OUR REVIEW
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Cooperate to Avoid Ragnarök
YGGDRASIL
Vikings and Elves against Fenrir and Bifröst
Odin, Thor, Loki, Asgard, Midgard – all terms from Northern Mythology, known to nearly everyone, but Yggdrasil and other terms like Fenrir, Jörmungand and Bifröst, what is that supposed to be? Those among us who did watch Thor at the cinema or those who did read the Thor Comics from Marvels will be able to supply some answers to those questions. If you venture to play Yggdrasil you can close some more of those knowledge gaps.
Yggdrasil is an Ash, the World Tree representing the cosmos in total. In the game Yggrasil - which is a cooperative game for 2-6 players – you fight in Ragnarök. Ragnarök is the epic final conflict between Giants and Gods, which ends the world and is the end of the gods; and you fight 6 enemies that move from left to right towards Odin’s lair and must hold them back for the duration of 42 rounds. If you manage that, all players have won together. Let me tell you that that is very difficult with a higher number of players.
The very beautiful board, which of course represents the Ash and 9 worlds, shows a track of 8 spaces where you place 6 enemy tiles from at the left. Vikings, elves, face-down Giants deck, artifacts = weapons cards and Fire Giants are placed on their respective spaces. 4 bags in 4 colors, white, blue, green and black, are filled according to the rules with different mixtures of Fire Giants (equaling blanks later in the game) and Vikings (important for fighting).
Naturally, the white bag which is easily reached at the start of the game by the Valkyrie riders, which are one of the action options, is filled in a ratio bad for the players, whereas the bag that is hardest to reach is filled with nearly Vikings only. The other bags have a nearly balanced ratio. Each player draws a random god or – should you prefer this – you can choose a god. I recommend the powerful gods Thor, Frey and Tyr for the first game. The goddess Freya is not a bad choice either.
The move of each player comprises the drawing of an enemy card from the stack and then moving the related enemy one space to the right. Should that – when any player has completed his turn – result in the presence of five enemies on the spaces 4 to 7 or three enemies on the spaces 6-7 or one enemy on space 8, all players have at that moment lost the game. And that happens faster than you would believe possible, especially when 4 or more are playing.
When an enemy has advanced one space his personal ability/function is implemented. And these are – depending on the enemy – a big or small disadvantage for the gods (players). So if the enemy is Surt, he enhances a bag with Fire Giants by rolling the color die/combat die and throwing 1 to 3 Fire Giants, in relation to the current position of Surt, into the bag. Hel more or less has the contrary effect: he removes 1 to 3 Vikings from the bag. Nidhögg the Snake advances the enemy in the leftmost position one space, but fortunately his ability is not activated. Loki throws 1 to 3 randomly draws Giants at us – whereby 3 can amount to a veritable disaster– which are placed next to the Frost Fortress. Those giants block certain worlds, strengthen enemies or block the special abilities of gods. So Loki does not cur much favor with the gods. If the enemy is Jörmungard, he recalls the Valkyrie riders in Midgard back to the starting island and thus nearer to the bags of bad colors and also blocks an island determined by a die roll and thus blocks the corresponding bag.
Wolf Fenrir has an especially nasty action. First, he blocks all further possibilities of action for the player and must be calmed down. For this – depending on the current location of Fenrir – one die result from several possibilities (depending on the location) must be rolled. If Fenrir already is rather advanced to the right, you must roll white, which is shown on two sides of the die. Each attempt takes up one of the player’s actions. So this leaves him maybe one or two actions for his move, if worst comes to the worst, he has none action left. Then the next player would have to try to calm Fenric down. Of course, the next player also draws an enemy car. If this is again Fenrir, he is only moved ahead, but not activated – one furious wolf Fenrir is enough, after all.
After the advancing of the enemy and the action of the enemy is is finally the active player’s turn, who must do something, after all. He basically has three actions, but each action must be implemented on another of the 9 worlds. I will get you acquainted with some of those worlds:
At the start of the game it is a good idea to change the ratio Vikings to Fire Giants in the bags a little bit to the advantage of the players. For this, on the World „Kingdom of Fire“ you draw 5 tiles from a a bag of your choice and remove all Fire Giants, the Vikings are put back into the bag. On the “World of the Dead” – another choice of action – you put 5 vikings (insofar as some them are available) in a bag of your choice. And as easy as that we hopefully have improved the ratio of one of the bags a lot. Because we want to equip a few of our vikings from these bags using the action in “Midgard” to outfit them for the unavoidable fights on Asgard or the Ice Fortress. Because without vikings the fights aren’t much to made of. We move the valkyries one step (the islands have the same colors as the bags) and take 3 tiles from the bag of the island color. The vikings are given to the player, any fire giants unfortunately go back into the bag.
