A Feast For Odin

I think A Feast For Odin is a remarkably fun game. It has a lot of depth, there's several courses of action per play, and each number of players alters the game drastically (fewer actions available, repeatable actions, competition for resources...). Also, the build quality is very high for the boards. This is, at its heart, a worker placement game. It is the engine that drives the machine toward its goal of attaining points. Though, in this game you begin deep in the red so-to-say, with a fillable board covered in negative value. The added board that one must fill and cover to attain positive points is the twist, and one of the core mechanics. You spend your workers on getting oddly shaped and sized geometric pieces into your inventory firstly (some of which can be eaten, some of which can't), and secondly then try and fit those pieces onto your board in such a way that you get the most points. Or bonus resources. Or raw currency gain. Oh, and without forgetting to feed your vikings! The nuances and relationships between gaining resources and spending them is a wonderfully diverse and rewarding, even at an entry level. This game makes you feel good even if you 'lose', because you gain something out of it. You learn what strategies work in long and short term, or how to interact more carefully with other player sizes. You always come away with something gained. This game's complex for sure, but don't let that dissuade you. It has a LOT of actionable items, but at the surface level those actions are easily understood, the true heart of the complexity is in the later game ramifications of your actions earlier, whether or not you should place more items on your board to snag important free resources earlier, or perhaps you should've explored?...But those things can be gleaned later, and help you grow as a player. I think, despite its seemingly large initial payload, this game is very easy to learn provided you're even lightly familiar with worker placement games, but I'd say it's hard to master. Definitely can recommend to even modest board game enthusiasts. My only complaint is that it's 4 players, but it's an absolutely understandable limitation for now.

This is a really great game. It is a “euro” style strategy board game where each player rules some Vikings. Each turn you place a number of your Vikings on action spaces and take the corresponding action: hunt, gather food, raid, craft stuff, trade stuff, discover new lands, emigrate, etc. These actions gain you resources that are tiles that you then place on your player board, Tetris-style, to cover up the board to get points. Every turn you must also feed your Vikings at the feast or they get upset and you lose points. The game lasts 7 rounds. Then you score and see who wins. There isn’t much player interaction but it’s still fun, and plays great as solitaire. I was a bit intimidated by its sheer size and scope, but I’d say it’s surprisingly simple to learn and play (not necessarily play well!). The turns move quickly and you can take basic actions that are very logical. Of course, eventually you want to understand every single action space and that will take more time; as will learning how the actions interact. But you don’t actually need to know all that at first. Because it’s jus fun to get food, raise cattle, feed your Vikings and occasionally go for a hunt. There’s something very satisfying about each action and building up the board. Of course if you don’t find this satisfying, you will probably not like this game. I was surprised that I liked it because many Euro games like this leave me cold (like Catan). But it’s fun being Vikings and collecting stuff!

Quality is top-notch, and the design is super detailed without being overwhelming. The ease of play improves after the first run-through, and the difficulty level scales well depending on how strategic you want to be. I play this with my young kids, and while it’s complex, they catch on with some help and love it. Size of the game is big, but manageable, and the expansion value makes it feel fresh every time. A really fun mix of strategy and creativity.

I play a lot of board games. My family mostly struggles through my hobby with me (normally play with friends). I'm always searching for games I can play at home as my family is super picky. This game, however, was instantly popular with everyone. It's a worker placement game that looks intimidating at first. However, this game is very easy to pickup. My favorite thing about this game is that you always have something you can do. In other worker placement games, other players can block your actions and it becomes frustrating. In this one if that happens, there's always something cool your can do instead. This game along with Lost Ruins of Arnak and Everdell are the 3 most played games at my house.

The card aspect of this game seems tacked on. In Agricola it seemed intended from the start of the design and was very thematic. In this game it seems like an afterthought.

This is a Uwe Rosenberg masterpiece sandbox efficiency puzzle. There are 60 action options to explore and score. Worker placement, resource management, and puzzle building keep this game interesting every play of every game. I only play it solo and it’s one of the best solo experiences I’ve played. I’m guessing higher player counts might be slow as analysis paralysis is real with so many actions. I highly recommend the Norwegians expansion and suggest adding it to the game from the very beginning. It smooths a few things out and integrates seamlessly.

This is an extremely fun game with many viable victory strategies and deep, absorbing gameplay. It is somewhat daunting for new players, but is well designed enough that people can figure it out fairly rapidly and become competitive by their second play through. There are a lot of options and rules, but the game prompts players pretty well and the rules are logical so that people can navigate themselves fairly rapidly. The cheat sheet available from boardgamegeek.com are recommended for new players. It’s designed by the person who made Agricola, and it shares a lot of that game’s competitive worker placement elements. The difference comes from The relative set of options that are available; in Agricola there are a few critical resources that everyone is always trying to get, and much of the gameplay involves positioning play order and blocking others from doing what they want to do. This game has a ton of different strategies that are intersecting but largely independent from each other, so the blocking aspect mostly comes up rarely and in situations where two players are trying to pursue the same strategy at the same time. In practice this really sets the game apart from other worker placement games, and the results are great!

This is a great solitaire or multiplayer worker placement/resource management game. Even though it looks intimidating at first, the mechanics are easy to pick up. You start small, but each turn you'll get to do bigger and better things, like gathering crops, raising livestock, building structures, colonizing islands, hunting & trapping game, fishing & whaling, raiding & pillaging, trading, and adding experts and special abilities to your clan. Overall, it's a fantastic simulation of managing a small viking village, without worrying about moving ships and armies around a map.