The Danes - Sneak Preview - Is Feast for Odin dead?
Transcript
Hi, my name's Paul Grogan. And in this video, the three of us are going to be giving you our first impressions and a quick overview of the Danes, A Feast for Odin game.
[snorts]
So, we've just played a full three-player game of it. And that was our second game of it because we actually had a practice game last week, which we didn't finish cuz we were learning it and we ran out of time. And we're going to tell you a bit about it. Now, my the first thing I want to say about it is that if you love Feast for Odin, you are going to be dribbling at the mouth over this game as as we were. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, it's like Feast for Odin plus
It It is It is Feast for Odin plus. This game [clears throat] was originally planned as another expansion to Feast for Odin like we had the Norwegians, which was an expansion that took for me a 9.5 game to a 9.9 game.
Yeah.
This is extra. And this is now a standalone game. This is going to be coming to crowdfunding at some point later this year. Uh this is not a paid preview or anything like that. We're not being paid any money for this, but Feuerland Spiele kindly sent me a copy of it because we all love Feast for Odin and I was very desperate to get a copy of it. And what what are my claims to fame, Paul?
You taught me taught me
Feast for Odin.
many many many years ago.
years ago. So, I got this game. What you think? It was like I was terrified.
And Feast for Odin is in my top 10 games of all time. So,
Yeah, in our top five.
And in your top five. And Rob, who I played this with [clears throat] yesterday, it's in his top three. So, I I think my initial statement of if you love Feast for Odin, you're going to get on well with this game, but I would stand by the statement that if you are new to Feast for Odin and you've heard of it and you've heard us talking about it, I wouldn't start with this.
It's be quite overwhelming.
It would.
Yeah.
There's a lot going on in this game. And I think one of the things that people have been asking me is does this replace A Feast for Odin? And it doesn't for me. Because if a group of people want to come around and say, "Paul, we're interested in this game." I'll say, "Right, well, before you do this, let's play this." And probably get a couple of games of A Feast for Odin in with the Norwegians cuz I think you can play with the Norwegians.
I would say I'll never want to play A Feast for Odin without the Norwegians. It irons enough wrinkles out. I think the original game was amazing, but the Norwegians, just as you said, just sorted a few bits out where this sorts a few other bits out but also gives you so much more.
And let's talk about that now. Let's talk about the tweaks to some of the core rules in this game which I really like. So, one of them is that whenever you are placing workers onto the main board on the one of the many different action spaces, you can always place one more worker than needed in order to play an occupation card from your hand. So, in the previous versions of A Feast for Odin, the way to play cards was
Certain spaces on the board.
Certain spaces on the board and then in Norwegians, there was the last column that if the last thing you did, if you played one, you got to do the action. If you played two, you got to do a thing. So, they've basically given a lot more opportunities to play cards. And I think for me that opens up the possibilities of of when you can play cards.
I played far more occupations today than I've ever played in any game.
many did you play?
Um
15?
Maybe 14 or 15.
Wow. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah, with A Feast for Odin, sometimes you play none or three or five if you're
You played 14 of them in the game today. Sally won the game today.
Huge pile.
Big big big pile of occupations. [clears throat] So, that's one thing I like. Another thing, and this is a really small change, but in A Feast for Odin and A Feast for Odin Norwegians, you could buy boats. You could build them by using the appropriate action and wood, or you could just buy them as an anytime action. And the value of the boat was exactly the same as the money that you paid. So it was almost a no-brainer that if you've got the spare money and you're not doing anything with it, you buy the boat. Well, there are now five different types of boats and every one of them is worth one fewer victory point than the cost to buy it. So it isn't a no-brainer. It's a such a small little tweak, but I really like that.
Yeah. There were so many tiny tweaks in the war. For example, the die. The die is now one fewer, isn't it? So it's not a D8, it's a D7.
The D8 is a D7, which doesn't exist. You can't have a D7, so it's a D14 with the numbers one to seven on twice. So that's easier to now go hunting, fishing, whatever. But the blue dice is a D14, which means you can now get bigger stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just It's just They They've tweaked the dice.
So it It just feels just If you played Feast for Odin and went, "Ooh, you know, I did really badly." You still can roll bad, you know, I did earlier.
Yeah.
But this does make it a bit more forgiving, a little more.
And Sally, do you want to explain what this is? Now this is a prototype copy of the game, so we're showing a little bit of cardboard that was printed off. But it's basically the picture of an orange die with a three on it.
So everybody starts off with one of those and at any point after rolling your orange die one time, you can choose to trade that in and it automatically turns the orange die to a three.
There you go.
Um which is really, really handy when you do a bad roll, which I did. So
But it's got to be done after your initial roll before you then do any rerolls. But again, that's another nice little tweak.
