A Feast for Odin: The Pig Strategy

The Animal Strategies Chapter Four: The Sheep Strategy

The Preamble

As a game engine, pigs generate not only bones, meat, spice, herbs, and silver (and possibly wool given at least one sheep) from Livestock Market and weekly market action spaces, they generate more pig tiles free during animal breeding which can upgrade via Mountains and Trade to elk horns and tools. As mentioned in the Sheep Strategy, Sheep Strategists will want to familiarize themselves with this chapter, as Sheep Strategy can easily produce pigs by upgrading herbs obtained on the 4V Weekly Market.

While pigs are generally the weakest of the animal strategies, not having the big scoring opportunities of sheep, the tremendous upgrade potential of cattle, or the sheer point value of horses, pigs are a decent B strategy.

The Caveats

The nicest thing about pigs in A Feast for Odin is their breeding rate, which occurs twice as fast as the other round, so that new pigs come once a round, so long as you have two in your stall.

Before you get too excited about this rapid reproduction, pigs also have the least potential to be exploited as a dominant strategy, as they don’t have the scoring opportunities of sheep, the big coverage of upgraded cattle, or the point value of horses. What they do have, aside from their fast breeding, is 1) a tremendously useful polyomino shape that easily activates strategic bonus squares, and 2) this convenient polyomino is also the perfect shape for longhouses, either quickly activating a bean bonus or halfway circling the oil barrel bonus, and, in any case, being a great help in endgame, when you discover that they’re worth much more points in your longhouses than they are in your stables. While you may be scrambling for points in endgame if you make pigs your A strategy,

pigs are an extremely versatile B strategy.

When you have both pigs and houses, always remember that animal breeding occurs before bonus phase. While you might be able to activate a house bonus during action phase, you can possibly do so during breeding phase, as laying a tile on a board is an anytime action. E.g., having bought two pigs in round one of the Harvest short game, you’re a little short on food due to starting with the 1-1 Harvest, and don’t have quite enough food to activate the flax bonus in the Spinnery after action phase. (Remember, in the Harvest short game, the artisan sheds start built, but not filled.) However, the third pig you receive in animal breeding phase, combined with a single peas tile, activates both its flax bonus and 1 income.

Due to their usefulness in conjunction with a house strategy, it’s good to pursue early stone bonuses, so that you only spend Vikings on building houses, not on taking stone from mountain strips.

Just as for other Animal Strategies, the Mason’s Shed has strong synergy with Pig Strategy, as you will want the stone for houses. Other sheds that are strong include the Spinnery (a super easy activation of income and bonus with your first bred pig and one pea), the Hermit’s hut (the pig half-solves the herb bonus), and the Pig Sty. When solving the Pig Sty, remember that you can place tiles as an anytime action in A Feast for Odin. That is, a pig made during breeding phase can be placed before bonus phase, so that your brand new pig can definitely trigger the meat bonus the same round, assuming that you have the goods for the floor of the Pig Sty (either a grain or a peas and two silver, or any other suitable combination).

The Action Spaces

3V Build Longhouse or 4V Build Knarr/Longhouse

2V Build Stonehouse or 4V Build Longship/Stonehouse

While longhouses are a good investment with any animal strategy, they are particularly suited to pigs, which can be placed directly inside longhouses, either working toward an oil barrel bonus, or activating the bean bonus with no other tiles required.

Stonehouses also pair well with a pig strategy. Usually, stonehouses are a niche strategy in A Feast for Odin, for while an early stonehouse pays off five or six pelts over a game–a substantial advantage–they are of diminishing value as rounds go by, and are, moreover, difficult to fill, having not only a weird shape, but requiring useful lumber and stone to score their full VP value. Often all three stonehouses sit untouched for the whole game, as the longhouses are pursued aggressively, being seen as more worthwhile and easier to fill. With pigs, however, not only is the stonehouse pelt bonus activated super easily and quickly, but filling the stonehouse is a three-tile breeze: flax, pig, pea, done. This makes a midgame acquisition of a stonehouse a more interesting venture, as what is already half-done (by virtue of having a pig tile ready for the stonehouse) is a more profitable investment.

Pigs placed in houses lose their 1 VP point value, but as they cover three points in a house, it’s a good deal. In endgame—specifically, after the final round’s action phase—place as many pigs in your houses as possible, abutting them to orange tiles to cover as many negatives as you can. Obviously, use mead, fish, and meat first, but any time you must use a pig’s one point to cover three negatives, it’s worth it. If you trade one point for three points four times, you just added eight points to your score!

5th column Livestock Market (trade a pig for bones and meat; as it’s an Exchange Space, you lose the pig.)

Compared with whaling, the 5th column Livestock Market is a fantastic deal for 1 Viking. Examine the yields of both spots: 8 green squares and 9 red for 3 Vikings, or 6 green and 4 red for only 1 Viking. While you give up a pig for the latter, the former require whaling ships, which represent either lumber and actions or hacksilver, an investment increased by ore and/or weapon cards, with some overly cautious players spending as much as 3 lumber, 3 Vikings, and 3 ore on whaling fleets. Buying a breeding pair of pigs to exploit the 5^th column Livestock Market round to round requires only 3 Vikings and 2 silver, or even better, upgraded herbs.

This is pig strategy’s “pillaging” action, comparable in strength not only to pillaging but Sheep Strategy’s 3V Weekly Market, as the bones covers six squares on the home board or exploration boards and the meat covers 4 squares in a house. Translated into a point value, when you assume that the bones could be used to cover six negatives and the meat could be used to cover two negatives in a house, this is a consistent 8 point action. The best part of pig strategy is that you can hit this action space once a round the round after you acquire your breeding pair. E.g., if you buy a breeding pair round one, you make a third pig in breeding phase which you can then turn in for a bones and a meat on the 5^th column Livestock Market. As you still have two pigs at the end of the round, you make a third pig again, which you can turn in round 3 on the 5^th column Livestock Market.

Not only is this action space the best scoring opportunity for pigs, but by paying an additional Viking, you can play an occupation card. The right card in hand can make this action space even sweeter. Alternatively, you can use the card play to amass VP chips.

While the 5^th column Livestock Market is often a niche action you can keep all to yourself, there can also be competition for it, as pigs can be acquired via upgraded herbs, unlike the other animal tiles. Players to watch: anyone with sheep and the player who has the Hermit’s Hut. Sheep Strategists may think of upgrading herbs acquired on the 4V Weekly Market to pigs, and the Hermit’s Hut builder should do this as soon as they have a pair of herbs.

Other than the potential for competition, the other downside to this action space is that by using it, you don’t have a pig to place in a house.

4V Weekly Market.(spice, silver, herb, plus an occupation card play; with pigs, take a meat tile; with sheep, take a wool tile. As it’s a Production Space and not an Exchange Space, keep the pig and sheep source tiles.)

While this space is much better with sheep, even without one, the 4V Weekly Market’s a decent play with pigs and a good occupation card to play, yielding a spice, a meat, an herb, and a silver.

That said, if you want to make pigs your dominant strategy, buy a sheep so that you get a wool, a spice, a meat, an herb, a silver, and a card play whenever you land here. (And if you’re going to buy a single sheep, you may as well spend a silver less and a Viking more and get a pair of them and an occupation card, which means you’ve just committed to Sheep Strategy as well…) If you have not only pigs but sheep, and houses to hold the meat and herb for scoring purposes, this is potentially a 16 point play plus the point value of the occupation card. And as this is one of the more undervalued action spaces on the board, you often have it all to yourself. While it’s expensive in terms of Vikings, it’s a great value, worth 4+ points a Viking when you have all the prerequisites and a house, and it’s worth this much at any point in the game, whether in the early rounds or in the endgame.