With an action at the „Dwarven Forge“ you can pick up a weapon of strength 1 or improve a weapon you already have by one level. This is possible up to a strength of 3. The weapons thereby returned are available for other players. There is a different kind of weapon for each of the enemies and those weapons are indispensable for Asgard, too. Without weapons you would have to sacrifice too many vikings to be successful.
In the „World of the Elves“ you can take an elf. These are even better fighters then the vikings, but unfortunately rather rare. There are only elves equal to the number of players +1 available for all players.
Finally, let’s take a look at the action „Fight“ against an enemy in „Asgard“, this after all is the main purpose of the game, everything else is just preparation for this. At last, we want to attack an enemy with Thors Hammer „Mjöllnir“ (or any other weapon)! To attack the active player take a number of his vikings that he – as is to be hoped – has acquired before in Midgard, adds the strength of the weapon he wants to use against the enenny of his choice and rolls a six-sided die. The result of this roll can be between 0 and 3 (0 and 1 are on the die twice, 2 and 3 only once) and you add it to strength and vikings. If the result now surpasses the strength of the enemy (between 5 and 8 depending on the enemy position) you have pushed back the enemy one space. Should the result not be high enough you can call for help from your elves. And if that is still not enough, surprisingly nothing happens. But that is the worst that could happen, because in fact we wanted to really impress an enemy with our strength and push him back one space. However the confrontation might end, the vikings are lost in any case; the elves only if you did use them.
Another possibility for an action is to fight the very annoying Ice Giants, introduced by Loki, in the Ice Fortress, where each giant always has a strength of 3. Unfortunately there is no special weapon for use against the ice giants. You can only use vikings, the die and elves against them.
I will pass to comment on the other two possible actions, “World of Darkness” and “Sacred Land”, World of the Vana, as they are not of such paramount importance as the actions I described.
After a player has exhausted his possible three action, the next one takes three actions and again an enemy is drawn from the stack, etc. Each of the 6 enemies is there sevenfold, as there are 42 enemy cards.
And the verdict is:
As all other cooperative games Yggdrasil too thrives on discussions and suggestions made by the players on what to do and how to act best in any given situation. And yet the active player takes the final decision regardless if the others believe it to be good or bad. Oh, one more thing! There is no traitor in this game, at least according to the rules ;-). As it is always necessary to adapt the level of difficulty in an cooperative game it is an excellent feature that there are “enraged” enemies in this game, which can move two spaces. In an acute fit of megalomania we tried to confront six of those „double move“ enemies. What can I say: The enemies in an excellent action moved 5 enemies out of „Nidhögg“ across the first border and 3 enemies across the second border and all was lost. The only thing that could have helped was the special ability of Goddess Freya, she can take the same action twice at a location, that is fight twice in Asgard if necessary. Unfortunately this goddess was not in play. Incidentally, each god has a special ability. Thor contributes +1 to the result in each fight, Frey has 4 actions, Tyr can roll twice and choose the better result.
For the die-hards among the cooperative fraternity there are the „Ragnarök“ cards; these are shuffled into the stack and advance more than one enemy one space.
To fans of cooperative games which have no shortage on chance by dice roll (like Ghost Stories, Witch of Salem, Arkham Horror or Space Hulk Death Angel) I can recommend Yggdrasil without restriction or reservation.
At http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/94614/yggdrasil-frigg-promo you can download another God named „Frigg“, he would allow you – at least in theory – to play Yggdrasil with 7 players.
Gert Stöckl
Players : 1-6
Age : 13+
Duration : 45+
Designer : Cédric Lefebvre, Fabrice Rabellino
Artist : Pierô, Gwendal Le Roux
Price : ca. 40 Euro
Publisher : Ludonaute
Web : www.ludonaute.fr
Genre : Cooperative game
Users : With friends
Special : 1 player
Version : multi
Rules : de en fr it nl
In-game text : no
Comments:
Joint edition from Ludonate and Z-Man Games * very attractive graphics and components * Nordic mythology beautifully integrated and explained
Compares to : Battlestar Galactica, Ghost Stories and other cooperative games
Other editions:
Currently none other
My rating : 5
Statement by Gert Stöckl:
An entrancing cooperative game in the tradition of Battlestar Galactica, without traitor, but with enough strong opponents to feel the heat!
Chance 1
Tactic 2
Strategy__ 2
Creativity 0
Knowledge 0
Memory 0
Communication 3
Interaction 1
Dexterity 0
Action 0