Champions of Midgard | Viking Themed Strategy Game | 2-4 Players | 90 Minutes

Champions of Midgard is my favorite game featuring my favorite board game mechanic, worker placement. This is a good game to use for teaching worker placement to new gamers, but should be reserved for when they start to transition into more complicated games. That’s not to say the game is complicated. For experienced gamers, the mechanics and rules will be easy to comprehend and pick up. Thematically, the game ties in well with the worker placement mechanic. On your turn you will choose a specific wp spot in your Viking village based on the strategy you are pursuing to become the next chief of your village. One of the strategies involves fighting mythical monsters and trolls using beautiful custom dice representing different types of warriors that range from more offensive to more defensive. Cards and wooden meeples are high quality. There are upgrade kits available to make the game more immersive. The Valhalla and Dark Mountains expansion really make the game sing. I highly recommend this if you like the Viking theme or like worker placement or dice chucking in your games.

Great worker placement game. Viking themed which adds to the game. Plus battling by rolling dice. There are items in the game that help you with the randomness you get from dice rolling. Only plays up to four and as of now, I believe there is no expansion. Still, this is a very fun game that I would recommend to anyone. The game is very easy to learn even though it looks overwhelming, players will understand the flow of the game after a round or two. There are many different ways players can go about the strategy they plan on using each round, which adds to the games repeatability. Plus each player gets a Viking character that gives them a special ability.

This unexpectedly became the hit game for my family during Covid. I bought this based on reviews read on game website to add to my board game collection. No one else in my family likes fantasy style games. My family likes traditional games like monopoly, Catan and cards. I collect fantasy games, particularly solo play. I bought this game thinking no one would like it. My family bought me the expansions as gifts for my bday. Out of boredom they tried it with me and everyone liked it a lot. We soon broke out the expansions, which added lots of fun. I highly recommend this game. The game components are well designed. The instruction booklets are super easy to follow and you can learn this game in and hour or less. The game formula is very addicting. The ability to make different choices each turn keeps the game unpredictable and fresh. It also helps that the game is capped at 8 turns. I think the biggest turn off to people on fantasy games is the long and sometimes multi day commitment. I really enjoy the game and rank it right along with other long standing hit games like Talisman. Like I said, people that don’t even like fantasy settings or this type of genre really enjoy the game. Get it.

Fantastic game! I'll spare you the summary of the game because all the other reviews here do a good job of that, but I just want to say that this is probably my new favorite game that I own now. It was also a big hit with my friends (I was a little nervous because it's the first worker plcement game we've played). Only takes a few minutes to set the game up after you've played a game and are familiar with the cards and dice etc... In the first round it clicks with everyone at the table. Very easy to get the hang of. And you're never really out of the game even if you're in last place. We just played our second game tonight and after the final scoring takes place, the two people that were in the lead finished last and the person who was in last place during the game scored some big bonuses from some objectives and shot into first. Anyways, I never really write reviews on here but I was compelled to give this a 5 star review and share my thoughts because our group had an absolute blast playing this! Oh and lastly, the artwork is phenomenal and the theme is lots of fun. Who doesn't want to kill monsters and trolls with Vikings?

Champions Of Midgard: Valhalla is a fantastic expansion that changes the base game for the better! Basically, Valhalla adds, well, Valhalla, that actually rewards you for loosing warriors! Yes, this expansion mitigates the one great weakness of the base game of Champions of Midgard-bad die rolls! Now, if you roll bad, instead of just losing and falling behind the other players, you send your dead warriors to Valhalla where you accumulate "sacrifice tokens" which can be turned in special tiles (some of which are powerful monsters) and "Valkyrie Blessings." Think of it as a 'catch up mechanism' for unlucky die roles. -It also adds more types of warrior dice-BESERKERS and SHIELD WARRIORS! -LEADER DICE that give you special powers! - 2 new LEADERS are added with cool powers. One of them can even change into a bear!! -.And a SECOND ABILITY FOR YOUR LEADERS. Now, all leaders have two powers to choose from! That really helps with play balance!! -More Destiny Cards It's a game-changer for the best! GET THIS! NOW!!.

This is the board game that helped me turn a corner in to hobby gaming. I feel this is an excellent entry point into a variety of mechanics (Worker Placement, Dice Combat and Set Collection) of modern board gaming. It is a touch more luck dependent than I currently enjoy, however I feel that is a great thing for newcomers. I will also say that BOTH expansions significantly improve the experience, especially the Valhalla expansion. THEME / SETTING I think this is an excellent setting for this style of game. Getting hordes of various warrior dice and sending them to their death in battle is very thematic. Again, I am making the assumption that you will buy at least the Valhalla expansion to go with this. AESTHETICS For your money the component quality is great. They even sell some component upgrades on their website. Which I recommend if you find yourself enjoying this game. The art is vibrant and overall great as well. REPLAY VALUE I think there is a lot of replay value right out of the box. You have several unique Vikings to choose from and there are several different types of Trolls, Monsters and Draugrs. Even some of the worker placement locations will change from game to game. GAME ARC This game does a great job of allowing your actions to build up. You'll slowly be able to gain better workers and take on larger enemies throughout the game. The game does not feel to overstay it's welcome either. It can feel overwhelming at first during the end game, as there are quite a few things to add up after the game concludes. EASE OF PLAY I would say this is a medium weight game. If you haven't played a hobby style board game before, this could certainly feel a bit much. The rulebook isn't terrible and of course there are several great online video tutorials. I wouldn't feel too intimidated by anything here. TACTICS While a seasoned player of this will have a leg up playing this (like pretty much any game). I do think it is offset by a healthy amount of dice rolling. It absolutely is NOT a pure strategy game; I think it is important knowing that going in. There is a fair amount of push your luck as well and I do not think there are great catch-up mechanics. If a player gets a large lead, it will likely stay that way. FINAL THOUGHTS (4/5) I really do enjoy this game and it holds a special place in my heart. I recommend it at 3-4 players, 2P didn't feel tight enough and 5P dragged on for too long. Again, after your first play, please at least add Valhalla. It significantly improves the game and theme. Dark Mountains is also excellent, just not essential. You can snag both expansions in a nice package from their website as well. (Also, thanks to Zee Garcia from Dice Tower, I straight up took your TARGET rating system. It works so well)

I love this game. So much so that I actually bought a lot of upgrades: wood/meat tokens, viking meeples, every promo card I could get, and the game mat. This is a fun worker placement game. It adds some chance with dice battle mechanics, but otherwise utilizes strategy. You gather resources/soldiers to prepare for ship journeys to slay monsters and gain glory. The dark mountain expansion adds land journeys and archers, which are a powerful offensive only unit. You can also play with 5 players. The valhalla expansion adds shield maidens and berserkers, both very powerful units. More importantly, it gives you souls of your dead warriors that you can use to fight legendary monsters or gain boons from the gods. You also get a chief dice and new chief powers. Both expansions add new cards and leaders. Personally, I like and play with both expansions. The player who gains the most glory wins and becomes the new jarl!!

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.