1V-4V Mountains and Trade

It’s generally better to upgrade the largest tiles possible, but pigs do upgrade to elk horns and tools, which are useful in solving exploration boards and activating bonuses.

For instance, let’s suppose you want to activate your homeboard stone bonus round 2, so it pays out 4-5 free stone during the game to put toward longhouse purchases. Having already bought a breeding pair of pigs round one, and a third pig from round one animal breeding, you must only craft flax to linen for 1V, then upgrade the pig and linen to elk horn and silk with 1+ Vikings on Mountains and Trade, and voila, free stone.

Upgrading pigs to elk horns helps a lot in solving Shetland’s bonuses, as well as Isle of Man’s, Newfoundland’s, Cork’s, Labrador’s, Iceland’s, Baffin’s (the whaling meat and the lake), Greenland’s (the whaling meat and mountains), Islay’s, Bear Island’s, and Faroe’s.

However, upgrading too many small tiles will make your score lag compared to other players. As a rule of thumb, it’s best to upgrade sheep-sized tiles and larger. Upgrading a pig to an elk horn covers five squares, while upgrading a cattle to a jacket covers twelve squares. If you pit two players in an upgrade war, one with cows and one with pigs, my money is on the cows, even given the pigs’ faster breeding. Not only is the coverage of 4-5 upgraded cows better than the coverage of 7-8 upgraded pigs, but the placement of jacket tiles triggers a lot more income than the placement of elk horns. Sometimes covering the right five squares is better than covering any twelve squares, but not as often as you’d think. That said, pigs upgraded earlier and used for the purpose of activating a strategic bonus can pay off big during a game, as in the aforementioned early stone bonus activation.

While upgrading too many pigs in a game can set back your score, upgrading herbs to pigs is an excellent move, especially to produce your first breeding pair of pigs.

Appendix 1: Getting Your Pigs

In pre-Harvest Norwegians, you can buy a pair of pigs round one by the following action chain: 2V Weekly Market, 3V Livestock Market.

In the Harvest long game of Norwegians, you can either use the above action chain, or with the silver token, you could take the 1V Weekly Market and the 3V Livestock Market.

In the Harvest short game of Norwegians, you can take two pigs as your opening move with the 3V Livestock Market, or you can use the 4V Livestock Market if you start with the 1-2, 1-3, or 1-4 Harvests.

Unlike sheep, cattle, and horses, which have no underlying orange tile that can upgrade to them, pigs can be produced not only in the Livestock Market, but on an “installment plan,” from upgraded herbs obtained in the Weekly Market, the Hermit’s Hut, or the Outer Hebrides.

As Sheep Strategy already uses the herb-producing 4V Weekly Market, sheep players will often have pigs breeding by mid-game. Similarly whoever has the Hermit’s Hut can easily make a breeding pair of pigs by round 3 by taking his round 1 and round 2 bonus herbs to an upgrade space in round 3. Someone may also choose to hit the 5^th column Weekly Market in back to back rounds, then upgrade the two herbs acquired in the following round. While this still costs at least 3 Vikings, you’re also acquiring silver and mead by this route, and can play occupation cardspaying extra vikings on the 5^th column Weekly Market. Moreover, you don’t feel the loss of 3-4 Vikings all at once in this method, unlike buying them on the 3V or 4V weekly market, which can make a big dent in your actions in a given round.

Unlike Sheep Strategy, in which it is best to buy a breeding pair round one to maximize future 3V Weekly Market yields, with Pig Strategy, it can make sense to buy not a breeding pair of pigs, but a pig and a sheep, the better to exploit the 4V Weekly Market, then acquire your second pig via upgrading an herb. This is especially good with the Hermit’s Hut, as you could upgrade your first bonus herb to complete your breeding pair. You could also potentially use the following action chain in basic Norwegians–2V Weekly Market, 3V Livestock Market (pig + sheep), 5^th column Weekly Market, using the herb from the 5^th column to upgrade to your second pig in round two and complete the pair. In the Harvest short game, try the following: 3V Livestock Market (pig + sheep) and 4V Weekly Market (wool, meat, spice, herb, silver), which gives you not only the herb you want to make your second pig, but two income from placing the wool on your home board, extra food for your artisan shed, a starter tile for an exploration board next round (the spice), and an occupation card play. One disadvantage in not acquiring your breeding pair round one is it delays your use of the 5^th column Livestock Market. So if your strategy will center on the 4V Weekly Market, choose the pig+sheep method described in this paragraph, while if your strategy will depend on the 5^th column Livestock Market, buy the breeding pair.

You can also make pigs from Isle of Man, and whoever does so will soon be making two pigs a round, one from breeding and one from the island bonus. On top of its fast income—very strong for a 1V island—this bonus pig, which soon becomes two pigs a round, is what makes Isle of Man so strong. If you’re a strong puzzler, and can fill A Feast for Odin islands in a round or so, Isle of Man is probably the best way of getting pigs to source for Pig Strategy, as with two pigs a round, you’re able to use one on the 5^th column Livestock Market and the other to activate a house bonus.

Appendix 2: Occupation Cards That Enhance the Pig Strategy

The Starter Cards

Messenger, Middleman, and Milkman aren’t as useful for Pig Strategy as the other animal strategies, as your go-to action space, the 5^th column Livestock Market, is not on the Weekly Market. If you’re using the 4V Weekly Market, however, perhaps in the method described at the end of Appendix One, these cards have a lot of value. If that’s the case, read the section on these cards in my earlier post, The Sheep Strategy.

Tanner (47A; as an anytime action, turn a meat tile into a pelt) can be strong when using the 5^th column Livestock Market, as instead of bones and meat, you can take bones and a pelt, two green tiles with only one Viking.

Meat Inspector (26c) can pay off well if you play it at the right time.

Farm Shop Owner (53b; as an anytime action, upgrade an orange tile to red for one silver) can upgrade herbs to pigs as an anytime action for one silver. This means you simply have to acquire two herbs from action spaces, then pay 2 silver, and NO Vikings on upgrading at all, and you have a breeding pair of pigs. Additionally, Farm Shop Owner can help in endgame if you have a preponderance of orange tiles, and not enough red, for your longhouses. Paying three hacksilver to flip three grain or flax to meat or fish can net you another three points, as each upgraded tile covers two negatives in a longhouse. You’re essentially paying 1 point for 2 points as often as it makes sense.

The Dark Brown Occupation Cards.

The upgrade cards are typically pretty useful for animal strategies, and these include Traveling Merchant (78B), Wholesaler (83A), Foreign Trader (37A), Dorestad Traveler (185B), Field Farmer and Orient Shipper (66A and 17A, great for a fruit basket), Merchant (152A), Clerk (88C), Shipowner (117A). However, the upgrade cards aren’t as useful to Pig Strategy as they are to Sheep Strategy or Cattle Strategy, as sheep and cattle upgrade to hides and jackets, while pigs only become elk horns. That said, the ability to make tools from a pig when you stop on Overseas Trading (Foreign Trader) can be pretty useful for unlocking exploration board bonuses. But if you have the luck to draw Wholesaler, you’ll wish you bought cows round one rather than pigs. Ship’s Cook (36A), a niche upgrade card that allows you to upgrade only meat, game meat, and whaling meat on Overseas Trading, has some use for Pig Strategy, as you can upgrade the meat tiles you’re making on the 5^th column Livestock Market, the 4V Weekly Market, or the Pig Sty, to silk tiles every time you hit Overseas Trading.

