How different will the Danes be from AFFO? Gamefound rulebook analysis and first impressions
Transcript
We know it's bigger, but will the Danes be better than a feast roden? This is an exciting time to be a Rosenberg fan as we have more information now with the game found preview page for the Danes, the sequel to A Feast for Odin. We knew it was going to be a bigger game, literally. And if you know how big A Feast for Odin is already, then you know the Danes will be a massive box. In addition to that, we've got some information about what the game actually is and when it will release roughly. It looks like we will have crown funding starting this October and the game will be slated to arrive at doors in quarter 3 of next year 2027. And then finally, we do have more information in terms of a rule book and a booklet containing more information about the calpang of this game. More on that later, which is a big difference between the Danes and the base game. But I wanted to know how much will be different and what will be the same compared to a fee froen. I read the rule book and I want to relay some of the findings that I have for you to help us make this decision and ultimately kind of think about whether the Danes will be a better version of A Feast for Odin or if it's going to be a completely different experience.
So, first let's compare and talk about what is the same. Actually, most of it. So, most of the same resources. The overall objectives of the game are pretty much the same. Covering up your personal player board and other tiles that you play in your tableau, covering them with polyomino tiles to gain income and uh gain points. Essentially, all the phases of the game are pretty much the same. Most the tiles are the same that are coming over from A Feast for Odin and Norwegian's placement rules. A general sense of pretty much how worker placement works in this game. All of that is pretty much the same. So what's going to be different are the subtle rules and additional opportunities, resources, and other little things beyond what the base game offers. That's what's going to be different in the Danes. So, in a sense, I think it's correct to think of this as an expansion as it was intended to be at first, but now that we have so many of these little things added together, at least little tweaks to the game, it has become its own standalone game. So, let's start with the action board. The action board resembles the scaled version of the worker placement opportunities utilized in the Norwegians expansion where there is some scaling based on player count.
But now there is a special column uh to the far left and far right. And so the far left column A can only be used if it is your first Viking that you play in the round and the far right one is or column E is your last Viking. very similar to how the far right column worked in Norwegians. You also have the option every action, no matter where you place a Viking and if you still have one in your supply to place an additional Viking down onto that space that you just took and to be able to draw one weapon card and play an occupation card. So that kind of resembles what that far right column again was doing in Norwegians. If you place two workers down, you could play uh do that action and play an occupation card. But this one opens it up to all actions and makes it more flexible and easier to get some occupations and weapon cards down and played. The actions themselves seem to be and they work like they do in a feast for Odin with some small exceptions. I'm not going to go through everything, but for example, in the long distance trade actions where you would take your nar and uh buy special gray tiles, you can now use green tiles in addition to or instead of silver to trade for and pay for special tiles where each space covered by a tile on your green uh token or cardboard
piece that you're uh converting it, each space converts to a silver to pay for whatever you're trying to pay for. So, this also increases the flexibility to obtain and use special tiles. There are now action tiles that are variable and drafted at the beginning of the game. There are some more that come throughout the game as well, but based off of player count, you have a certain number of action tiles that you place on the board that will most likely be variable from game to game. don't know because there isn't a component listing in the rule book as of yet. But you can imagine that for a three-player game, there might be like three additional actions that are placed on the board amongst the other open spaces that aren't used to create a an alternate variable start uh of an offering of actions for you to take. So, this is very interesting.
There is the same board for special tiles, the special gray tiles that we were talking about before. It looks like it will be organized a little bit better with what can be purchased, what can be looted, and what can be forged. But on the backside, there is a similar print out to how the old version has that board set up. The environ strips or the environmental strips are mostly the same. They offer the basic resources. However, with what we can see in the rule book that it looks like some of them might have tiles that like orange and red tiles that are available for you to draft and and be able to use how you see fit. The personal board mostly looks the same with some interesting new additions. the bonuses and the income diagonal looks pretty much the same, but if you notice at the very uh far right as well as the top edges, there is an additional row and column added uh for space to place tiles down, which I think is really interesting. I sometimes in my games of a Face for Odin find that I am lacking the like I have a lot of large tiles and I'm lacking the space to put those tiles down. And so while this might increase uh more negative opportunity if you don't fill those tiles up, it also might increase the flexibility to place tiles that you might have retained in the later stages of the game to be able to
fit onto your main board and uh utilize them in a better way. In addition, there are two other features on your player board. You have immediate bonuses. So, if you cover all of the spaces that are that include the bonus, you will get whatever resource or resources that are listed there. And there's also a space to surround with your tiles that unlocks a copy action tile. So in other games or I should say in other Rosenberg games as well as in the feast for Odin depending on player count you have a copy action space to copy the action that someone else used with their worker placement Vikings. In this game, it looks like you have to work to unlock the ability to copy and then you place that onto your thing, which is where you keep your Vikings. And it so it appears that you can use that action space on your turn.
