A Feast for Odin rules refresher

Read the refresher

You are trying to end the game with the most valuable possessions. You do that mainly by covering the negative-point spaces of your home board, exploration boards and houses with big green and blue goods tiles, while keeping your Vikings fed at the feast each round.

For setup, remember each home board has a seven round side and a six round side, so agree which length you are playing and use the matching side. Place seven Vikings on the numbered Banquet Table spaces, six in the short game, and put the rest of your twelve on the Thing Square. Each player draws one light brown starting occupation card and keeps it hidden, then the rest of the light brown cards are removed from the game. Each player also takes a bow and arrow, a snare, a spear, and one mead tile. Shuffle the dark brown occupations and the remaining weapons into face down stacks. Lay out the four exploration boards showing Shetland, Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland. Turn two mountain strips face up, three in a four player game, and stock them with the depicted goods. In a four player game add the two extension tiles to the action board, randomly choosing which side is face up. Put the round marker on space one and hand out the start player moose at random.

Each round runs through twelve phases in a fixed order. You take a new Viking off the Banquet Table, take the harvest shown under the new round number, turn an exploration board and place silver on the unclaimed ones, draw a weapon card, and then the action phase. After actions, the player who placed Vikings last becomes start player, everyone takes income, animals breed, you hold the feast, you collect bonuses, mountain strips are updated, and finally all Vikings come back from the action board. In the action phase, starting with the start player and going clockwise, you take one or more Vikings from your Thing Square and place them on exactly one unoccupied action space, then immediately use it. Spaces in the first column need one Viking, second column two, third three, fourth four. Each action space is used only once per round. You may pass at any point, and once you pass you are out for the round. The phase ends when everyone has passed or run out.

Now the core of it. Placing goods on your boards is an anytime action. Green craft products, blue luxury goods, silver coins and ore tokens can go into the placement area of your home board or an exploration board whenever you like. Green tiles may never be orthogonally adjacent to other green tiles, though diagonal touching is fine. Blue may touch blue, silver may touch silver, ore may touch ore. Nothing may overlap or overhang, and once placed you cannot take it back. The big numbers form the income diagonal, and you may only cover one of those numbered spaces if you also cover, or have already covered, everything to its left, everything below it, and the whole square to its bottom left. Your income each round is the smallest still uncovered number. The five spaces with goods symbols count as already covered, and if you surround one completely without covering it, you receive that good as a bonus every round. Houses are different: stone houses and long houses also accept orange and red food tiles and silver, but not ore, orange may not touch orange, red may not touch red, and the long house pillars can never be covered. Sheds require wood and stone.

On the action board, the green production spaces simply give you what is pictured, sometimes scaled to how many sheep or cattle you own, sometimes for a silver cost printed at the left. The dark yellow exchange spaces build sheds and houses from wood and stone, build ships from wood, upgrade goods like flax into linen, and let you play occupation cards for a stone or an ore. The golden brown spaces take building resources from the mountain strips, always from left to right, or upgrade goods one step to the next more valuable tile of the same shape and size. Blue spaces need a knarr. Overseas trading is the big one: pay one silver and flip any number of different green goods in your supply to their blue sides, though green tiles already placed on a board may not be flipped.

Whenever you place three Vikings on a third column space, you draw a dark brown occupation card into your hand before taking the action. Whenever you place four Vikings on a fourth column space, you may play an occupation card from your hand, before or after the action. In a four player game, the grey imitation spaces let you copy an action space in the same column that is occupied by another player, never an empty one and never your own.

The red spaces use dice. Raiding needs a longship and uses the orange die, and ore on the ship does not help. Pillaging needs a longship, you must use the one with the most ore, and you add one to the blue die roll for each ore on it, keeping the ore. You may roll up to three times, each roll cancelling the last, and you may spend stone and long swords to add one each. A battle result of five or less is an automatic failure. On success you take one blue goods tile, or a special tile, with a sword value equal to or lower than your result. On failure you get a consolation stone and long sword, and after a failed pillaging you also return one Viking to your Thing Square to use again. Hunting game, laying a snare and whaling work the opposite way: you want to roll low, and for whaling you subtract one for each ore on the whaling boats you are using, with negative treated as zero. Then you pay wood and/or the proper weapon equal to that value to declare success and take the reward. If you declare failure instead you pay nothing and take a consolation wood and weapon, plus one Viking back after a failed snare and two after failed whaling. A result of zero must be declared a success.

Exploration claims a board and adds it to your tableau. Shetland or the Faroe Islands need a whaling boat, knarr or longship and one Viking, and only on the one Viking space. Iceland, Greenland and Bear Island need a knarr or longship plus two Vikings. The American boards need a longship and three Vikings. You keep the ship, and any silver sitting on the board. Emigration flips a knarr or longship to its back and places it on the leftmost Banquet Table space, costing silver equal to the current round number, and permanently shrinking the feast you must serve.

The feast comes after income. You must fill every empty space of the Banquet Table with orange and red food tiles from your supply or stable, or with one silver coins. Orange may not sit next to orange, red may not sit next to red, silver may sit next to silver, and no ore is allowed. One tile of each type may be laid horizontally, the rest of that type must go vertically, and every tile must cover at least one square below the table without overhanging. For every space you cannot or will not fill, take a Thing Penalty tile, worth minus three at the end. Then everything on the table goes back to the supply.

The game ends immediately after the feast of the final round, and you receive no bonus in that last round. Place any leftover wood and stone on your sheds and stone houses and any remaining goods into your placement areas, then score. Whaling boats are three points, knarrs five, longships eight, and an emigrated knarr is eighteen, an emigrated longship twenty one. Exploration boards score the value printed in the corner, from four up to thirty eight. Sheds are eight, stone houses ten, long houses seventeen. Sheep are two and cattle three, one more each if pregnant. Occupations score their printed value, but only the ones you played. Count the silver in your supply, since silver on your boards is worthless, and add the final round's income instead of paying it out. The English Crown gives two extra points wherever it sits. Then subtract every uncovered negative space on your home board, exploration boards, sheds and houses, and three for each Thing Penalty. Highest total wins, and a tie means multiple winners.

A turn, played out

It is round 4 of the 7 round game. On your home board you have 2 longships, one carrying 2 ore and the other carrying 1. In your supply are 1 stone and 1 long sword. You place your Vikings on a free pillaging space and use it at once. Pillaging makes you sail the longship with the most ore, so the one with 2 ore goes. Your first roll of the blue die is a 2. The 2 ore make it 4, and anything 5 or less fails automatically. You roll again, and the new roll replaces the old one: a 3, plus 2, is exactly 5. Still a failure. You take your third and last roll: a 5, plus 2, makes 7. Now you choose what to spend. Your stone adds 1, bringing you to 8, and you hold on to the long sword for another day. With a result of 8, you may take any blue goods tile with a sword value of 8 or lower. You take one, and the 2 ore stay on the longship for next time. Had you settled for a 5, you would have taken a consolation stone and long sword, and 1 Viking would have come back to your Thing Square to be placed again. Placing goods is an anytime action, so the new blue tile goes straight onto your home board. You would love it over the next income number, but the square to the left of that number is still bare, and you may not cover a number until everything to its left and below it is covered. So you lay it one row lower, touching the blue tile you placed last round. Blue may touch blue, so that is legal, and it hides several negative spaces for good.