Milker (10A), like the Meat Inspector starter card, can pay off if played at the right time. You could potentially get four milks and four silver with this card in Norwegians.

Cattle Breeder (35A) applies to pigs, as stated in the Norwegians errata. This means you could make an extra pig in the round that you play it, as well as trigger breeding for any other animals.

Chief (5A) will be much easier to play due to the meat tiles coming in from the 5^th column Livestock Market or the 4V Weekly Market. Additionally, you could use a pig itself in a pinch, as losing a one point pig is no big deal when you’re playing a 7VP card.

A Feast for Odin: The Horse Strategy

The Preamble

As a game engine, horses can generate not only mead, flax, grain, silver, meat, and leather tiles by Livestock Market and weekly market action spaces, they generate more horse tiles free during animal breeding which can be upgraded on the mountain strips to leather and wadmal. That said, if you’re upgrading or slaughtering your horses, you’re likely playing the horse strategy completely wrong, and may want to think about holding onto your horses for the point value, grab longhouses to fill with tiles from the 2V Weekly Market, and engineer a solid B strategy.

Horse strategy is likely the easiest of the animal strategies: hold onto your horses, unlock a stone bonus or two, build longhouses, and fill them with the 2V weekly market. The combined point value of your longhouses and horses will give you a strong VP advantage, especially in conjunction with a good B strategy for filling your home board and/or 1-2 exploration boards. As your horses will not be very action-intensive, requiring only their initial Viking expense (preferably 4 vikings for the breeding pair), ongoing use of the 2V weekly market, and 3+ Vikings for each longhouse, you will have a good number of Vikings to support a strong B strategy. What is likely more true is that the horses may end up being your B strategy. But due to the timing of animal breeding, you will want to focus on your horses early, even if it does turn out to be your secondary strategy.

The Caveats

Generally speaking, horses have fewer scoring opportunities than sheep or cows, but as they themselves are an excellent scoring opportunity, and they do have at least one high yield action space that can pay off in conjunction with building longhouses, horses can be a very strong strategy in The Norwegians.

That said, there are a few important things to remember when attempting a horse strategy.

1) The timing of animal breeding is extremely important, as the earlier you start animal breeding, the more your horses will be worth.

The easiest way to demonstrate this is by listing round by round exactly how much a breeding pair of horses is worth over a game.

If you buy a breeding pair of horses round 1 (only possible with the Harvest expansion), you will breed new horses on round 2, 4, and 6, yielding 30 or 32 points in the short or long games, respectively.

Round 2: new horses in rounds 3, 5, and 7 (long game only); 26/30 points in the short and long game, respectively.

Round 3: new horses in round 4 and 6; 24/26 points in the short and long game, respectively.

Round 4: new horses in rounds 5 and 7 (long game only); 20/24 points in the short and long game, respectively.

Round 5: a new horse in round 6. 18/20 points in the short and long game, respectively.

Round 6: a new horse in round 7 (long game only). 14/18 points in the short and long game, respectively.

Round 7: 14 points in the long game.

As you can see, the same 4 Vikings played round one pay off 30-32 points, plus the play of your starter occupation card, while a johnny-come-lately in the last round will pay 4 Vikings and get only 14 points plus the occupation card. While a round 2 horse purchase is still a solid point play, horses have diminishing rewards as the game goes on, until in the final round there are almost always better things to do with your Vikings than buy 2 horses for only 14 points. 4 Vikings are usually worth more than 4 points apiece in the final round, and you’re only getting 3.5 points each for your Vikings with this late purchase. In the penultimate round, buying two horses is still a pretty good move, as they will be worth 18 points at game end, or 4.5 points a viking plus the card play. But you will probably be kicking yourself that you weren’t able to buy them earlier.

2) Buy longhouses. The tiles you make on the 2V Weekly Market are only worth points when you have houses for placement of those tiles. Additionally, if you want to save your actions for the best scoring opportunities, you want to get your stone for the longhouses from stone bonuses, not from the mountain strips. So while most players tend to grow their homeboard up toward the mead, lumber, and ore first, it can make more sense, when playing a horse strategy, to work toward the stone bonus first, or as it is not on the income line, simply surround it at the earliest opportunity. Stone bonuses from Isle of Man, the Mason’s Shed, Lofoten, Isle of Mull, Caithness, Outer Hebrides, Iceland, or Tierra del Fuego can help here.

3) Cattle may be your best B strategy, and may end up becoming your A strategy. That is, having acquired horses, you can get grain anytime you wish on the 2V Weekly Market, which can feed directly into another use of the 4V Livestock Market, taking 2 cattle, which, after setting up a breeding pair, can be used to feed directly into upgrade squares, trading the cattle from breeding and repeat stops for jackets. This means in addition to getting tons of longhouse and horse points, you’re also filling your homeboard fast for income points, or you can take a stab at one of the larger exploration boards. Moreover, this blocks others from using the 4V Weekly Market, which is a strong point generator, whether they’re buying cattle or horses. To understand how to make repeat stops on the 4V Livestock Market work for you in more detail, you will want to familiarize yourself with the Cattle Strategy (LINK HERE). Additionally, if you can manage to start with the Barn, a hybrid horses/cattle strategy is even stronger, as you get the grain for free every round, and you won’t be ransacking the tiles you need for filling your longhouses.

4) In the short game, your choice of artisan is pretty important. There are two solid choices here—The Barn or the Mason’s Shed. The Mason’s Shed will jumpstart stone production for early and frequent purchase of longhouses, and is probably the best choice for a horse strategy. Failing that, The Barn is a lot stronger than it looks. In the past, I was disinclined to choose the Barn, because animals placed on boards do not score, so you give up the 6 points for the horse to activate its income and bonuses.

That said, the barn can be a strong artisan shed with a round one or two purchase, as the point sacrifice from the horse will come back in the form of income and either frequent cattle purchases for upgrade to jackets, or simply more roughage for your longhouses.

The timing of a Barn fill is important, which will be obvious to those familiar with the round structure of A Feast for Odin. That is, breeding precedes bonus phase. For our example, we’ll look at round one of a Harvest short game in which you start not only with 7 vikings, 3 silver, and a grain, but the Barn (which is built, but not filled, in the Harvest short game). Having bought two horses with 4 Vikings,

you hit the 2V weekly market for a flax, a mead, a grain, and 2 silver, then use your 7^th Viking for income (hunting, fishing, 1V crafting, or a mountain strip upgrade). You place one flax in the barn,

although this doesn’t activate its income for round one. In breeding phase, you flip a horse to the pregnant side, then put the other in the Barn. As tile placement is an anytime action, you can do this before bonus phase. This unlocks two income from the Barn for rounds 2-6, as well as its grain bonus,

which you get immediately in bonus phase. Your solitary but pregnant horse still produces a new horse in round 2. It is a common beginner’s mistake to think that you need two animals of the same kind in your stalls for breeding, and this is not the case. You only need one pregnant animal tile to make a new animal. You do need two non-pregnant animal tiles to make one of the tiles pregnant, but as soon as this happens in breeding phase, the non-pregnant horse tile is up for grabs for placement in the Barn.

While you lose 6 points from the horse, you make ten points worth of income (5 remaining rounds x 2 income) as well as five grain in rounds 1-5. Start snapping up houses and/or cattle. The timing of a Barn build is a bit trickier in the long game, whether in Norwegians or Norwegians+Harvest, as your artisan shed doesn’t start built, but you have an extra round to get its income and bonuses, so The Barn is still a strong play, given an early purchase of horses. (Moreover, in the long game, the artisan sheds are not chosen but randomized, so your only other choice drawing that artisan shed would be the flip side, The Lumberjack’s Hut.)