I I would play with I would play Norwegians with that.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, the big changes in the game is the cow pens. So in Feast for Odin and Norwegians, you have the islands and the islands would come out and there was four of them, I think, and then at various points in the game they would flip over. So, I think on round three the A would flip over so that what what was there is no longer there and you would put money on each of the ones so that they get more valuable the longer that they're there. That's all gone, but it's been replaced by these. And what we have is we have a whole series of boxes for all of the different places that the Vikings can conquer. And inside each of these boxes, don't worry it's not a legacy game or a campaign game or anything like that, but within each of these boxes are an island, two buildings, some occupations, some extra stuff.
There's a lot of detail in these and it's overwhelming at first, which is why I'm saying I wouldn't recommend this as your first Feast for Odin game. But, this is where the excitement comes.
And it really is so exciting. So, they all interact with each other. So, the occupations that come out with the cow pangs are tied in with them. So, I had Oh, actually, am I allowed to say?
Yeah.
I had Nottingham and it was based about there was a a kind of highwayman Robin Hood and so, yeah, there was a very much a theme to it.
Yes. And yesterday I had Dublin so, I had the the tavern and I had a meeting hall and things like that.
So good.
But, what happens is these are all a certain way up at the start of the game and then as time goes on certain ones will flip over cuz inside each of these boxes is two of them which represents the A and the B side of of the previous titles. Um so, yeah.
This is extraordinary. The the depth here, the variety here. It almost when you get one it almost feels like a separate game. You're trying to achieve unlocking new spaces for the board.
Yeah.
You try to get your occupations working. You're trying to new That's where the new buildings come from. Buildings are far more limited.
So, let show you let show you my board at the end of the of the game. So, this is This is my board. And what we have is we have my my main board. So, let's talk about this for a start because what we have is we have a bigger board now with some minus two spaces on there.
Lots of them.
So, you really need to spend more time covering the board. Other than that, the other main difference is as well as the feast, which gets harder and harder as you enter the spaces, you also have taxes. So, every single round, you need to pay your taxes, and you do that by either filling the orange row, or the red row, or the green row. But, you can fill it with wood, stone, or money. And there's all sorts of clever stuff that you can do here. You can put like an orange tile here that covers up the green. Like, for example,
The fruit.
Yeah, the big the big fruit tile. Wherever the big fruit tile is, pretend that that's fruit. Okay, you can put it there. If that was an orange tile, it would fit on the on the bottom, and it would it would go to the top. So, you can do that. But, I took over Roskilde as the as the place which I took over, and I'm just going to remove all of these pieces because that's what it looks like at the end of the game. [clears throat] Oh, there's the fruit. There you go. Um but, that's what it looks like at the start of the game. And again, there's so much detail in here. But, what you've got is it actually comes with two buildings. So, these are the two buildings that came with, which was the boat house and also the the butcher's shop. So, at the start of when when you get this, you get this you get the two buildings. You can't build these. So, what you do, and this is prototype components from another game. We put little red top hats on to say you can't actually build these. You've got to unlock them by surrounding the corresponding icon on here. At that point, you will unlock it, and you're then able to build it.
When you do build it, and it is a a level two building, once you've built it, you can then start filling it with goods. Now, these are buildings, so they follow the normal rules for buildings, but you will notice that there are these ship spaces. So, as an any time action, you can send the corresponding ships. So, this is a yellow one, so I could send this yellow one here, and you can send it here, and when you do send it there, you can carry with it five points of orange goods, cuz you can normally send red ones to here. Here, you cannot normally send red or orange, but if I was to send that there, I could send five points of orange and red goods. So, I could send this pig, for example, here, which normally you couldn't do. So, these are really clever. This one, I have this area here, and you are trying rebuild these fortifications.
The points, by the way, that you get for these boats, you lose those points if you send them here, and then once they're there, they're gone. But yeah, the amount of detail in each of these is quite interesting. Right, another thing that's interesting is these will come with extra action tiles. So, there's an 18B tile that went on there, and there's an 8A tile that goes on there. As soon as you have built on the spaces that are pointing to it, then you can, on a future turn, put this onto the board. And what will happen is you will take it off here, and you will put it onto the actual board. So, this is 8A, it will go here, and I will get a coin for doing that, and it's basically an extra action space, which has now appeared in the game. And anybody else who uses it, I get a money from it. Well, do you want to tell us about the action board? Cuz you we've now got five columns, and the first column and the last column are special.
Yes, well, if you want to go in the first column, you have to do that with your first Viking. Um, and that could be quite impractical, because you might want to go there subsequently, or somebody puts out a new thing, you can't do that. The final uh column, you have to that has to be your last Viking.
Mhm.