No one else can use it. And therefore, you can use it to copy someone else's action, which once again, the uh the word of the day is flexibility, and it gives you an opportunity to utilize. I think this would really apply to the mid and late game when strategies are uh are established and being uh you know done. They this action copy action would really come in handy to be able to use stronger actions that are being utilized at this portion of the game. And so this is a very interesting development for how that works. There's another new aspect to the game board or the player board rather with the tax board that requires filling the end at the end of the round. Very similar to how you need to feed your workers or feed your people at the banquet table. What you do is you choose one color to completely fill from left to right. So that's either orange, red, or green. So you choose one of those rows that you must complete out to the end of the row. And you can use any kind of tile. Well, I should say any orange, red, or green tile. You can place them next to each other, though. You can use silver. You can also use building resources to cover this up as well. So, I I you know, it's an opportunity that you need to keep in track, keep track of. You know, you're always making sure that you have enough orange and red
tiles to feed your workers at the end of each round. But now you have this extra opportunity to meet uh with paying taxes. The penalty for not paying taxes is not as harsh as feeding, but still it is an additional layer of uh of objectives that you're trying to fulfill uh on the regular during this game. The board for ships where it was separate in the base game is now included in the overall player tableau. And there are additionally uh two more ships to bring it to five. You have an additional fishing and an additional trading ship or nar. Uh they're they're called differently in the game of course, but more on how some of these ships work. There are some additional icons to what they offer, but for the most part they work the same just with different levels of strength.
Now, the starting resources are going to be the same in terms of everyone gets one weapon, each type of one weapon card at the beginning of the game, a me tile, and a starting occupation, one of two cards that are dealt to you. But now, you also additionally start with one red egg, which is a single tile, similar to a single silver, which is a new type of tile in this game. And based off the player count, you get an additional weapon card based off of your player turn order. At the beginning, you also start with a new die joker, which is a cardboard tile which can be used once per game to set any orange die roll or at least the one that you use that die roll for, typically for hunting or fishing fishing to and you set it to three. And so you can use your weapons and resources to subtract from three to be able to uh successfully hunt or fish, which may or may not be difficult at the beginning of the game depending on what you have. And so this is an opportunity to create a more fair experience if you go down that route in the early game.
So finally, the biggest difference in the Danes compared to the base game is the cowpang. Uh it looks like instead of exploring single island tiles, you will unlock boxes full of multiple tiles. They include the main Kalpang, which represents the island, but you also have additional building tiles, occupation cards, action tiles, and other special tiles as well. they are available and become unavailable in a similar fashion to how the islands are available at first and throughout the rounds if they're not uh explored. They are flipped over and eventually sent away. And so very similar to how the Kalpang will be handled here. Now, one word about the action tiles from the Kalpang.
When you surround the particular icon that represents the action tile in that Kalpang, you will take that action tile and place it onto the action board and you will gain a silver if you do so. And I believe it's just column A. And if anyone else uses that action after you, then they will have to pay you a silver in a similar fashion to other Rosenberg games like La Hav and or at Labbor. The additional buildings given in the Calpang boxes are once again only made available to you to build from once you surround that particular icon in the Calpang. And you can use uh special tiles to let you know if one is available to build and use or not. One is green, which says yes, you can build it. Red is I haven't surrounded it yet to kind of help you keep track of that.
And cowpang boards have construction spaces too where it looks like you need a a special special resource to be able to place on it, but you essentially can trade a building resource to build that particular thing like a grave or whatever it's representing. Finally, with the culp tiles, you can send ships to them permanently. So, you lose the ship and you lose the points it represents, but it covers up any negative points. And it gives you a one-time ability based off of the transportation icon, which is located on the ship card or the ship tile to take as many of orange and red resources as those that transport represents and to be able to place them onto your Kalpang. Once again, only once per game based off of the ship that you have placed to uh be shipped there.
And then finally, an overall variant to the game. The game itself normally lasts eight rounds, and there is a variant with rules to play in a shorter six round version. And the same eight and six round rules will apply for the solo game, which plays very similarly to the base game. Finally, what do I think of the Danes based off of the information that we have? So, I overall am very excited with the new changes and additions that this game is going to make. I like some of the small changes that are being made to the to the game to make things once again more flexible or easier to achieve like the die joker and using green tiles to pay for uh special gray ones, right?
