Gods from afar go to war in ASGARD...

 

 

So I hope my little intro video was viewable? If not, I am sorry about that, this is my first time trying to add a video to my blog and in fact, just creating a video. Wow I think you have to film short shots in order to edit it after instead of one long video which you probably can't cut parts out (like the one I tried to do with actual review - I sneezed very loudly and also my head was cut off - ok I am using a simple camera and not a video camera - my bad for that).

Anyways, getting to the review of the game.

I had a couple of negatives with this game: first major one was that the game was very long to setup and was quite hard to figure the round and turn sequences. There are a lot of rules and special rules and so on that you have to read and re-read the rules. I setup a 4 player game and ended up only getting through one round and it took me a total of about 2 hours in total; I am sure that if it was all setup and I played a second time, I think it would be faster but it was a very complicated game.

Just look at the size of the board and all the little tiles, figurines and cards... Just think about trying to place all of this on the board... it took me about 30 minutes to do this.

Another negative was that it seemed that certain areas on the board were not defined until the end of the rulebook and yes you are supposed to read the entire thing but it would have been nice to see a board layout with area identifications and what the area does.

They do give you a board layout but just in order to place all the little things.

I also have to say that Thor looks kind of dinky in this game.
Now on the other hand, the artwork is really nice in general and board looks really nice. The actual God cards are well illustrated and the little figures are well cut and detailed (as far as detail can go on little wooden figures - but at least you really know which is a giant - larger black figure).

The point of the game is to accumulate as many victory points by the end of the 5th round (and the 5th round is the final battle between the gods) and you do this by following very long and strange phase actions.

You start the game with 3 influence discs and these count towards taking actions from the gods.
In the first phase, you take 3 God cards from your pile and each player (starting with the first player which was decided randomly with the turn tiles) shows one God car and takes their influence disc and places on the Gods' square (each God has different abilities and rune stones - the stones are needed to build temples which give you victory points); if you look at Thor above, if you place a disc on the top rune, you get 2 runes from his supply and you also get the special ability of playing another turn, if you place a disc on the bottom right (temple spot), you can build a temple (if you have the right stones to do it) and then you must pay the God one unit to him or her (which is identified on the bottom left - topmost of the two) and then place your disc there (making it that you lose a disc, thus a future action possibility).

You can also place your disc on the Asgard area, which again should have actually been identified on the actual board, which then allows you to recruit new units, purchase new influence discs (which again is really long to explain) and take those discs and go to battle.

So this goes on until all players have place all three discs and then you move on to the action phase.

In the action phase, there is a lot going on, but once again, in turn order to choose which disc to remove from a God and take the action (which could be taking stones, building temples, or much more stuff - each God has their own unique abilities). Now if you are in the Asgard area, you have many actions you can take (like I mentioned previously).

Then, if needed, there is a battle phase which is cool but just adds more complication to a game that has so much going on at the same time... you really need to focus and look at everything on the board.

So that is all over and the round ends and then you refresh the board and start all over again but this time you add a new evil God to the mix (sorry to mention this so late, but there are three Gods that come into play as the rounds progress).

I don't even know how to really explain this game without actually creating an actual video demo of the game because there is just too much going on in this game.

I was looking forward to playing it and I think it will be a lot of fun playing a real game, but for now...
This game gets 2.5 dice out of 5.

Once again, this game was provided by and available to buy at Multizone