Review: In the name of Odin – Become a new Viking jarl

Old jarl can already smell the death on his tongue a Odin is about to call him. This is your chance to get the throne for yourself. But there are others, who would like to rule as well. Only the one who can become the most famous amongst the people can rule in the Odin name.

In the game In the name of Odin gamers become one of the chiefs of Viking tribe. Your goal is to raise you fame, extend you village, undertake sea expeditions and conquer others. Game was released in 2016 by Romanian company NSKN Games and the author is Krzystof Zieba. It’s a strategic game of euro type games, which is run by cards. Gamers have lots of possible actions to do – build new building in your village, hire champions a Vikings, construct and repair vessels and most importantly sail to plunder.

Game is intended to play in 2-5 Vikings of 13+ years and to become a jarl will take around an hour.

What you are going to find in the box

The box is full of gaming components. Arranged game is dominated by a big game plan, graficaly very successfully done, made as a old map. Game plan serves only as reference board to know where to put on cards and tokens, that are available. Every player has his own game plan that represents his village and a scoring disc of his colour.

Most of the things are dealt by cards, cards are more than 150. Most of them are action cards, that allows you to make specific actions. Other cards allows you to build, hire, construct ships and then there are cards for raids.

Two piles of tokens representing building materials and damage are appended by 90 miniatures of Vikings. We got three types of Vikings – red warriors, black

Everything is completed by set of uncluttered rulebook.

Components are of great quality a graphically very well done and they bring the right atmosphere.

How is it played

In the game your goal is to gather as much points of fame as possible and become the most famous Jarl. You get points for building village and ships but most of them you get by raids a plunder. When is everything plundered, game ends.

Game has interesting mechanism of card using. In your turn you have at your disposal six cards, that have two kinds of symbols – At the top is symbol for hiring new Vikings and at the bottom is some kind of action. In you turn you can do as much actions as you wish, sometimes you can even redo the one you already did, but you have to manage.

What you can do?

From the supply on the game plan you can trade one card with a card in your hand, this action you can do once in your turn. Others you can repeat.

Every player has his individual player mat, that represents his village. There are places for hired Vikings, champion cards, ships and buildings. There are 5 types buildings (shipyard, Rune circle, forge, Jarl’s house and tavern). You can build just one building from each type. Buildings can give you upgrades so you have to choose between upgrading an action and having the more points at the end. But before you start building, you have to have enough materials, materials become more and more expensive depending on the buildings already own.

For symbols at the top of the cards you hire new Vikings – black for merchants, blue for sailors and red for warriors, more you have of the same colour, cheaper they become.

From offer on the game plan you can pay for services  of one of the champions and either choose to use his special ability or to choose him as a leader of your raid.

One of the free places on the desk is for anchorage for you Drakkar. Not even ship cards are the same – some can carry more than others or they can go further and some can give you fame straight away. You can have just one ship at the port, but others can search the sea. And of course you can repair them as an action.

Now to the most important thing. As a true Viking you have go to raids to remote shores. On the game plan is a option for raids, but to use it, you have have a ship, that can sail that far and a hero that will lead your raid party. Further on the card is shown which vikings you have to take with you and how much fame you get. When you set sails other players get a chance to stop you. This represents unforeseeable events –  every player can play a card, until there are 3. Then you have to pair their symbols. Then you either get more points or you loose some.

When you don’t want to play more actions, you just draw cards until you have six in hand and it’s next player’s turn.

The game ends when all raid cards are used, at this time everything is counted and the player with most fame points becomes the new Jarl.

Infos courtesy of boardgamegeek.com. More Infos.