5) Never upgrade your horses.

Actually, it’s fine to upgrade your horses if you feel that you have to do it. But here is why you should think twice about upgrading horses.

Given just two horses in round 6, there is no urgency to upgrade them, unlike there is with cattle and sheep, as if you simply hold onto the horses, they’ll add a third horse in round 7. So those two horses are going to make six points for you action-free. 6 points for no Vikings at all is much better than 4 points a Viking, the general rule of thumb you’re aiming at in endgame actions.

Earlier in the game, it can make sense to upgrade a horse to a leather or wadmal tile if it will feed into income production that pays off over game time. So long as you remember not to interrupt the breeding cycle—that is, not upgrading when you have only two non-pregnant horses or one pregnant horse—this can be done occasionally, although it is generally better to raise your income with any other tile, given that the exchange rate of horses to leather/wadmal is only 6:10, adding four points per upgraded horse to your score. If you upgrade two horses to wadmal with 4 Vikings, for instance, you’re only netting 8 points with 4 Vikings, or 2 points a Viking, and there are much better moves than that at any point in the game. If you upgrade two horses to leather with one Viking, that’s 8 points with 1 Viking, or 8:1, which sounds exciting until you realize if they had been cattle, it would have been an exchange rate of 9 points per cattle (3:12) or 18 points with 1 Viking. And if you just traded in your breeding pair of horses, you just lost 30 points to make 8 points, as two horses in round 1 or 2 would have become 5 horses by the end of the game.

How many Vikings are those horses from breeding worth after all? If you figure 4 points a Viking as the best possible goal with every action, then holding onto your horses is worth about 4-5 Vikings after their initial round 1-2 purchase. Given an early purchase of a breeding pair, the three horses you make from breeding in rounds 2, 4, and 6 are worth 18 points, or 4.5 Vikings worth of VP, so just leave them in your stall and let them work for you. Could you use an extra 4-5 Vikings? I thought so. Not that you’re really getting extra Vikings here, but that is what your horses are worth if you leave them alone and don’t upgrade them into tiles.

Sure, there are exceptions, like grabbing Isle of Mull, Orkney, or Cork, all of which have long isthmuses perfect for leather tiles. But these islands can also be solved with sheep or crafting. If you like working with large tiles, choose a sheep or cattle strategy instead. You can always get horses later. A round 3 horse purchase is still worth 24 points for a minimum of four horses. (Your sheep may keep you occupied with better scoring opportunities than that, though.)

The Action Spaces

As horses only appear with Norwegians, all of this commentary is geared specifically for that expansion, as well as when played in conjunction with Harvest.

4V Livestock Market (buy 2 of any animal for 3 silver and a grain). Typically, this action space will be used for buying horses or cattle, but players can also use it to buy sheep or pigs, or one of two different animals, so you shouldn’t wait on using this space if you definitely know you want to utilize it.

As noted above, in The Caveats, this action space can remain strong after your initial horse purchase, as you will have grain coming in from the 2V Weekly Market, which you can then use to buy 2 cattle on the 4V Weekly Market for upgrading to jackets on the 1V-4V Mountains and Trade, as I have described in The Cattle Strategy. Spamming this space for making a fleet of horses is not quite as good, as the horses aren’t as quick at translating into homeboard income production. 2 horses upgraded to leather only cover 20 squares, while 2 cattle upgraded to leather cover 24 squares.

In multiplayer Harvest, you could conceivably hit this action space every round, starting with horses in round one, and taking cattle every round thereafter, translating into 5 horses, or 30 points, and 14 cattle from purchase and breeding, or 168 squares worth of potential coverage on boards. However, with 28 vikings tied up in just horse and cattle purchases, this is likely too much cattle production, with four total stops likely being optimal, so that you have vikings for upgrading the tiles, building longhouses, and a B strategy for generating blue or special tiles. On the other hand, I wonder if someone one day will report a 250+ point game they scored in multiplayer from being able to spam the 4V Livestock Market round after round like this. Such a projected game would likely depend on the Barn for the action-free grain, and be exploration-heavy, filling 2-3 large exploration boards rather than the longhouse strategy I have recommended for much of this post. (In solo, it just isn’t possible, due to the self-blocking rules of solo, in which any action space can only be used 3-4 times.)

1V livestock market (trade a horse or horse for a leather tile and a meat tile). Upgrading or slaughtering horses is generally a suboptimal move, the argument for which appears below in 1V-4V Mountains and Trade. There are exceptions, of course, such as if you’re working Cork late game and want a leather piece for the top peninsula, while at the same time wanting the meat tile for a longhouse. Generally speaking, though, there are often other ways to make this happen that don’t give up your horses. Sometimes when you’re in a rush, and for reasons of timing, this can be the best action.

2V weekly market (gain 2 silver, a mead, and a flax, plus a grain if you have a horse. As this is a Production Space, not an Exchange Space, keep your horse.)

Outside of sheep or cattle strategy, this is the most used action space in the weekly market row, as the 2 silver is desirable for rounding out a ship purchase, and the food is great for non-harvest rounds. Early on it can be used for both purposes, such as in round one of the Harvest short game, when you can stop here first, buy a knarr with your five silver (3 starting + 2 from the space), and have extra food for filling your artisan shed. Even in standard Norwegians it is a good space in early rounds, as if you acquire just one silver before you land here, you can buy a whaling ship with your 3 silver, and get extra food for your feast, your shed, or a house. Horse strategists need to understand how desirable this action space can be for other players at the table, as you will want to use it yourself for its production. If you see people holding onto silver at the end of the round, it is likely either for buying animals or a ship purchase by anytime action, and if they’re a few silver short of the ship purchase, they likely want to use this action space.

If you have horses and longhouses, this is an even better place to stop every round. With horses, this action space yields a grain, a flax, a mead, and 2 silver, which covers nearly half of the negatives in a longhouse, and/or can unlock one (and nearly two) of a longhouse’s bonus squares. This is particularly nice. With on stop on the 2V Weekly Market, you increase the VP value of your longhouse and activate its oil barrel bonus (grain on bottom, mead on left side, flax on top, silver at right center). With a minimal income investment you can unlock more than one longhouse bonus with the 2V Weekly Market’s production.

Flax and grain also feed into a variety of occupation cards (see below), and flax can be used in 1V crafting, which can in turn feed into 2V crafting. It can also be a crucial part of the action chain by which you implement the hybrid horse/cattle strategy I have described above in this post.

Due to this action space’s popularity, especially in early rounds, once you have horses and a longhouse,

you want to stop here first or second in the round. As income rises in the game, fewer players will use this as an opportunity action, but you may still have competition from other players with horses. In endgame, when players have houses to fill, this action space could look tempting again. So think of this as a high traffic spot not only in early rounds, but in endgame, so long as there are other players with horses and houses.

1V-4V Mountains and Trade. The problem with upgrading horses directly to leather is the exchange rate isn’t outstanding, being only 6:10, or 4 points per horse upgraded.

