(Photo credit to Grey Fox Games)
The town is being ravaged by Trolls and other horrendous monsters; they need a leader who will protect them. In addition, glory awaits across the seas! Do you have what it takes to rid the village and gain the glory to become the new Jarl? Find out as you and your friends gather in the 2-4 player game Champions of Midgard from Grey Fox Games.
Champions of Midgard is a dice rolling worker placement game where players are brave Viking leaders competing for glory (points). The game is played in 8 rounds and the player who has earned the most glory at the end wins.
To start, set the board out and place the round tracker token on 1. Shuffle the troll, Draugr, rune, destiny, merchant ship, monster, and journey cards placing them on their appropriate spaces. Select a number and type of merchant and military tokens based on player count and place them on the board.
Set the resources (food, wood) cubes; the warrior dice (sword spear, and axemen), favor, coin, and blame tokens out. Give each player a Viking warrior player board, a set of 4 workers, and two discs in their chosen color and starting resources of 1 coin, food, wood, swordsman, and favor token. Place one disc on the glory track at zero and one on your player board to indicate your color. Select the first player and you are ready to go.
The game is played in a series of 8 rounds divided into three phases; worker, combat, and clean up. Each round begins with the current player revealing the top Troll and Draugr cards and placing them face up. Fill each empty monster, resource, journey, and rune spaces on the board where indicated. Add food and warriors to the indicated spaces on the board as well.
In the worker phase, each player, in turn, orders, places a worker on a space on the board, and takes the indicated action. The board is divided into three types of action spaces (brown, red, and blue). Workers at the brown and blue spaces resolve the actions immediately, but red is resolved in the combat phase of the turn. Brown and blue areas are resource gathering actions; players gather food, wood, coins, recruit warriors (gather dice), and gain favor or runes. Players use resources to prepare for journeys to fight monsters. The monsters from journeys are stronger and gain more glory.
After every player has placed all of their workers, combat begins. First, any player at the hunting grounds resolves their actions. Next, whoever placed a worker at the troll space, roll their warriors to fight the troll. The player involved can remove one blame token (if they have any) and give 1 blame token to any player who did not fight the troll. Blame tokens reduce glory at the end of the game during final scoring. Any player who fought the draugr also gains glory and the rewards indicated.
Next, in player order, anyone who journeys to fight one of the monsters, reveals the journey card and resolves the action. Next, they have to spend food tokens for their warriors or reduce them from the journey. Any remaining warriors can roll and fight the monster. Each monster attacks the player’s warriors simultaneously; damage is assigned and if any warriors remain, the player wins and they collect the monster card and gain the reward.
During combat, players can use rune cards or favor tokens to make rerolls or any indicated actions before making the final results. Each monster has a number of health points needed to defeat them and attacks the warriors. In addition, some monsters can only be damaged by specific warriors. Combat continues until either the monster or all warriors are defeated. If the monster remains undefeated and no warriors remain, remove all of the damage from the monster
In the clean up, each player returns all ships, gathers all undefeated warriors, and adds one coin to each undefeated monster. Discard any undefeated Draugr and troll cards, as well as any revealed journey cards. Move the round tracker up and start a new round.
After the 8th round, it’s time for the final scoring. Follow the chart and whoever has the most glory is the winner.
People have described Champions of Midgard as Lords of Waterdeep with a theme. Gameplay is fast and a game lasts only about 45-90 minutes. It is a great combination of worker placement and dice rolling. The combat mechanics are simple: roll dice, add any bonuses from rune cards, use favor tokens to make any rerolls, and compare the results. There are many thematic elements that enrich the game and allow it to rise above other worker placement games; known for their mechanics more than the theme.
If you enjoy worker placement games but are wanting a bit more theme and complexity, then Champions of Midgard may be just the game for you.
Written by Ed Carter
Hi, I’m Lynn, and I Make.
Props, Cosplay, Scale Models, Home Projects, and just about anything else that involves me Making.
A positive podcast about video games. Chris and Ashley go over the video games we love. Updated biweekly.
Chris and Lynn
Evan Conroy
Ron Peterson
Join our Patreon family
1 thought on “Save the Realm and Become the Jarl! Champions of Midgard”
Comments are closed.