For the Glory of Odin! - A review of Champions of Midgard

Skål!

As someone who is fiercely proud of my Scandinavian heritage (my last name is actually an Anglicization of "Madsen," a fairly common Danish last name) I'm all about Vikings, especially in fiction that takes them and adds a fun fantastical twist to them. I grew up listening to stories from my grandfather who's grandfather had emigrated from Denmark back in the 1800s, so there's a strong sense of pride with my heritage and I know that if I ever get the opportunity to visit the land of Vikings and Legos, I'll jump at the chance to do so.

So, when I was offered the opportunity to play Champions of Midgard by a good friend, I immediately jumped at the opportunity, not only because it was listed in the top 200 of games here on BGG, but also because it had Vikings and the theme spoke to my inner Viking heritage. Like usual, I watched a brief breakdown of the rules in order to ensure that I understood the gameplay so I could come in immediately and play without having too much to learn.

I was floored when I found out that we would also be playing with the Valhalla and Dark Mountains expansions as it meant that there was more game for me to learn and I'm always excited to learn more mechanics and rules for a game. It turned out that the expansions helped with mitigating some "bad luck" with rolls and were a welcome addition to the game when I played it for the first time. With a game under my belt, I felt like I had a really good understanding of the mechanics and wanted to provide a simple review of the game and how it played.

Champions of Midgard
Publish Year: 2015
Publisher: Grey Fox Games
BGG Ranking: 140
BGG Score: 7.7
Mechanics: Dice Rolling, Set Collection, Variable Player Powers, Worker Placement

Components: Most of Champions of Midgard is simplistic in design, and that actually works well in its favor. The meeples that each player uses are the standard wooden meeples found in most other games without adding any flourishes to differentiate them, aside from colors. The resources are also similarly made of cardboard chits (the favor, blame, coins and damage counters) or cubes (food and wood) which make them durable and the artwork on the various chits is excellent. Player boards and additional components (such as the ships players can buy or changeable market stalls) are all layered cardboard and have excellent artwork on them. The main board is also well-designed and despite the numerous locations that players can place meeples, all are easy to find and understand with simple iconography present through the entire game. Additionally, the cards are well designed, with card backs showing where they need to be placed and iconography clearly present on all cards, making them easy to understand. The biggest standout of the game are the custom dice that come in three separate colors, each with multiple icons on them to show the power of each warrior during combat.

Gameplay: As with any worker-placement game, players take turns assigning their meeples to various locations around the board, all of which are single occupancy only (except for the "Hunting" location that allows multiple meeples to visit). Locations include several locations offering options such as potential warrior restock locations, food restock, end-game bonus objectives, buying a private longboat for journeys, or attempting to fight one of several monsters available per round. Players also have various powers with their leader that allows them to gain bonuses while performing various actions during the game, including while fighting monsters and purchasing items from the market.

Once players have assigned their meeples and taken the respective actions for the locations, players then proceed to the combat phase where they fight various monsters (draugr, trolls, and other Scandinavian monsters can readily be found to fight at any time) with the assigned dice for each monster that they assigned in the previous phase. Combat is simple and quick, making player downtime extremely short and keeping the game speedy while playing. Once the combat has been completed, players then reset the board and refresh each of the various locations with new dice and cards as needed.

At the end of the eighth round, end game bonuses are totaled and the player with the most valor (VP) wins the game and becomes the new Jarl of the settlement and gains the favor of Odin.

Positives: I love how fast this game plays and despite there being a number of potential locations that players can place their workers at, there's generally not going to be AP that is induced because the game is balanced with many different options and ways to gain points. The various player powers that come with the game also offer a level of strategy that can be utilized during play and makes each leader play slightly different than other leaders. Additionally, the combat for the game is quick and brutal, which is both thematically appropriate and helpful with keeping the game from being bogged down too much.

Champions of Midgard manages to avoid what many other worker-placement games tends to struggle with, and that's the lack of various resources during the game. There wasn't any time where I felt like I was lacking the necessary resources for what I wanted to do, or didn't have a way to work around what I potentially needed for an action, which I very much appreciated. Despite several actions being taken by my friend during the game, I never felt like I was at a loss for what to do and I appreciated the flexibility offered by the game.

Negatives: There's one glaring concern that I have if I were to purchase the base game and that is the combat. While fantastically designed, it does lend itself to some "luck of the dice" for players. If a player is unable to defeat a troll, draugr or other monster on their turn, they lose all dice that are associated with the attack, which could potentially set them back a turn or two behind another player, resulting in their eventual loss. The expansion, Valhalla, helps mitigate this concern, but unfortunately if a player has a series of bad rolls for combat, that could take out any chance of winning if it happens more than once during a turn.