If you upgrade 3 horses to 3 leather with 2 Vikings, one way of looking at it is you’ve traded 18 points and 2 Vikings for 30 points. Had you upgraded 3 cattle to jackets instead, you’d have traded 9 points and 2 Vikings for 36 points, which is a net gain of 27 points, rather than a net gain of 12 points in the previous example. What’s worse, if you left no horses for breeding in your stable, your horses might have made you 12 more points, action-free, in subsequent breeding phase, while the cattle would have only made 6 more points in the same amount of time. So when game time and breeding is part of the equation, upgrading a breeding pair of horses early to mid-game is really trading 30 points (what the horses would have been worth from breeding) and two Vikings for 30 points of leather tiles, which, after our Viking algebra, means you threw your Vikings away for nothing except whatever income was produced by the leather tiles on your boards. You could have sent those vikings pillaging and kept your horses. The lessons here: never upgrade a pregnant horse, but also, make sure it’s absolutely worth it to you ro upgrade the horse to a tile, as when game time is factored in it’s a bad trade in early to midgame rounds, and even in endgame, many, many actions will pay off better than a horse trade. Why upgrade your horses when you can hold onto their points and invest your Vikings elsewhere?

Appendix 1: Getting Your Horses

Getting Your Horses in Norwegians

In Norwegians, it is typically impossible to buy a breeding pair of horses round one, as you lack not only silver but grain, which you don’t make until the round two harvest. In round two, however, it is feasible to buy a breeding pair of horses, using the grain from your 1-2 harvest, or a bonus grain from Isle of Man. Don’t forget to save your grain for buying horses, or you won’t be buying horses by the 4V Livestock Market until round four. (It is still possible to buy them one at a time, of course, from the Livestock Market.)

Getting Your Horses in the Harvest Expansion

In the Norwegians + Harvest long game, you start with a grain 75% of the time, and if you take the hacksilver Harvest token, you could buy a breeding pair of horses with this action chain: 2V Weekly Market, 4V Livestock Market.

In the Norwegians + Harvest short game, not only do you start with a grain 75% of the time, but you start with the three hacksilver required for the purchase, so that you could buy a breeding pair of horses for your very first action. As player one will often buy two horses for their opening move, and there are no copy actions in Norwegians, this will block the 4V Livestock Market until round two, when player one that round might buy horses if they didn’t spend their grain in their feast or their artisan shed. Hence, your best shot at a horse strategy in the harvest short game is being player one the first round; failing that, save your grain for round two. There may be less competition for the 4V Livestock Market in the round two as players fill their artisan sheds and pay for feasts, especially if round two has no harvest.

Appendix 2: Occupation Cards That Enhance the Horse Strategy

I’m not covering the banned or recommended-to-remove occupation cards here.

The Starter Cards

If you’re so lucky as to draw Messenger (118c, +1 stone and +1 mead on every Weekly Market visit), Milkman (119b, +1 Milk on every Weekly Market space), or Middleman (120b, spend 1 silver to upgrade one tile on a Weekly Market space) for your starters, they can make the 2V Weekly Market even stronger, and it can also make sense to try your hand at a hybrid animal strategy. Cattle work well with horses, and sheep work well with any strategy.

Milkman is the weakest of the three, but even so, the ability to take a milk, a grain, a flax, a mead, and two silver with just two Vikings is fantastic. Middleman is the best of the three if you have large tiles to upgrade when you stop on the Weekly Market. In fact, a hybrid animal strategy makes even more sense if you draw Messenger, as you don’t want to be upgrading your horses with Middleman, but cows or sheep would be an excellent B strategy, letting you make a hide or a jacket every stop on the 2V Weekly Market. Horses and whaling could also work, as the whaling meat would upgrade to a cloak when you stop on the 2V Weekly Market. With Messenger, of course, you make the stone you need for your longhouses without stopping on the mountain strips or activating stone bonuses. On the 2 Viking Weekly Market, you would make two mead, a grain, a flax, a stone, and two silver, a ridiculously strong yield for just two Vikings. After your first two stops here, you have the stone for a longhouse.

Tanner (47A; as an anytime action, turn a meat tile into a pelt) can make the 1V Livestock Market better for upgrading horses, as instead of a leather and a meat, you could take a leather and a pelt. Trading 6 points and a viking for 13 points worth of green tiles is not bad, as long as you’re not interrupting breeding.

Meat Inspector (26c) can pay off well if you play it at the right time.

Farm Shop Owner (53b) can help you in endgame if you have a preponderance of orange food tiles you’re trying to squirrel away in your longhouses. Paying three hacksilver to flip three grain or flax to meat or fish can net you another three points, as each of the upgraded tiles can cover two negatives in a longhouse, so you’re essentially paying 1 point to get 2 points for as many times as it makes sense. You can also use this card situationally to upgrade herbs to pigs, so that you can get pigs breeding as well. A few stops on the 5^th column Weekly Market can make sense if you start with this card. Still, it is significantly less lucky to draw Farm Shop Owner than to draw Messenger, Milkman, or Middleman, so if your two starters to pick from Farm Shop Owner and one of those, play one of those cards.

The Dark Brown Occupation Cards

What I’ve written on the upgrade cards for sheep and cattle strategy also applies here, with the caveat that they are generally less worthwhile as you’re trading six point horses to get the benefits of the cards. These upgrade cards are, once again, Traveling Merchant (78B), Wholesaler (83A), Foreign Trader (37A), Dorestad Traveler (185B), Field Farmer and Orient Shipper (66A and 17A, great for a fruit basket), Merchant (152A), Clerk (88C), Shipowner (117A).

Milker (10A), like the Meat Inspector starter card, can pay off if played at the right time. You could potentially get four milks and four silver with this card in Norwegians.

Cattle Breeder (35A) should be played as soon as possible, as it will speed up horse breeding and should get you an extra horse if played at the right time.

Chief (5A) will be much easier for you to play with all the food coming in from the 2V Weekly Market.

Sower (169C), Grain Deliveryman (183C), Flax Baker (171A), and Helper in Time of Need (93C) are good ways to make grain if you plan on spamming the 4V Livestock Market with a hybrid horses/cattle strategy, as described above, in The Action Spaces. Likewise, Patron (2C) can defray the costs of buying livestock.

The flax-consuming anytime cards can be a significant asset with a horse strategy. These are: Chronicler (187B; trade 3 flax for a large chest at anytime, as often as you like, and/or trade 2 flax for the belt special tile, but only during one of your viking actions); Linen Weaver (59A; trade 2 flax and 1 silver for 2 linen tiles at anytime, as often as you like); and Linseed Oil Presser (58Al trade 2 flax for three oil barrels at anytime, as often as you like). As you’re already making frequent stops on the 2V Weekly Market, this gives you more scoring options for the flax tiles. You can still use them to fill longhouses, but you can also bundle them up for chests, linen, or oil barrels. If you activate a flax bonus from the Spinnery or Isle of Skye. (There may be a flax bonus on Faroe, but that island is more often a liability than an asset, It is notoriously difficult to exploit even for veterans of the game. There is a possible fast partial fill of it with sheep/ore crafting/elk horn, upgrading a fruit basket from the 3V Weekly Market to a cloak for the first income square, and grabbing the axe and the elk horn for the bridge above the flax bonus, and an elk horn to support and halfway circle the pelt bonus. Three silver would still be required for the spaces to the left of the axe and to the right of the cloak. But starting with horses would make it very difficult to pull this off, so consider the flax on Faroe to be off-limits for horse strategy.). With these cards, the Spinnery is likely a better artisan shed for horse strategy than the barn, but there is no way to guarantee these lucky draws.

There are three cards that reward grain acquisition, and all are assets for horse strategy. These are Miller (7A), Nobleman (98A), and Sower (169C). Miller and Sower simply reward you silver or tiles for having grain in your supply, and this is not difficult to do. (If you have Sower and Chronicler, however, you want to use Sower to make flax to feed into chest production, not use it to make grain.) Nobleman is the best of the three so long as you remember to save silver for spending, as every time you place a grain in a longhouse with Nobleman, you can trade two silver for a silk tile, which essentially means trading two points for four points, at least until the endgame.

