I mentioned in a recent article about Almighty that there’s a rash of godly games being crowdfunded at the moment. The campaign for For the Gods has just launched and passed its funding target within the first hour.

Mighty Boards’ game is a rather more sober game than Almighty but looks eminently playable.

For the Gods is a 2–4 player quick area control game in which you navigate your ship across the Aegean sea, building temples to the gods on your journeys. The tallest temple in each region gains the most glory, and the winner of the game is the player most blessed by the gods.

The game is played on a rather neat circular map, which has nice touches such as being dual-layered to raise the islands above the sea, and the god tiles at the edges are curved to fit the board. Temples are built from stacks of tiles, which put me in mind of the cathedral pieces in Rebirth, another Mighty Boards game.

Gameplay Overview

The first thing to do is randomly select (or choose) a player-dependent number of god cards, from 4 gods with 2 players to 6 with 8. There are a dozen gods in total, each giving players different bonuses when temples are ‘dedicated’ to them.

Players each have a bag of ‘stones’ from which to build temples: these have 0–3 pips on them, and temples can be constructed using only stones of the same value (unless you invoke Hestia, who permits you to use two different values). These stones are placed in a bag and players draw a hand of 5 to play each turn—a turn consists of:

· A player can move their ship along 1 or more sea routes, returning a stone to the draw bag for each route segment.

· Next, they can build a temple using some or all of the remaining stones in their hand in the region beside the ship—if this is the first time they’ve built in this region, they might have the opportunity to gain a ‘god stone’ into their draw bag (more on those in a moment); if it’s a subsequent visit, they can extend the temple you already have (each player is allowed a maximum of a single temple per region); or they dedicate the temple to a god by placing a previously drawn god stone on top.

· Finally, any leftover stones are placed back into the bag and 5 new ones drawn.

I mentioned god stones: at the start of the game, player-dependent numbers of glory tokens as well as the god stones of the selected gods are distributed across the board. The first player to enter a region grabs the god stone of their choice (if there is a choice!), the next temple builder gets the next one, and so on. When a player uses a god stone (i.e., adds it to their temple), they can invoke the god’s special ability. For example, if you dedicate a temple to Apollo, you can draw 7 stones instead of 5 on your next turn; Ares lets you steal the god stone from an opponent’s temple and add it to your draw bag; and as mentioned earlier, dedicating to Hestia lets you add different valued stones to the temple you’re currently building. With 12 gods to choose from, there is plenty of variability in these bonuses.

The end of the game is triggered when a player’s draw bag is empty; the other players complete their turns and then the game is over. The owner of the tallest temple in each region gains the gold glory token from that region, the second (in games of more than 2 players) gains a silver or bronze one. If only one player has a temple in a given region, they get both. Ties are broken by looking at the value of the stones used for the temples; and if there’s still a tie at that point, the tokens are discarded and no one gets the points. Note that the silver and bronze tokens all have the same value, while the gold ones vary considerably, so there will be a race to get the best ones.

Whoever has most glory wins.

Verdict

For the Gods is an attractive and well-constructed game, at least in the Kickstarter exclusive form, though it does come with rather overblown ‘trireme’ shields behind which players can hide their drawn stones. The retail version will have single-layer boards and less polished components (and no triremes); however, there are no pictures of the components, so we don’t know what the retail ones will really look like, but they’re sure to be adequate. (Some of the videos linked from the page show early prototypes, which include rectangular god cards rather than curved ones, so it’s possible those will be part of the retail version.) Rather nice-looking metal glory tokens are available as an add-on for those prepared to pay, but there are no other add-ons or stretch goals, which is a refreshing change from the norm.

The campaign pages cover the game in a fair amount of detail, with links to rulebook, Tabletop Simulator mod and several playthrough videos. There’s also a link to a ‘design diary’ post on BoardGameGeek for those interested in more background on the game.

Shipping fees are pleasantly low as well—in fact, if you happen to be in Malta at the right time, you can avoid delivery charges altogether by popping into their offices to pick the game up!

If you like lighter-weight area control games, this is worth taking a look at. Should you back it? While crowdfunding is never risk free, this one’s most likely a safe bet, and the price differential between retail recommended price and the current Kickstarter price amounts to shipping (and possibly VAT), so it boils down to you balance component quality vs an extra 30–50% of the game’s cost.

I have to confess that For the Gods doesn’t grab me quite as much as Almighty, and I’ll be happy to put off a decision about it until retail time—I can live without the Kickstarter nice touches.

About the author:

When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.