In 2025 I played over 80 board games that I hadn’t previously played, just under half the different number of games that I played over the course of the year. Of these, many were new releases, or ones that had come out over the past couple of years, a few were classics that I hadn’t played before like El Grande, Ra, and A Feast For Odin.
I’ve been a fan of Uwe Rosenberg games for a few years, dabbled in Agricola, and love Hallertau but hadn’t had the chance to pick up his magnus opus (in my opinion, and probably many others) until last year. The box it comes in is massive, and of a time when many board games were not this size, existing in a pre kickstarter era where more is always more but packed in this box are the many necessary components for building your viking homestead and filling it with all the treasures your heart desires.
What is A Feast For Odin?
What exactly then is A Feast For Odin? Well, Uwe Rosenberg has designed many, many games, creating a number of fantastic worker placement games in various different historical contexts and with varying tightness of resources but with a Feast For Odin he has thrown whatever the Viking version of a kitchen sink is at this one, with something like 60 or so action spots for you to send your Vikings to.
This is combined with a delightful resource management system thrown in, where you are using polyominoes to both feed your Vikings and fill up your player board, along with buildings and islands with the goods you’ve acquired to gain more income and resources for future rounds.
This may seem overwhelming, and at first glance, it absolutely is, but once you’ve played it once, you realise that many of the actions are in fact linked, and similar, with the core part being placing a different number of Vikings down to increase the strength of the action.
However A Feast For Odin is very much a sandbox type of game with many paths to victory, from whaling, to breeding cattle, to trading, to pillaging - there are so many options that at first this is completely overwhelming, but with subsequent plays you can try out different strategies and lean into the occupation cards with can assist you with offering additional aid if you follow certain paths that it becomes something that becomes enjoyable and intuitive. In fact I’ve played many games that have far less going on where even after multiple plays I’ve had to check up on rules more than I have with A Feast For Odin, which does also contain a handy almanac and reference.
Through the game, you’ll be mostly acquiring different goods, upgrading them and placing them on your board, which begins covered in negative points, with a long term goal of trying to cover these all up and end the game in positive points. You’ll do this each round by placing Vikings on worker placement spots to gain new food, hunt, gain animals, resources, build boats, trade, pillage and discover new lands (among some other things I’ve probably missed out).
The more vikings you place on a spot, the stronger the type of action you get to do, and play enough Vikings to a spot and you can play career cards to help you in your goal. Now that I’ve written it down sounds simple enough but with the board and all the pieces in front of you on your first play, you will have absolutely no idea where to start or what to do.
The more I’ve played A Feast For Odin, the more I’ve wanted to try completely different approaches each game, to varying degrees of success but always fun and enjoyable, I’ve always found I’ve had a enough to feed my Vikings each round, unlike the challenges in Agricola, and I’ve loved piecing together the rewards of my hard work on my player board to try and reduce the many negative points you have to try and cover by the end of the game. Finding new paths and tiles to upgrade to fill your board or island remains as exciting to me as the first time I’ve played it.
I’ve even played it solo a couple of times, which is easy and enjoyable, leaving workers placed in a previous round for the future round, limiting the spots you can go to and offering a beat your score approach. It certainly helped cement how the game plays for me, and made me adapt my strategy as I couldn’t keep going back to the same spots as I might in a multiplayer game, but I’m not sure I quite enjoyed it as much as playing Hallertau solo and feel like it’s with other players that this game shines best.
Final Thoughts
It’s very easy for games that came out a year or two ago to still stand out sometimes in a crowded market where the hottest and the latest Euro game is the best thing we’ve ever played, and from the art to the feel of the game, there is something about A Feast For Odin that makes it feel like it belongs to a different time. I regret overlooking the game before, thinking it was dated or overwhelming, and alongside the joyous Galactic Cruise, it tied for the best ‘new to me’ game I played last year and catapulted itself into the list of my all time favourite games.
So I guess in some ways, this is less of a review, and more of a love letter to A Feast For Odin, to its open and sprawling decisions, and to Uwe for throwing what seems like every good and bold idea he had into one game, a game for me is the pinnacle of what he has achieved so far, and one I adore and would be willing to play anytime. A Feast For Odin, I’m sorry I didn’t play you before, but I can promise I will come back to you again and again (particularly now after I’ve just ordered the Norwegians expansion)!
You might like
Sandbox like nature - more worker placement spots than I’ve ever seen in a game - Vikings!
You might not like
How overwhelming it is to look at - it’s a bit of a tough teach - very little player interaction other than blocking worker spots
Artwork - 3
Complexity - 4
Replayability - 5
Player Interaction - 2
Component Quality 4
Overall - 95%