A Feast for Odin: The Cattle Strategy

A Feast for Odin: The Animal Strategies
Chapter Two: The Cattle Strategy
The Preamble
The Caveats
The Action Spaces
Appendix 1: Getting Your Cows
Appendix 2: Occupation Cards That Enhance the Cattle Strategy

A Feast for Odin: The Animal Strategies

(This section also appeared in The Sheep Strategy.)

In A Feast for Odin, swords and ships neither reproduce more swords and ships nor upgrade into tiles, and whaling meat doesn’t breed, so it is somewhat surprising that raiding, pillaging, and whaling are the most popular tiling engines in the game, when animals not only make tiles in the weekly market, they make tiles for free in animal breeding phase that you can upgrade into the largest tiles. 

In this series, we will discover that animal engines and strategies are powerful and versatile in A Feast for Odin. especially in terms of large tile strategies, like filling the home board and the larger exploration boards, but also, in the case of sheep and pigs, producing tiles of various sizes suitable for the smaller islands and longhouses.

In A Feast for Odin, all animal engines are alike in this regard: unlike the ship engines, the animal engines generate more tiles action-free. While sheep, cows, and horses can’t be directly placed on any boards aside from their respective artisan sheds, sheep can be upgraded to hides, cows to jackets, and horses to leather on the mountain strips, then placed on the home board or the more commodious islands. Pigs are smaller, but can be placed directly in longhouses, stone houses, and artisan sheds, or upgraded to elk horns or tools for placement on any board.

The Preamble

As a game engine, cattle generate not only milk, beans, leather, and meat by Livestock Market and Weekly Market action spaces, they generate more cattle tiles free during animal breeding, all of which can be upgraded via the mountains and/or overseas trading, to wool, chests, wadmal, linen, jackets, and loot tiles. While cattle have one fewer animal-specific action space than sheep do, and they aren’t the green tile engine sheep are, cattle are themselves 50% larger tiles, as well as more versatile in the kinds of tiles they can produce through action chains. The cattle strategy involves a bit more delayed gratification than the sheep strategy, but it can pay off huge in the endgame.

The Caveats

The most important thing to watch when playing a cattle strategy is the timing of your upgrades. Specifically, it is good to remember that to make a new cattle tile, you don’t need to have two cattle in your sheds, you just need a pregnant–flipped–cattle tile. The best way to explain the timing of animal breeding in A Feast for Odin, and how it can work for you, is by example:

1) Having bought two cattle round 2, one flips to its pregnant side during breeding phase the same round.

2) In round 3, you take the non-flipped cattle to Mountains and Trade or the 1V Livestock Market to make a jacket or leather tile. Despite only having one cattle in your stalls, your pregnant cattle makes a new cattle tile in breeding phase of round 3. So, in round 3, you made a jacket during action phase, and still made a new cow in breeding phase.

3) As you have two cattle tiles again in round 4, one flips in breeding phase that round.

4) In round 5, you take the non-flipped tile to Mountains/Livestock Market for a jacket or leather tile during action phase, and your pregnant cattle makes a new cattle tile in breeding phase.

5) In round 6, you take both of your cattle tiles to the Mountains to make two jacket tiles. Alternatively, if you no longer have the space for large tiles on your boards, you could let them breed, to end with 3 cattle (9 points) in round 7. Usually the 24 squares of coverage from two jackets is the better option, especially if you have a late island acquisition to fill.

By timing your cattle breeding, your initial purchase of two cattle became four jackets, or 48 squares worth of coverage, which is a good chunk of your homeboard. 

By not timing breeding and upgrades, you lose potential income. Assuming the round 2 cattle purchase above, your round 3 upgrade is something you shouldn’t pass up, as with a minimal Viking expenditure, you can cover a good chunk of your homeboard or a new exploration board and boost your income significantly. 

It is nearly impossible to do better than two ‘free’ jackets from animal breeding, but assuming a round one purchase of two cattle in a Norwegians/Harvest Long game (Hacksilver token + 2V Weekly Market + 4V Livestock Market), you would make new cattle tiles on rounds 2, 4, and 6 during breeding phase, which means you would potentially make three free jackets, or five total, since you could upgrade during round 7. Few will choose to short their income and bonuses so drastically in the long game, but you would be able to upgrade a cattle to a jacket as soon as round two if you pursued this path. 

In the Norwegians/Harvest short game, you can potentially make new cattle tiles on rounds 2, 4, and 6, but only those you make in 2 and 4 can be upgraded, as round 6 animal breeding comes after the action phase of that last round. So you still can only make the two free jackets in the Harvest short game. But you have a more spectacular start, not only buying two cattle in round one, but having three vikings worth of additional engine building and a jump-started artisan shed.

You’ll notice that there is no “Endgame” section in this post, as there is in “The Sheep Strategy,” as if you’ve been timing your upgrades correctly, your cattle endgame shouldn’t be much of an issue. At most, you will have two cattle tiles in round 6 or 7 for upgrading. Unless you want to pursue a milking strategy (which can admittedly be very strong with the right occupation card), there isn’t much use in holding on to non-breeding cows. 

The Action Spaces.

4V Livestock Market. (Norwegians: buy 2 of any animal for a grain and 3 silver, play an occupation card. Base game: buy a sheep and a cattle for 3 silver, play an occupation card.)

That’s right. One of the best actions for the Cattle Strategy is the same action space where you acquire the cattle in the first place. 

Unlike sheep strategy, which produces viable tiles in the weekly market without returning to the animal market, cattle are so useful for filling large spaces that it can make sense to keep hitting this spot, re-purposing the action space for “cow whaling,” or producing the largest red tiles, cattle, for subsequent upgrading to the largest green tiles, jackets.

In the early game, the first time you buy two cattle is much better than whaling. If this seems an outlandish claim, let’s consider that whaling gives you a whaling meat, bones, and oil, but buying a breeding pair of cows in round 2 or 3 becomes FOUR cows over game time. So what’s better? 
3 Vikings for 8 squares immediate coverage (bones, oil) and 9 squares potential coverage (whaling meat, for upgrading to cloaks) or 4 Vikings for 48 squares of potential coverage (2 cattle, bred and upgraded to 4 jackets)? Plus the occupation card play—never forget the value of occupation cards. Have problems filling your homeboard? Here’s your answer—buy two cows by round 3 of any version of the long game (or by round 2 of the Harvest short game), let them double via animal breeding, and upgrade them during the game to jackets or loot tiles.

Once you’ve acquired your breeding pair, however, the value of buying 2 cows diminishes to be on par with whaling. On the upside, it is not a risk action space, and an occupation card play is better than an occupation card draw, but on the downside, it is resource intensive (3 silver and a grain), and requires mountain strip upgrades or the 1V Livestock Market to activate all potential income. 

That said, even after buying your breeding pair, buying even more cows for 4 Vikings, a grain, and 3 silver remains a strong play and it’s even better if you have a strong occupation card to play. Multiple cattle purchases and subsequent upgrades is certainly the easiest way to fill the homeboard, and in tandem with a good silver or blue tile engine, it can be one of the fastest methods. Some of the biggest islands fall quick with one jacket in the center or at the bottom left, and a bunch of small blue or gray tiles around it—Labrador, Newfoundland, Waterford, Iceland, Limerick, and Wexford, among others. 

