Champions of Midgard

Great game. Lots of fun.

OVERVIEW:8 roundsPlace workers during a round and get the action of that spot...just like Lords of Waterdeep (LoWD) or Stone AgeRandom buildings each game to take actions and/or collect resourcesWhere it is different. . .Your meeples can be set to go battle. There are land battles and sea battles. Sea battles have a lot more going on and can be more exciting with random events and greater rewards.If your meeple takes damage the meeple loses a die for each damage taken.If your meeple wins the battle, then they get the glory points for that monster.Goal of the game is to get the most glory by the end of the 8th round.There are quest/mission cards that give you bonus points at the end of the game too.Each player has a character card that gives them a special ability/bonus, just like the lords in LoWD.COMPONENTS:+ Tiles were nice and sturdy cardboard, with nice artwork.> The cards are nice with great artwork. Though for me, some of the colors are all the same muted look, so I had to look more closely at what the card color symbols were at times.+ Rulebook is nice and colorful, with clear pictures for buildings, cards, and clear explainations.-- No room in box to add much of any expansion parts, if/when an expansion is available. This means that any expansions will require to keep in the expansion box versus merge with this box.THEME:This is where the game shines over LoWD in my opinion. Similar mechanics and lots of similar aspects, but this game is so much better at theme than LoWD. After a while in LoWD we were calling wizards as purple cubes and warriors as orange cubes, because it was much easier since all the cards refer to those objects that way visually.+ Here I felt like each component was a specific component and not just a color cube. I liked it a lot better.LUCK:+Low luck.Yes, there is some dice rolling during combat, but that isn't the focus and it's one part of the game. Some who don't like randomness of dice may still get frustrated and not like this component of the game. Whereas LoWD has zero dice rolling, so you know what you are getting into with most decisions.STRATEGY:+ We find this to be a mid-to-high strategy game.> It doesn't feel like it most of the time, but myself and my 18yr old are the most strategic players, which means we tend to win more often. Thus your decisions have definitely gains and consequences and can be unforgiving at times. This means some players may need to not be so competitive with strategy OR choose to help guide other less strategic players, so they can still have a good time too.BUILDINGS:Like Stone Age and LoWD, there are action spots that you claim with one of your meeples.+ Thematically the buildings make a lot of sense and are cool, such as seeing the future of a battle encounter.+ Unlike LoWD, where you need to wait till you get an Intrigue card or wait till round 5 to get additional meeples, you can actually got to a building and pay gold to get your extra meeple. But there are incentives to not be the first to rush out and get that extra meeple right away. I like this building!COMBAT:+ There are game mechanics that incent players -- in the form of negative points -- to actually fight monsters instead of ignoring monsters+ There are public and private ships that can be used for sea battles. There are pros/cons to each.+ In some scenarios, if you beat the monster you not only get glory but can assign "blame" to another player (negative points). Wow! Ruthless.END of ROUND:At end of round monsters are rotated out and some buildings may be restocked and coin incentives are added to other action spots to encourage players to go there next round.OVERALL:Especially in worker placement games, I like a game where there isn't always a clear winner until the final points are calculated.Also I really like games where even if you feel behind, that doesn't mean you have no chance of winning, as there are tons of ways to get glory points and maybe even win in the end. Thus, there are many strategies to try and win and lots of replayability. . .and it has great theme and excellent components while doing it.We still have a place on our shelf for LoWD (a plethora of strategies can be used to win) and Stone Age (more of a gatweway game for new gamers or younger, less experienced players). But we don't feel this replaces either of the two but meets its own audience need and thus we give this one two-thumbs-up!!

I watched a review of this game that soured me on it and I moved on. The reviewer had disliked this game due to the luck involved with the dice rolls and how this could cause unpleasant swings in the game. I felt that this would be a big issue with my gaming crew (usually consisting of me and my children) and so I let it go as I don't need any more games (I want more games, but I don't need more). But something kept bringing me back to this...That "something" was that I kept seeing this game mentioned on different people's favorite games lists, and so I looked into it again.Many of these people recommended the game, but only with both of it's expansions, Valhalla and The Dark Mountains, and so I looked into those.Valhalla helps to mitigate bad dice rolls by providing cardboard chits representing the souls of the warriors (the different types of dice in the game that you roll to "battle" the monsters) lost in battle. These "souls" then can "travel" to Valhalla and can get you special cards and epic monsters from the Valhalla board that can give you points and bonuses, including stronger warrior dice (there are two new types, one of which is pink, which my daughter very much appreciated).Valhalla also provides two new characters and blue leader dice for each player with unique powers for each of the playable characters in the game. You can lose this leader dice in battles that you send it to, but you can get it back through certain acquisitions in Valhalla.The Dark Mountains expansion adds a new location to travel to to fight a new type of monster. It also adds another type of warrior dice and cards for the other spots in the base game. It also adds two new characters.These sounded fantastic and appeared to correct the aforementioned reviewer's issues with the game and so I took another look at reviews of the game, but with both expansions... And ended up walking away, again.The expansions did appear to "fix" the game, but then appeared to break it in a new way.One of the things I like best about a lot of worker placement games (meaning a game where you place your game pieces, representing your workers, on different spaces on the board to get/do stuff) is the tightness of the board. Meaning that there are a limited number of spots on the board and you want to get to the ones you want to use that round before someone else does. And the expansions appeared to make the game too loose by providing too many available spots. Plus, it made the game pretty big overall.So I moved on, yet again, and ran into the same issue. There are a lot of people who love this game and are vocal about it.And then I had an epiphany:What if I only added the Valhalla expansion?That would help mitigate bad dice rolls without loosening the board. Brilliant! And so, I bought this game from this site and the Valhalla expansion from another that had a better price (because I'm cheap).This came first and I decided to give it a try without the expansion and had another epiphany: This game doesn't need an expansion to be great!Yes there are dice rolls, and yes luck is a factor, but if you prepare appropriately for those dice rolls, they don't ruin your day as the base game does provide ways to mitigate those rolls so that they usually get the job done. And if you don't prepare appropriately for those dice rolls, then you are knowingly taking a risk, which can be super exciting and not as disappointing if they fail (but way more fun if you succeed).So, do you need an expansion (or for some, two expansions) to make this game "fun"? Not in my opinion. However, we don't play without the Valhalla expansion now that we have it (it's pretty great). But I would love the game still without it.And as for The Dark Mountains expansion. I still don't want it as I don't want to risk messing up the tightness of the board and I don't see that this game needs anything else.But that's me. You do you.

Works very well with the base game.Risk vs reward is mitigated by VALHALLA! Be rewarded by the gods for losing warriors. Whereas before they were just gone and you had to do the same actions for the same dice.