The other negative that I would like to point out is the player powers are a bit skewed with how effective they can be. While there's only really one that could be a major issue, I will note that when playing with my friend, he managed to get a combination of cards with his player power that ended up getting him a whopping 36 points and won him the game due to the combination, all due to some lucky dice rolls. I don't fault him for the strategy since it worked out very well for him, but it was disconcerting to see his score jump by so much at the end of the game when we were totaling final scores.

Expansions:Champions of Midgard has two expansions: Valhalla and The Dark Mountains.

Champions of Midgard: Valhalla offers significant mitigation to players who lose dice during combat and (in my opinion) actually helps players to make more effective choices while assigning dice for combat against monsters. When players lose warriors during combat, they are given chips that can be turned in for blessings from the Valkyries or even for an additional bonus at the end of the game. This helps to mitigate bad rolls during combat by providing a reason to have warriors die in glorious combat as it allow players to use their dead companions to purchase new warrior types such as shieldwarriors and berzerkers, which offer even more ways to increase combat effectiveness. It's an effective way at reducing the frustration that can be found with having awful rolls against the monsters and even introduces some fantastic big bad lore monsters like Surtr, Fenrir, and Ymir. These so-called "Epic Monster" cards add even more end-game bonuses that are related to the various monsters that players can defeat as well as some of the original end-game goal cards.

The expansion also adds a new leader dice that adds some additional powers when assigned during a fight and helps to balance out leader abilities. There are a few overpowered combinations of leaders and cards from this expansion (as I previously noted) but it overall is a good mix of abilities. The additional dice also adds some clever usage as while the leader can go into battle, it is possible to lose your leader as well and requires the sacrifice of some of your lost warrior tokens to revive with a blessing of the Valkyries.

Champions of Midgard: The Dark Mountains adds in two new locations that allows players to fight bergrisars (giants) and adds in the new archer clansmen that can be used to fight monsters and also gives a bonus while hunting. I will admit that not once during the game did I go hunting, so the additional bonus provided by the new archers isn't that much of a new bonus. Additionally, the bergrisars generally take precedence over the journey monsters and present an easier way to achieve Valor Points (VP), making this a harder fought over location. There is the added caveat that the journey does cost coin or could present an added monster/bandit to fight against, but overall the risks are far outweighed by the rewards. More often than not, our game saw both bergrisar locations occupied and maybe a draugr location or two being occupied and often the troll and journey monsters were ignored.

Overall Thoughts: I was really actually quite impressed with how Champions of Midgard played and thought that the addition of the expansions also helped with fleshing out the base game a bit more. The Valkyries Expansion especially helped to mitigate the bad luck that could occur with dice rolls and helped to really tie together the game with additional end-game bonuses.

I loved the theming for the game and really feel like not only did the mechanics play well into the theme, but also the gameplay. Obviously, battle obsessed Vikings are going to throw themselves headlong into battles with trolls, giants and draugr, and the more that die in glorious battle, the better. It's a really fun idea and the game does an excellent job of making you feel like a warrior attempting to gain the most power in a vicious battle of glory.

It is interesting to me how there seems to be an overwhelming amount of cultural zeitgeist with Roman and Greek mythology, and although there has been a surge of more modern sensibilities exploring Scandinavian mythology, in my mind, it's one of the lesser known (mainstream) mythologies, along with Egyptian Mythology. I personally wish that I knew a bit more about Scandinavian mythology, and although I'm learning more, I seem to have missed that boat in regards to that mythological bent. There seems to be quite a bit out there that explores Roman and Greek mythology, and Scandinavian and Egyptian mythology, but the further you go from European culture, the less mythology you see from other parts of the world. I would love to see some more exploration of other mythological origins such as Polynesian, Aztec, or even some African cultures. There is so much that could be delved into and it represents a really wide world of creativity.

I'm on the fence about whether or not to add it to my collection since I'm not certain how often it would get played. Part of me wants to just go out and buy a copy myself since it was such a fun game, but I've gotten a bit more choosy with what I'm adding nowadays and I have several worker-placement games that scratch that itch well. Still, I would award Champions of Midgard a solid 8.5/10 from what I played and I really hope to play another game or two in the near future. I'd be curious to see what it plays like in a group of three or four.

Give me your thoughts:What are your thoughts on Champions of Midgard, if any? Aside from the very obvious A Feast for Odin, what other games have you played with the theme of Vikings? What is your favorite mythology to see in board games, if any at all, and what would you be interested in seeing explored in games?

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*Originally posted on BoardGameGeek on 7/6/2024*