Overview
Midgard is an area majority game for 3 to 5 players with a Norse mythology theme. It’s designed by Eric Lang and published by Z-Man Games. Each player takes on the mantle of a Viking chieftain, battling to be the dominant clan over the kingdoms of Midgard before Ragnarok takes them all to the halls of Valhalla. Players draft cards each round and play them either to improve their position or sabotage an opponent, acquiring victory points (VPs) along the way. The player with the most VPs at the end of the game wins. Our games usually hover around the hour mark, a bit less with 3 players and a bit more with the full complement of 5.

Out of the Box
The components are not flashy but, while they don’t bleed theme, they are functional and of good quality. There are 100 cards; they’re kind of on the small side, but they’re nicely illustrated and have a nice finish. The wooden components consist of 55 Viking warrior pawns, 5 Viking leader pawns, and 5 score markers; all of these are divided into equal numbers in the 5 different player colors (red, yellow, green, black, and purple). The sturdy, multi-fold gameboard shows a map of Asgard with its three distinct kingdoms and accompanying provinces. It also displays three heavens (Asgard, Vanaheim, & Valhalla) along with 5 Viking ships (1 of each player color) and a scoring track. The ten doom tokens (1 for each province) and 120 kingdom tokens (40 each for the 3 kingdoms) are made from thick cardboard. The rulebook is pretty straightforward and reasonably short, ‘bout 8 pages, but this also includes a couple of pages with details on each type of card, as well as a one page turn summary. There are plenty of illustrated examples of game play to help you along.

The Cards
The 100 cards are divided among 3 different colors: 15 gold, 35 silver, and 50 bronze. Each card has a symbol and correlating action (in English text); the gold cards have a numerical value as well (1 to 15). The cards, like Olympic medals, denote their status by their color; gold cards have the most powerful actions, followed by silver, and then bronze. The bronze cards allow you to either invade an unoccupied village or recruit new warriors. The silver cards allow you to either attack occupied villages or horde up to three of your warriors into a province. The gold cards allow a myriad of more powerful actions, from scoring or destroying kingdoms to drawing cards or tokens to recruiting and placing warriors.

Set Up
Make and shuffle three separate decks of cards, according to their color, placing each deck near the board. Each player will choose a color and take the pawns and score marker of that color. They will place their Viking leader and 5 warriors on the matching colored ship on the board; the remaining 6 warriors are placed in front of the respective player. Score markers will be placed on the start space of the scoring track at the top of the board. Sort the kingdom markers by kingdom, and place them close to the board, along with the doom tokens.

Game Phases
Midgard lasts for three rounds, with each round consisting of five phases. The first phase is the Doom phase and consists of randomly drawing 5 doom tokens and placing them in the appropriate provinces. Next comes the Draft phase, with each player being dealt 1 gold, 2 silver, and 3 bronze cards. Each player will select a card and pass the remainder to their left, select another and pass again, repeating this process until each player has six cards in their supply.

The Action phase will then follow and each player will first reveal their gold cards, if they have any. The person with the highest valued gold card will play first. That player will play any one card from his/her supply, and carry out its subsequent action. Then play will continue in a clockwise fashion with the next player playing one card; this will continue until each player has played 4 cards. All players will keep their remaining 2 cards in their supply for possible use in future rounds.

The fourth phase is the Scoring phase, where players will advance their scoring marker in accordance with their position on the board. You score anywhere from 3 to 20 victory points per kingdom, depending upon how many provinces within each kingdom that you control. Control is determined by the number of warriors in each province, with a leader breaking ties. Next, for each province in which you have a presence, you receive one token of the kingdom in which that province resides. Last, you score the Heavens. The player with the most Vikings in Asgard receives 5 victory points while the player controlling Vanaheim selects any two kingdom tokens of his/her choosing. Vikings in Valhalla aren’t scored at this time.

The last phase is Ragnarok. All Vikings in provinces that contain a doom token are moved to Valhalla; each player having presence in a doomed province will receive 2 VPs per Viking. Once all doom tokens have been acted upon, all Vikings within Valhalla are returned to their owners, with each player receiving 1 VP per Viking, including those just moved there.

Play remains the basically the same for the next 2 rounds. The exceptions being that during the second round each player will play 5 cards apiece during the Action phase, and in the third round this will increase to 6 cards apiece.

End Game
The game ends after the third round. After scoring the round, the kingdom tokens are scored. Each player will divide the tokens he/she collected throughout the game into sets; a set consists of 3 tokens and must contain one token from each kingdom. Each complete set is worth 5 VPs and any leftover tokens are worthless. Each player’s scoring marker will be forwarded along the track accordingly and the player with the most VPs is the conqueror of Midgard.

Observations
Midgard can be a bit chaotic, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing in this game. The randomness of the cards you receive is counterbalanced by the drafting mechanic; you can select which card to keep and which ones to pass. The Doom tokens are another random element in the game but, since you know where they’re placed before you draft and play cards, you can plan accordingly. Also, I think the Doom tokens have a good balancing effect whereas they promote turnover of the provinces, thus it’s hard for one person to consistently dominate a kingdom.

Going first in a round is a disadvantage since the players after you, particularly the last player, are better suited to react to the changing board. That’s why the person with the highest valued gold card always starts the round; since that person has the most powerful card, he/she will have that balanced by having to go first. This was a nice touch by the designer, but I don’t think it completely nullifies the disadvantage. If you go first more than once in a game, it’ll be hard for you to win. So during the drafting phase, particularly in the last round, think twice before keeping a high valued gold card; make sure the reward is worth the risk. Also, make sure you play the high valued gold card in the same round that it is drafted; if you hold it as one of your leftovers, that card could make you go first in the next round as well.

Good decision making is crucial to the game and will most often decide the winner. There are tough decisions to be made throughout the game, not only during the Drafting phase but in the Action phase as well. Which card do you keep and which ones to pass? During drafting, there’ll often be two or three cards that you’d like to have. However, while drafting you also need to be aware of your opponents’ board position, since you want to avoid passing advantageous cards to them. Which card do you play and which ones do you hold for the next round? When playing action cards, you’ll be torn between establishing your presence on the board and trying to cripple your opponents. In my limited experience thus far, I’d recommend concentrating more on getting a lot of your Vikings on the board for the first round or two and concentrate more on attacking your opponents in the last round.

The game scales fairly well, but I think the more players there are, the better the game. The board gets crowded with more players, and makes the competition for the kingdoms and heavens fiercer. It plays okay with 3, better with 4, and best with 5.

Conclusions
Midgard is a solid addition to the area majority genre. It’s a game that’s easy enough to grasp and fairly easy to explain to others, but also has some meat to it. To win, you need good hand management skills, sound decision making, and just a bit of, but not too much, luck. I particularly like the drafting element to the game, as it’s a lot less random as opposed to being just dealt a fixed hand of cards to play. And at about an hour, or just over, the playing time seems to be ideal. The bottom line for me, however, is that the game is fun to play. I currently rate Midgard a “pillaging” 8.

The really cool balancing mechanic is that you have control over and knowledge of the cards held by the people who play after you in turn order. You need to use that to your advantage. Quite clever.

I agree...I really like how Midgard uses drafting as opposed to just dealing out fixed hands. As you stated, that gives you a bit more control and helps you to prepare for what might be coming. It knocks the random factor down a notch as well...

I dislike drafting in Age of Empires- but it works.
Here I don't think the drafting is worth the downtime. You already get to control your cards by building a reserve of them. I don't see how it helps you knowing what cards someone may have and may play.

Thinking of getting game and wonder if any players can reply back to this person's claim?