BOARD GAME REVIEW: CHAMPIONS OF MIDGARD

Champions of Midgard is a game published by Grey Fox Games that has had no shortage of love. Featuring glowing reviews from the Dice Tower and featured on an episode of Tabletop, it grabbed my interest when it was described by Wil Wheaton as a mix of Lords of Waterdeep and Stone Age. These are both games I really like and, add to that the new expansions that are available for it, I decided to see how it would compare.

In Champions of Midgard, you are trying to earn the most glory over 8 rounds. Glory is earned by building up the village (resources), defeating monsters and fulfilling destiny (or goal) cards. This is done by  a combination of worker placement and dice-based combat resolution against monsters threatening your village. The game feels quite tight, with only 8 rounds and normally only 3-4 workers per round meaning you have to focus on what you are doing. 

Because Champions of Midgard feels so tight, allot can be dependent on the dice roles (especially when fighting the bigger monsters). The more you want to mitigate them, the more actions you need to spend to earn re-roll tokens. This is probably the biggest detractor from the game, as you can fluff key dice roles (even if you re-roll them) meaning you have lost out on allot of resources. 

This is a shame because allot of the other mechanisms are quite nice. The way blame for not defending the village is assigned is what all semi-co op games should aspire too when trying to determine lose conditions (i.e. just punish the people not helping). The worker placement and collecting of dice resources feels nearly copied from Lords of Waterdeep, which isn't a bad thing (why shouldn't designs feel iterative) and collecting resources to send out for raiding feels quite thematic.

However, Stone Age has the advantage of not having each individual roll feel as critical and having the ability to stock up on tools and cards to mitigate this. Lords of Waterdeep is a very tactical game (except for those stupid Mandatory Quest Cards, which should just be reworked into negative points if uncompleted) where you aren't leaving huge scoring opportunities to chance. Compared to these, Champions of Midgard may be average to good, but won't often be a game I would choose to play above these or a bunch of other worker placement games such as Russian Railroads or Ancient World.

On a side note, it appears that the Valhalla expansion addresses most of my main issues with this game so perhaps that will elevate the game into the regular rotation for me.

2.5 out of 5 non-horned Waffles

BOARD GAME REVIEW: KEYFLOWER (2012)

Keyflower is a bit of a funny game. On the surface of it, it shouldn't work. It is part worker placement, part bidding and bluffing, part city building, part resource management, part randomiser. And somehow it does, being a relatively fast paced game that combines just the right amount of these elements so that nothing feels too tacked on.

Keyflower is the story of you trying to establish your colony. Every season, new resources come in and new buildings are available to build. Players then either have the option to bid on these tiles or utilise them. Once everyone is out of moves, winning bidders get to place the tiles in their villages to be utilised and upgraded by themselves (or others) later by moving resources to them. At the end of the 4th season (winter), most points is the winner.

This game has allot of cool mechanics going on. For example, you can move your bidding pieces if you are the losing bid, and your 'secret' victory point conditions are actually things you can choose to bid on (rather than automatic bonus'). For a game with so many disconnected elements, it comes together really well.

There are only two criticisms I have with it. For the most part, the theme of the game comes through really well. However, some mechanics are (by balancing and gameplay necessity) slightly disconnected from the theme. For example, why can you utilise tiles before anyone has built them and why don't workers return after utilising opposing players tiles?

The other criticism is that if a player is prone to 'analysis paralysis', there turn can drag out. This is also true if someone is the first player, not paying attention and planning during other players turn, or if there planned move is taken away at the last minute.

However, these complaints are minor. For the most part, the artwork and elegance of the game match the theme (new workers arrive every turn). The game flows really well and their are allot of paths to victory and options you can take on your turn. The game doesn't drag with allot of players

5 out of 5 Penal Colony Waffles.