Um, or at least when you place a Viking there, you can't place any afterwards. So, that's to do with that. But what's really fascinating is these, you can see, are not in every single game. When you start each game according to number of players in the game, you draw out a random number. And so, on some games you've got some activities or action spaces that are available, some there aren't.
Yeah.
And we've got to find a way around it.
And this board is modular, so that it's split into sections and you flip over sections depending on the number of players in the game. So, we were three players, so we've got it configured for a three-player game. But as Mark says, the the actual action spaces in the fifth column will vary depending on on the game.
And there's upgrades as well, of course.
Yeah, so the one that I placed actually was a new action that became available. But Sally, you placed one that improved one of the existing actions.
I did.
So, it makes the actions on the board slightly better. Um, there's a lot going on in this game. We're We're not going to cover everything in this. This is just a very high-level overview about it. We got any particular things that you liked about it the most?
I love the power plants so much. I just want to play it again and again so that I can open up all of these and see what they all do. I just That was my best bit.
And you can see the amount of effort that's gone into the design of each of these based on the historical significance of the location and everything else. And that's one thing that I really like about a lot of Uwe Rosenberg games. Uh, you can read the like appendix or the glossaries afterwards to find out uh, what is this place? When did the Vikings take it? And what it's famous for. You built the Bayeux Tapestry, right?
Well, it was there and I thought
there.
Very tropical. Yeah, and I put it, you know. Very beautiful as well. Look at that.
Yeah.
Lovely.
Nice.
And great great shaped felt spaces.
Let's talk about the gray board. Let's move that off to one side. Let's just talk about the gray board. So, the gray board is bigger. It's grown again. And this is normally covered with tiles at the start of the game. But what have we done? We've finished them all, haven't we?
We have forced them.
This is at the end of the game. Um, but what you have is you have all of these on the various spaces. And, what they've categorized it is they've all got sword values, so they can all be raided or pillaged. The ones in the bottom two rows can also be forged. These can be traded for. And, anything over here is less than nine, because certain effects in the game will affect things that are less than nine. And, one thing that's really nice is they've printed the blue tiles on here. So, in the previous version of the game, I used to put the blue tiles on the board, so that people could actually see what they were. We're all very positive about this game. Again, this is not a paid preview or anything like that, so we can be completely honest uh with you. And, yeah. I've loved my three games of this so far, and I just want to play more of it, because I want to explore more of the Kaapangs. And, the more you get to know the game, you will realize which of the Kaapangs that you want.
Whereas, when you first start the game, you're like, "I've no idea. I'll go for that one." But, once you start leaning into a particular thing, like if you've got loads and loads of stone, you might want to go for a Kaapang that is trying to build a fortress, so you can spend the stone. And, they will each work in different ways with their own style.
And, there are all those little books that come with the game, aren't there, that do illustrate. So, it's not about luck. You could go and plan a strategy.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
I I do have one comment, cuz you've said about you probably wouldn't want to go into this new game.
I I I don't think so.
I think in the in the original game, when I first played it, going for an island seemed terrible.
Yes, because you're like, "How am I going to fill this board?"
You play a few times, and you're fighting over islands, you've got two or three.
Yeah.
And, I think you could teach [clears throat] this to somebody, but you'd probably say to them, "Look, go for a Kaapang number four.
Right.
Keep it simple. Don't go for anything else. This is how you get it, so you do it. So, give them a little bit of strategy, and just keep it to that space. It's still going to be hard, and you know, and it might be a bit overwhelming, but I think you could do some baby steps to it. The real game in this, I think, is when you go for two or three five times, and it And And that's going to take many, many
And in the game that we've played today, we both said at the end of it that if we weren't rushing to get it finished because we're hungry, we probably would have gone for a second one.
When it's game, I'll go for two.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I whipped two, and both of them completely and won, and yeah, it was great.
Yeah. But even though Sally did win, what was fascinating, again, like the best games, we all did radically different things, and the point span was only eight points.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't do any immigrations whatsoever. I was I was farming fish. So, I had I had pigs. I had pig breeding. I had pigs coming out of my ears.
Making lots of money.
You were making a lot of money. Definitely. Um but yeah, that's that's it. Just a just a quick overview video about the game. Very lucky to have been sent a copy of it. And I'm definitely going to get a few more games in. But yeah, thank you very much for watching. And as I mentioned, this is not a paid preview, so I'm able to do this sort of stuff thanks to the support of the Patreon campaign. If you like the content that I make and you want to support me directly and get exclusive access to behind-the-scenes playthroughs, such as the game that we just played this afternoon, then you can find all of that over on my Patreon page, patreon.com/gamingrules. Thank you very much for watching. Cheers, you two. See you next time. Bye-bye.