A Feast for Odin is a saga in the form of a board game. You are reliving the cultural achievements, mercantile expeditions, and pillages of those tribes we know as Viking today — a term that was used quite differently towards the end of the first millennium. In this game, you will raid and explore new territories. You will also engage in the day-to-day activity of collecting goods with which to achieve a financially secure position in society. In the end, the player whose possessions bear the greatest value will be declared the winner.

A Feast for Odin is a points-driven game, with a plethora of pathways to victory, with a range of risks balanced against rewards. A significant portion of this is your central hall, which has a whopping -86 points of squares and a major part of your game is attempting to cover these up with various tiles. Likewise, long halls and island colonies can also offer large rewards, but they will have penalties of their own.
Each year follows a familiar pattern of preparation, worker placement, and then meeting the requirements of your feast. The main phase of each year is a worker placement affair. You start with a selection of Vikings, and a large action board with a whopping 61 different options to choose from. Each of these will be arranged from left to right in one of four columns. Each column requires an additional Viking to activate, but they are proportionally more powerful.
At the end of each round, you will need to fill a feast table with food, alternating between plants and vegetable matter. You will also have a chance to lay the valuable green and blue tiles into your main hall. The configuration of these tiles must follow certain requirements, but your main goal is to both cover up a line of coin icons to increase your income, while otherwise encircling certain printed icons to generate those.
You will build your engine over time, following an alternating pattern of outward expansion and hunting against development and cultivation. It all comes down to how much you’re willing to take on at any one time, and what risks you’re willing to set yourself up with for their rewards.
 
Awards & Honors
2018 Gra Roku Advanced Game of the Year Nominee
2017 International Gamers Award - General Strategy: Multi-player Nominee
2016 Meeples Choice Award Nominee
2016 Jocul Anului în România Advanced Finalist
2016 Golden Geek Board Game of the Year Nominee
2016 Golden Geek Best Strategy Board Game Nominee
2016 Golden Geek Best Solo Board Game Nominee
2016 Cardboard Republic Daredevil Laurel Winner
2016 Cardboard Republic Daredevil Laurel Nominee
 
 
A Feast for Odin: The Norwegians expansion, includes a viking-sized number of additions to the game, adding new strategies and puzzle-tiles.
Renewed action board: The largest of the new additions, made of three double-sided pieces that can be flipped to show different actions based on the number of players, opening up new action paths and increasing the chances of players getting in each others' way. It contains new opportunities like butchering, elk-hunting, fishing, and thievery, along with changes for some old actions. It's now easier, for example, to play an animal strategy, because you can now get two of the same animals in one action. There is also a new fifth column with (better) actions that require only one viking. For example, you can now forge a grey special tile with a sword value of 8 or less by using an ore and only one viking! Another totally new 1-viking action is to do a "small emigration" using a whaling boat, which covers one space at the banquet table instead of two but is worth 7VP and costs no silver to do so. And as a bonus, you can send two vikings to this column instead of one to play an occupation card in addition to the action. The catch is, once you use an action from the fifth column, you can't place any more vikings for the rest of this round.
New puzzle-tiles: 2x5 rectangle (horse/pregnant horse/leather/vadmal) and 5 spaces in a "U" shape (herbs/pig/antlers/tools). The red versions of these tiles feature two new animals, horses (worth 6VP) and pigs (worth 1VP and breed every round as opposed to every other round) respectively, adding yet more paths for an animal strategy. There are also five new grey special tiles such as a pan, a hauberk and an anvil, most of which can be forged with ore. Also included is a third goods box to hold all the new tiles.
Four new exploration boards: Islands on the frontside (Isle of Man, Isle of Skye, Islay, Outer Hebrides) with Irish coastal viking-settlements on the backside (Waterford, Wexford, Cork, Limerick), where people from Norway came to stay through the winter, to trade at, and to settle nearby. Also included are renewed versions of the four exploration boards from the base game, with updated iconography and some with adjusted VPs.
New buildings: Also totally new is the idea of a random start-building. Everybody gets one of the six double-sided "artisan shed" boards, and whenever a player could build a shed during the game, they may instead build the front or backside of their artisan shed. Just like the stonehouse and longhouse, the artisan sheds offer new spaces to place orange and red tiles to earn bonus goods, silver and VP, and many of them require specific tiles to be placed in specific spaces. So everybody has another different start-opportunity - like the occupation cards.
VP tokens: Another new option is that, whenever a player would play an occupation card into the game, the player may instead discard the card for a VP token, which are worth 4, 3 or 2VP at the end of the game. A nice little competitive element, as there are a limited number of the 4VP and 3VP tokens.
Other stuff: The expansion also includes another mountain strip, more two-silver coins and more beans/mead and oil/runestone tiles.
The expansion includes another almanac about the new game-elements and their viking-history. 
 
Awards & Honors
2018 Golden Geek Best Board Game Expansion Nominee