It's these small tweaks that I think adds, you know, a lot more flexibility to this game and the opportunity to not be done in by the randomness, right? Uh there's there are dice rolls, you know, card flips, things like that. The action tiles that are set up at the beginning of this game as well could potentially hinder or support a strategy that you're pursuing. So, I'm excited to explore that. Of course, I'm excited to explore all of the new Kalpang sets and what they offer uh based off of when they come out and are a available during the game and how they might interact with the main resources and opportunities that the game gives as well as with each other. And so, a part of A Feast for Odin that makes it special is that it's a very chesslike game, right? And so I think this is the while both games will play overall very similarly, I think this is the takeaway that I I got from this that might persuade you to try this game or not, right? Based off of your preferences. So anyway, so A Feast for Odin, the way that a typical game for me, and you know, I've I've played this game about 50 times or so uh on mostly online. There are those who play it better and have played it more, but in my perspective, A Feast for Odin starts with and it might appear very sandbox in nature with a lot of different things to
pursue, but you kind of settle in on a certain particular strategy, whether that is, hey, I'm going to focus on getting as many islands as I can and filling them up, which is generally what you do anyway, but you can also subspecialize in exploring with ships, turning them over or immigrating with ships rather and turning them over for points. You can also focus on like with Norwegians, you can focus on breeding animals as a viable strategy, etc. Right? There are different avenues that you can pursue. And so it's kind of starts off I feel like you kind of pick and choose which direction you want to go. And at the beginning of the game, sometimes occupation cards sway you one way or the other. But then as you reach the middle portion of the game, uh once things are more established, like for example, someone has boats and they want to go fishing every round, uh maybe someone else is playing boats as well and they compete for that fishing spot or you find an opportunity to block your opponent from doing that. And so it starts off very wide, but then it gets very competitive with certain hot actions being uh competed for often uh during the mid and late game. And the same goes for islands as well. Uh you know, certain islands are tend to be a little bit better with certain strategies. And so if you know what strategy someone is going for, then you can get an idea of what islands they
want to pursue. All that to say is that it feels very chesslike. A feast for Odin offers randomness in a few areas. One being the occupation cards and two being the uh the dice rolls, right? And there are other ways as well like the environment strips and things. But uh basically there's not a lot of variability when it comes to this when you play a feast for Odin. And in my opinion, the occupation cards don't really make or break every single game. They may come and be relevant in a few games overall, but the chess-like experience is variable and makes the game variable and feel it because of what other players are choosing to do. It's not the game itself creating abundant variable starting situations or events happening throughout the game or, you know, extreme randomness as well to dictate how each game feels differently.
And so Rosenberg tends to make games like a feast for Odin, like or at labor, especially Fields of Arl, which are pretty static cavern, which are pretty static from game to game. There's slight changes to make things a little different every time, but the overall approach may or may not be the same, and things are different because of how players choose to make decisions and interact in different ways. And so playing with different players is what makes the game different every time. And this is very true for other games too. I've explored and talked about splatter games which this is very much the focus of player design or or uh board game design is having player agency be the focus of how each game plays differently every time and player account as well.
And so overall, I think the Danes is taking a an approach that is closer to what a modern Euro game tends to feel like with additional game set variabilities with the different action tiles and such rather than having it be more chestlike and more static like a feast for Odin is. And so that may or may not appeal to you. I think most of it is going to be the same and it's essentially going to be a feast for Odin but with like remove all the islands and include like a bunch of additional material to understand and and internalize with the new Kalpang sets. I compared this another comparison that I had with this was like Terrammystica was very much a game that you could analyze and not have a lot of variability or it's a very attainable um understandment of the uh variability that is present there. And then you have Gaia Project which has a modular board.
It has a modular tech tree and and so it feels very approachable. It's a lot easier to have people of different levels of skill play that game and feel like they have a fair shot versus a more chesslike game where the advantage I in my opinion is much greater for those who understand the game better. So I think that's the biggest difference. And then one final thought about the occupation cards. That's one area of a feast for Odin that I have a particular drawback to. I really enjoy agricula because of the card play and how core it is to creating an interesting experience every game. Finding the combinations of those cards to build out your asymmetric player powers throughout the game. And in a feast for Odin, a lot of those cards didn't offer that opportunity. And I think to the point where with Norwegians, you could just play those cards and just take a victory point token and not use the cards effect, right? And so it's this that same rule does apply here in the Danes, but I did hear on forums I'm pretty sure that the occupations were taken into account and will hopefully be either, you know, call it more balanced or call call them more relevant to the game. And so I'm very hopeful that they will play an additional role. I think what will help that is that there are certain
occupations that come with each Kelpang in addition to what I assume since we don't have the component list yet is are a stack of general occupation cards to take as well. But these occupation cards I think since they might be tied closer to the Kalpang may be more relevant to consider when you do take those sets and try to play them and maximize their benefits. So I'm very hopeful for that. And because of that, I am very excited to play the Danes. I think it's going to be like 80 80 to 90% similar, but it's the differences are essentially just more material in the sense of like an expansion with slight tweaks to the rules to make it more flexible and perhaps approachable to a wider audience rather than those who enjoy a more static and chess-like experience that A Feast for Odin offers. So, what do you think about this information? Let me know if you are excited for or are not excited for the Danes and what it has to offer. Let me know in the comments down below. Thank you very much and thank you for, you know, watching this video and hope you have a great one. Take care.