While whaling can be fought over, you can often save the 4V Livestock Market for the end of the action phase, as most players invest income in unlocking bonuses, buying ships, or buying tiles at the knarr market, not in acquiring livestock. To make multiple stops on the 4V Livestock Market less draining on your feast, activate get Isle of Man and activate its grain bonus. The only other grain bonus in the game is on The Barn, which can be too costly to fill when you’re already trying to get a cattle engine running.

While spamming the 4V Livestock Market is an unconventional tiling method that might not work for everyone, and can be hard on your feast without a grain bonus, buying just one breeding pair cows is a great move for ANY strategy, especially round 3 or earlier in the long game, or round 2 or earlier for the short game. No other action in the game pays off that many potential VP. 

While what I’ve written here is geared towards Norwegians, this action space is also extremely strong in the base game. While a sheep and a cow amount to 20 squares potential coverage instead of 24 squares, getting both sheep and cattle on this space will enable you to get the full benefits of the 4V Weekly Market (below), which is particularly strong for cattle strategy in the base game (but not in Norwegians). Adding on even more sheep in the base game will also make the 3V wool action in the Weekly Market strong, giving you even more tiling options round to round. 

1V Livestock Market (Norwegians only: trade one cow tile for one leather and one meat). If you’re planning on milking the milk spot, you may want to hold off on spamming this space until the midgame, when you have 4 cows or more. But if you’re not milking, I wouldn’t. This is a good spot if you have cows, as cows aren’t the green tile engine that sheep are. So long as you’re keeping two cows or a pregnant cow to keep breeding going, use this spot as much as you can.

The usefulness of this space diminishes if you don’t buy houses, as it is better to upgrade multiple cows straight to jackets rather than trade one for a leather tile, unless you have houses to hold the meat tile, or you’re short on food for your feast.

In two player or three player, it is important to remember that rival animal strategists can block this action space. In four player, the 1V Livestock Market has one space for sheep, and another for cows and horses, but at smaller player counts, there is only one double-duty action space. So at 2P/3P, if you have cows, and your opponent(s) have sheep, when they stop here to trade a sheep for wool, pelt, and meat, you cannot also trade your cattle here for leather and meat until the following round. If there are multiple animal strategists in a game, this action space can be pretty busy, and you might never be able to use it unless you make it a priority. In four player, though, if you have cows, another player has sheep, and the other two players have no animals at all, you can save this action space for late in the round, as the 4P Livestock Market action spaces can’t be triggered without one of the animals specific to that action space. 

1V Weekly Market (base game: 1-3 milk from 1-3 cows; 1 bean, 1 silver, 1-2 milk with 2-3 cows)

For a longhouse-based strategy, this is an extremely good action space, as since beans and milk have no restriction on placement in the feast other than alternating orange and red tiles, for 1 Viking you can make up to 6 Vikings worth of food and save your skinny tiles (beans, mead, flax, fish, grain, meat, herbs, pigs) for your longhouses. In Norwegians, by placing the milk-bean-milk your 3 cows just made directly in your feast, you could make do with just one additional food tile until as late as round 5 (round 4 of the short game).

Speaking in general, there isn’t an action space this economical anywhere else on the board, assuming you have 3 cows—1 Viking for three tiles is a fantastic deal. If you can follow the 1V weekly market with an upgrade action, this is a good way to make wool. In the base game or 3-4 Player Norwegians, you could potentially make 2 wool with only 2 Vikings, if you can follow the 1V Weekly Market with the 1V Mountains 2x upgrade action space. 

4V Weekly Market (base game—1 wool with sheep, 2 milk with cows, 1 silver, 1 spice, and an occupation card play.) 

While animal strategies are, in general stronger in Norwegians, cattle are very strong in the base game, due to the strength of the base game version of the 4V Weekly Market, assuming that you pick up at least one sheep by the 4V Livestock Market when you buy one of your cattle. While this space will be stronger if you have 1 sheep, even if you don’t, 2 milk, a spice, a silver, and a card play is a pretty good trade for four vikings, as the milk will either save you silver on your feast, save you skinny tiles for your longhouses, or be upgraded to wool. With both sheep and cows, and a card to play, this is one of the better action spaces in the base game. 

If you don’t have sheep and/or pigs, the 4V Weekly Market in Norwegians isn’t a very good spot unless you have a spectacular card to play. 

Mountains and Trade 1V-4V (Upgrade a varying number of tiles). The mountain strips are a great place to trade cows for jackets or loot tiles, as well as, less optimally, milk for wool. You can also take or play occupation cards as you use the 3V or 4V upgrade spots. The earlier you acquire your breeding pair, the earlier and the more often you will be stopping on these action spaces. If milking doesn’t factor into your strategy, you could upgrade one of your cows as soon as the other flips to the pregnant side; remember, you don’t need to have two cattle in your pens to make a new cattle, you just need a pregnant cattle tile. 

Overseas Trading 1V-2V (Spend 1-2 hacksilver to flip one of each type of green tile in your supply to blue).

As you will make jackets and leather from your cattle, and perhaps wool from milk, you could easily three green tiles to upgrade when you hit overseas trading. Overseas Trading should be infrequently used, as you can place green tiles directly on the homeboard or exploration boards, but when you have large green tiles to place, like jackets and leather, it becomes a more valuable action. The more points of contact a tile has, the more likely you will need to spend silver to accommodate it on your boards. Spending a viking and rwo hacksilver to flip large green tiles to blue is often better than using your income as a buffer to cram them on your board. 

Appendix 1: Getting Your Cattle

Getting Your Cattle in the Base Game

In the base game, it is difficult, but not impossible, to get cows round one. While hacksilver exposed on the mountain strips can enable a round one cattle purchase with two vikings, it is generally best to save silver and vikings for the 4V Livestock Market. When you can buy one cattle for three silver and two vikings, or a cattle and a sheep for three silver and four vikings, it is better to add on the extra two vikings. If you’re able to hit the 4V Livestock Market in both round two and three of the long base game, you will have a breeding pair of not only cattle but sheep in round three, giving you not only better yields from the 4V Weekly Market, but the option of hitting the 3V Weekly Market (wool), and the benefit of free sheep and cattle from breeding phase in rounds 4 and 6, for a total of four sheep and four cattle, or four hides and four jackets upgraded, or 80 squares coverage in all. 

Getting Your Cattle in Norwegians

In Norwegians, it is usually impossible to buy cattle round one, as you lack not only the silver but the grain, which you typically don’t make until the round two harvest. In round two, however, it is very feasible to buy a breeding pair of cattle. Don’t forget to save your grain for buying cattle, or you won’t be buying any until round four.

Getting Your Cattle in the Harvest Expansion

In the base game plus Harvest, the addition of the hacksilver token to the long game, or 3 hacksilver for every player in the short game, makes buying animals much easier. A round one cattle purchase becomes more feasible, and in the short Harvest version of the base game, it is possible to hit the 4V Livestock Market in rounds one and two, giving you a breeding pair in round 2, and free sheep and cattle in rounds 3 and 5. 

In the Norwegians + Harvest long game, you start with a grain 75% of the time, and if you take the hacksilver Harvest token, you could buy cattle with this action chain: 2V Weekly Market, 4V Livestock Market. 

In the Norwegians + Harvest short game, not only do you start with a grain 75% of the time, but you start with the three hacksilver required for the purchase. That said, player one will often buy two horses for their opening move, which amounts to 30 VP over game time and can seem too good to pass up. As there are no copy actions in Norwegians, this will block the buy two animals spot until round two, when player one of that round will buy horses if they didn’t spend their grain in their feast or their artisan shed. Your best shot at trying a cattle strategy in the harvest short game is if you’re player one the first round; failing that, save your grain for round two. There will be less competition for the space in the second round due to players filling their artisan sheds and having to pay for feasts, especially if round two has no harvest. 

