I reference Uwe Rosenberg countless times in my reviews. Trying to write about board games without talking about Uwe is like trying to talk about movies without mentioning Stephen Spielberg. When it comes to making deep, thoughtful Euro games, nobody does it quite like this lovable German. As the creator of Agricola, Caverna, Le Havre, and countless other divinely excellent worker placement games (hell, Agricola is the granddaddy of the genre) Mr. Rosenberg’s pedigree in the gaming community is pretty much unmatched.
So when he released A Feast for Odin for 2016, it was to a great deal of fanfare and baited breath from all of us incredibly popular people who just could not wait to make sheep multiply and feed Vikings a feast of beans and salt meat.
Er… okay. Let’s back up. When it comes to farming in board games, you go straight to Uwe Rosenberg. This man is responsible for more veggies in board gaming than that time I spilled my salad on my copy of Splendor. The vast majority of his works involve farming in some capacity, but bucolic farmland isn’t exactly the first thing that springs to mind when you think about Vikings. It turns out he’s done more research on the topic than you and I ever thought to do and has plenty of feelings about the day to day diet of Viking raiders. Vikings ate mostly veggies… who knew.
So what’s the experience like? Truly, it’s unlike any other board game out there. I don’t say that lightly – worker placement games are a dime a dozen. Uwe Rosenberg himself has already managed to flood the market with countless games focused on putting down meeples to make food grow. And feeding workers? Been there, done that. But this… this is different. In A Feast for Odin, the shape of everything you produce is key. Workers eat at a long table, and food takes up a certain amount of space on that table. You then have to balance that space against the colors of the food tiles (a cartoon version of Uwe is waiting for you in the manual to tell you to check your preconceived notions about Viking diets). In the meantime, all of this producing and feeding is getting you exactly ZERO points, and you’ll need to quickly start working out ways to get ahead.
As if getting ahead wasn’t challenging enough, your home board is absolutely COVERED in spaces that you give you negative victory points at the end of the game. Not only is it possible to finish this game with zero points, you could conceivably end with negative points.
It sounds brutal, but Uwe has given you the tools to put together a machine that’ll propel you forward if you’re willing to do the work to put the pieces together. It’s a labor that’s well worth the effort, and leaves you slowly building an engine that churns out extra goods to cover those troublesome spaces. But even if you cover everything – you’ll still have zero points! Actually doing things that gain you points is an additional task you’ll need to accomplish on top of laying down treasure over your land like it’s drying in the sun; sending your Vikings to colonize distant lands, conquering islands (which you’ll promptly have to cover with more goods), breeding animals, and building structures for a meager collection of points. A high score in the this game hovers just north of 100 points, and when you consider that you start roughly 30 below zero, it’s a long road indeed to the finish line.
For all the bits and pieces that he gave us in 2016, Uwe slipped another string bean on the table when The Norwegians expansion was released in 2018 – this time much more under the radar. Calling it an expansion is a bit of a misnomer – it’s practically A Feast for Odin version 1.5. Not only is there a wealth of added content to the game, but Uwe actually replaced the entire main board of the game with a tweaked, more competitive layout.
It was a good game made even better – but now that’s it’s 2019 and it looks like your coffee table just can’t take anymore, you might be wondering if this is a race worth running.
Most of Uwe Rosenberg’s games are designed with some solo capability in mind, and A Feast for Odin is no exception. Uwe has mentioned in interviews that his kids were too young to play board games with him and that’s why got into solo gaming. It’s a background that I sympathize with, because I too like to blame my kids instead of my distinct lack of friends, but I’m willing to keep his secret for now.
As a solo game, it’s an all-around excellent experience. While Uwe gives you a target score in the manual that you can judge yourself against, it’s still basically a beat your own score solo mode. It’s not typically my favorite type of solo objective, but by giving me a challenging target to hit (maybe I’m just terrible at this game, but I haven’t got there in 53 plays) there is at least some semblance of something that I’m playing “against.”. It is, in a weird way, like having an opponent that consistently scores 100 points.
A Feast for Odin was the first of Rosenberg’s solo experiences to include a unique feature – alternating colors between turns. In worker placement games, it’s typical that you can’t place a worker in an action space that’s already taken by another player, so by having you use two colors as a solo player, you essentially get in your own way, forcing you to vary and adapt your strategy against your own worst enemy.
