin.
Playing Viking Vanguard
Those people who review the pay table will get an idea of how it all works, and what each symbol combination pays out. The top symbols are a fierce female warrior, and the male, who is double-height and therefore a little easier to line up across a line for some of the biggest wins. Further down in value, there’s the wolf and a black crow, and then the lower parts of the payscale are made up of some carved wolf and dragon badges, plus there’s some runes made from sticks that take up the bottom of the table.
Having 6 reels in play seems a bit of a novelty, as it doesn’t really affect the return to player percentage of this game, and only serves to make the paytable a little more complicated, but as symbols still only need to land on 3 connected reels for a win, the extra reel only makes it a little harder to get a full line right across the game.
Helping players to achieve this goal however, is the wild symbol, which is a close up view of a dragon’s yellow eye, During every spin, a randomly selected reel will be filled with the wild symbol, and this can often help to complete winning combinations by substituting for all except the scatter symbol. If the wild turns up towards the right side of the game, and there’s already a winning line on the first 3 or more reels, then it will extend the line for a higher-value payout. A nice animation of the dragon is a further reward for players when it completes a winning line.
Viking Vanguard
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Free Spins Bonus Game
The scatter symbol is the picture of a bare tree that looks as if it’s been drawn on leather, but whatever it is, this is what launches the main bonus feature of this pokie whenever it appears in any 3, 4 or 5 positions at once.
The number of spins, and the size of the scatter awards paid out before them, depends on how many landed, so if it was just 3 scatters, there’s no initial payout and players earn 8 free spins. If 4 turned up, then 10x the total triggering bet is awarded, followed by 20 free spins, and anyone who manages to land 5 scatter symbols at once gets a real cash payment of 15x their stake returned to them, followed by no less than 100 free games.
Because each spin has a wild reel, whichever one it was on the triggering spin will stay as a locked wild throughout the free games, while further stacked dragon’s eye symbols will randomly fill additional reels, which should help to turn this bonus game into a highly rewarding round, even if there’s just 8 spins.
The Verdict
Viking Vanguard is certainly among the best looking online casino pokie machines on the market, particularly with the character symbols and background image, but also due to the dragon animations and even the design of some of the minor symbols.
The stacked wilds on every spin should compensate for the sixth reel, and once the bonus free spins have started, players are virtually guaranteed to get some wins from wild substitutions. The fact that they can’t test the game with just a tiny bet may be enough to put a few punters off these reels, but with a starting wager of just 0.30, most people should find it within their means to give these reels a spin.