Grey Fox Games 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.

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?

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!!

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.

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)

Champions of Midgard is a worker placement, resource management, dice rolling game. It takes everything I loved about two of my favorite games , Lord of Waterdeep and Stoneage, and mashed them together. This game is a recent addition to my collection but has made it to the game table every time my game group gets together. You play as one of the viking leaders trying to become Jarl. You place your Meeples on spaces to recruit warriors, or gather resources, such as wood and meat. You must protect the village by fighting monsters, such as Trolls or travel a sea to face more dangerous foes. Along your sea travels you may encounter storms, or even the might Kraken! so prepare by making sure to stock your ship as full as possible. In the end whom ever has the most Glory becomes the Jarl. The randomness of the dice rolling is balanced quite nicely by the ability to re-roll them using your horns that are gathered by defeating less dangerous foes, and the ability to "plan" for the loss of warriors. If you liked either Lord of Waterdeep or Stoneage I highly recommend this game.

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.

This game is awesome. I own a ton of board games and this is the one that i ALWAYS want to play. When I ask the wife "what do you want to play?" I secretly want her to say CHAMPIONS OF MIDGARD every time. The art, gameplay, presentation, and overall feel of this game is 10/10. Sometimes theme is lost in worker placement games and things boil down to cube color, tile numbers, etc. This game the theme courses through the entire game and really puts you in the position of a viking clan in heated battle to become the new Jarl of the village. Plus it is easy to pick up, learn and teach. I was able to explain it to my 10 year old niece and after the first round of play she was right in the thick of it. I can't say enough nice things about this game. If you like worker placement, dice rolling, or just board games in general, you won't be disappointed with CHAMPIONS OF MIDGARD.

Emballage honteux. Aucune protection du produit, carton trop petit. Je ne commanderai plus ce type d'article chez Amazon. La boite de jeu est cisaillée sur 2 arêtes. Pour un jeu à 50 €, ca fait mal au coeur....

Always enjoy to play.

Es un eurotrash donde las mecánicas cazan perfecto con la temática. Es un must si te gusta la colocación de trabajadores. Y si te gustan los vikingos es GENIAL. Lo agarré en descuento (me parece que 800 o 900) y además llegó antes de lo esperado en excelente estado. Gran compra! Sólo tres detalles que no me encantaron: El reglamento no está muy bien redactado (tuve que buscar en internet una edición revisada y ver varios videos tutoriales) así que es un poquitín tardado de aprender. Por otro lado creo que los enemigos se vencen demasiado fácil: con máximo 3 de daño ya acabaste con ellos. Creo que los combates deberían ser más retadores. Por último, siento que los recursos podrían ser mejorcitos (madera y carne son simples cuadritos cafés y rojos; monedas, favores y culpa son piezas de cartón), aunque eso aumentara un poco el precio, lo valdría. Lo que yo haré es “tunear” mi juego para hacer los recursos más realistas. En FB hay quien te los puede hacer con resina.

This is such a great game! I love worker placement games, but sometimes they can just feel a bit dry and dull. Put worker there and get resource. There is little risk or excitement because the outcome is guaranteed. CoM really combines great worker placement mechanics with the risk of dice rolling combat - and imo it does it very well, balancing the risk and bad rolls, with chance for reroll and using rune cards to turn the tide of combat. People say the expansion Valhalla is a must, I personally havent played with either expansions, and I think the game is great on its own. Sometimes you do get a really bad combat roll which will set you back quite a few points - this is sometimes game changing. Valhalla aims to balance this, however I dont think its absolutely needed. It's quite a complex game for people to understand at first, just because of the shear number of worker placement, combat and card options. However from our experience by round 2 people have grasped the basic mechanics and enjoy the rest of the game. I imagine Valhalla and Dark Mountains add yet more options that for a 1st play through would be a bit overwhelming for new players.

The game is interesting and fun. Instructions and board prompts make it easy to learn. The 8 rounds per game help you learn by through repetition. Lot's of different strategies can be tried to add variations to the game. It can be fast moving depending on how fast the players make decisions.