As you might have guessed by now, I definitely recommend this one to solo gamers. It’s a tight, interesting experience with such a variety of paths to victory that you’ll certainly never play the same game twice. Different occupations cards will wind up in your hand (with three decks to choose from, you may never play some cards as long as you own this game), different weapons and tools will guide your approach. A hand full of swords are incredibly important for the budding pillager, but whales are pretty unimpressed with your shiny metal slashy thing. You might have a grand strategy, and you might generally stick to it – but you’ll be forced into short term decisions to bend the current circumstances to your will.
But alas, even the best doughnut has a hole. First of all, this is a tremendously complex experience to set up. For a game that plays solo in just a brisk hour, it takes a solid fifteen minutes for even an experienced player to get the table ready. And that’s WITH some sort of additional organizer solution. Maybe that’s an unavoidable fault – but once you add in the expansion content its size becomes truly staggering. So many bits and pieces will come out to the table… but the odds are good that you won’t use everything in a single play through. I’m not sure what the solution looks like, but luxury in design can still be had without sacrificing efficiency. It’s a small gripe though, and some of us even happen to like gigantic, sprawling experiences that consume our coffee tables and our couches at the same time.
There’s also one… baffling… problem with the expansion. There are a series of mountain strips from which you’ll be plucking resources during the game. They’re meant to be randomized with a new one brought out each round, so that you don’t know what’s coming. Unfortunately….
I’m not sure whether to yell “One of these things is not like the other” or “you had one job” but this is the sort of printing error that is just uncalled for. I’ve seen some different suggestions to overcome this, from using dice to select the mountain to (my personal favorite) just leaving the strip in the box and playing without it. It’s a boneheaded production error, and a great many people will never bother reaching out to Z-Man for a replacement. That includes me – I’d much rather spend my time playing games and writing about them than spending time chasing down fixes for other people’s errors.
But like the little pile of dog poop in an otherwise scenic park, there are some flaws you just learn to scrape off your shoe and get on with the fun. In the end, serious solo gamers owe it to themselves to add both A Feast for Odin and The Norwegians to their collection. In fact, if you get only one Uwe Rosenberg game – this is the one you need to pick up.
4.5 out of 5 cups of coffee.
So what about if you have… you know… friends?
That answer is going to depend on a couple things. Is this Uwe’s BEST game for competitive play? I actually vote no. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a fantastic game all the way to the max player count, but it’s a different experience. And if you’re going to go for cut throat worker placement with three of your awkward coworkers best buds, then you’re probably better served by his classic Agricola. Or, if you’re a little less cutthroat, his sequel Caverna.
A Feast for Odin, ultimately, isn’t very COMPETITIVE. There are tons of spaces available to accomplish your goals. And while many people doing their own thing together is a hallmark of Euro games, the interactions are so sparse that they’re virtually meaningless. It’s multiplayer solo at its purest form, and that’s going to be a turn off for some people. At least in Agricola the available spaces for your workers ensure that someone else desperately needs the thing you’re about to take from underneath them.
The Norwegians expansion helps here considerably, literally removing several spaces from the main board and tightening up action selection, but there’s still a good chance that no one is going to thwart your goals by cleverly observing your play. And likewise, you probably won’t do it to them, either. Whether on purpose, or completely by chance. It might seem like I’m understating this, so it needs to be said again – The Norwegians makes this game a lot more tight and competitive, but it takes it from wide open beach to a sandbox.
And maybe that’s okay for you. Maybe you prefer a little room to flawlessly execute your plans. Maybe you don’t crave the look of despair on your friends face you put down a friendly little faceless blob of a Viking meeple and keep them from following through on a grand scheme to win the game… maybe you don’t need them to claw the table and roll their eyes… maybe this is why I have to play games alone!
And while the above is just a matter of preference, it’s hard to forgive the downtime that develops when you get more than two players on the table. In a solo game, every last minute is spent engaging with the board and making decisions, but four players who take any amount of time thinking about their next move are going to mean long waits between turns. Worst of all, with near zero player interaction, there’s just no reason for you to remain engaged with the game while your friends play with their collection of Viking beans and Viking fish. When three other people are taking a turn later in the game, you may as well just get up and go get a snack – there’s no point to you being at the table. Before you know it your friends will be getting out their cellphones and trying to pretend they’re doing something far more cool while they chat up their latest Tinder match rather than watch what’s going on, and who could blame them? Again, if the competition was a little tighter, at least they might have some anxiety about your choices. Instead, it’s just empty time to be filled by anything else they can find to do.
Still, in the grand scheme of things this is a fairly minor gripe. Four player games always take a long time, and some people like less competitive styles of play. Ultimately, it’s still a fun game and a worthy investment of your time and money. The verdict for multiplayer?
4 out of 5 cookies.