Appendix 2: Occupation Cards That Enhance the Cattle Strategy

I’m not covering the banned or recommended-to-remove occupation cards here. 

The Starter Cards

If you’re so lucky as to draw Messenger (118c, +1 stone and +1 mead on every Weekly Market visit), Milkman (119b, +1 Milk on every Weekly Market space), or Middleman (120b, spend 1 silver to upgrade one tile on a Weekly Market space) for your starters, they can make milking very strong for the cattle strategy. Milkman is the weakest of the three, but even so, the ability to take 3 milk, a bean, and a silver with just one Viking is very strong, as the milk can be part of a wool-making action chain. Messenger makes milking fantastic, as with 1 Viking you can get not only two milk, a bean, and a silver, but a mead and a stone, so that you can build houses to hold your heaping pile of food. Middleman means that you can upgrade your cows to jackets when you stop to milk.

Tanner (47A; as an anytime action, turn a meat tile into a pelt) can be strong when using the 1V Livestock Market, as instead of a leather and a meat, you could take a leather and a pelt.  

Meat Inspector (26c) can pay off well if you play it at the right time.

The Dark Brown Occupation Cards

All of the upgrade cards are strong for a Cattle Strategy. These include: Traveling Merchant (78B), Wholesaler (83A), Foreign Trader (37A), Dorestad Traveler (185B), Field Farmer and Orient Shipper (66A and 17A, great for a fruit basket), Merchant (152A), Clerk (88C), Shipowner (117A). Wholesaler is a particularly awesome card if you have four cows and a bunch of exploration boards. Foreign Trader and Clerk can also be particularly strong, as they allow you to upgrade cattle just prior to overseas trading. So if you have Foreign Trader and a cattle tile, you can upgrade the cattle tile to a jacket, then do overseas trading and flip it and your other green tiles to blue. Meaning you just upgraded a cattle all the way to a loot tile. If you draw Foreign Trader, you should buy a breeding pair of cattle immediately. Clerk and Traveling Merchant pay off even better for multiple knarrs. 

Milker (10A), like the Meat Inspector starter card, can pay off if played at the right time. You could potentially get four milks and four silver with this card in Norwegians.

Breeder (79A) and Cattle Breeder (35A) both affect breeding, and hence should both be played as soon as possible. Played at the right time, these could get you extra cattle tiles, which means even more jackets. 

Skinner (157C) I have already covered at length in my Occupation Card thread, which also appears in an edited format on my blog. 

Chief (5A) will be much easier for you to play if you are using a milking strategy.

Sower (169C), Grain Deliveryman (183C), Flax Baker (171A), and Helper in Time of Need (93C) are good ways to make grain if you plan on spamming the 4V Livestock Market as described, above, in The Action Spaces.
Likewise, Patron (2C) can defray the costs of buying livestock. 

Cowherd (74A) can help you make an extra cow, which can help you get your breeding pair faster in the base game, and can help you get to three cows faster for a milking strategy. 

Plower (49C) is a somewhat situational card, in that this often isn’t a good trade. If you have Farm Shop Owner (53b), for instance, or Chronicler, Plower could work, or four longhouses. 

Farmer (49C) is the strongest cattle card in the deck, and likely one of the best unbanned occupation cards. The ability to upgrade a cattle all the way to a jewelry as an anytime action is just so strong. Not only does it cost no vikings to use, but jackets often require a buffer of hacksilver to place on your boards, while jewelry can be placed anywhere, saving you not only Vikings but silver. I’ve discussed this card at more length in my Occupation Card guide on my blog, and on the thread that sourced it.

A Feast for Odin: The Sheep Strategy

In A Feast for Odin, swords and ships neither reproduce more swords and ships nor upgrade into tiles, and whaling meat doesn’t breed, so it is somewhat surprising that raiding, pillaging, and whaling are the most popular tiling engines in the game, when animals not only make tiles in the weekly market, they make tiles for free in animal breeding phase that you can upgrade into the largest tiles.

In this series, we will discover that animal engines and strategies are powerful and versatile in A Feast for Odin. especially in terms of large tile strategies, like filling the home board and the larger exploration boards, but also, in the case of sheep and pigs, producing tiles of various sizes suitable for the smaller islands and longhouses.

In A Feast for Odin, all animal engines are alike in this regard: unlike the ship engines, the animal engines generate more tiles action-free. While sheep, cows, and horses can’t be directly placed on any boards aside from their respective artisan sheds, sheep can be upgraded to hides, cows to jackets, and horses to leather on the mountain strips, then placed on the home board or the more commodious islands. Pigs are smaller, but can be placed directly in longhouses, stone houses, and artisan sheds, or upgraded to elk horns or tools for placement on any board

The Sheep Strategy

As a game engine, sheep generate not only wool, fur, meat, spices, herbs, fruit baskets, and occupation cards by Livestock Market and weekly market action spaces, they generate more sheep  tiles free during animal breeding

which you can upgrade on the mountain strips to hides and jewelry. As sheep strategy can also generate pigs in Norwegians, you will want to familiarize yourself with The Pig Strategy, which will likely come last in the series, as I personally feel that it is a by-product of the Sheep Strategy..

The Caveats

While The Sheep Strategy is not that difficult once you have moderate experience with the game, most players attempt whaling or pillaging strategies first, because they seem more straightforward. What you will find, however, once you start experimenting with any animal strategy is that they are surprisingly effective and just as straightforward as the ship strategies. Moreover, longship and whaling strategies can be duplicated later in the game with zero vikings by the anytime action of buying a longship or whaling ship, but animals always cost Vikings to acquire. So it is much easier in terms of the Viking cost to start with animals and branch out to pillaging later than to start with a longship and branch out to an animal strategy. If you build a longship round one for 4+ Vikings, then buy 2 sheep later for 3 Vikings, that’s 7+ vikings, while if you buy two sheep for 3 Vikings, then buy a longship later with an anytime action, that’s still only 3 Vikings. As you can’t buy animals with anytime actions, they are harder to duplicate, and sometimes this means that your sheep-specific action spaces are safe from other players, or will cost them valuable vikings to duplicate and block, while their longship-specific action spaces are much easier to duplicate and block. So yes, the Sheep Strategy is likely more complex than the longship or whaling strategies, but, only for your opponents; for you, it is very straightforward and very rewarding.

That said, there are some caveats before attempting the sheep strategy:

1) while sheep can be your main strategy, you will want a B strategy for special or blue tiles when your sheep produce oodles of green.

As you make scads of green, and want blue or special tiles to space them out and avoid spending too much of your income on puzzling, you can do this early on via 3V/5th column ore crafting, and later on by buying (not building) knarrs or longships as an anytime action with your rising income.

In early rounds, the easiest B strategy to implement for Sheep Strategy is ore crafting. While it looks expensive, costing three vikings, as you don’t have to build or buy a longship or a knarr first, ore crafting is actually very affordable in the early game rounds, when you want to establish game engines and get tiles immediately that can feed into income. With your Vikings tied up in sheep and wool production, you can’t waste vikings on building longships or knarrs. So that you don’t spend valuable actions sniping ore from the Mountain Strips, activate an ore bonus early on so that this free ore can feed directly into the 3V / 5^th column ore crafting actions.

From midgame on, the best B strategy is the longship, which you acquire as your income rises, action free, for the cost of eight hacksilver. Buying ships is the best anytime action in A Feast for Odin, and for Sheep Strategy, it becomes an opportunity to block your opponents, not just make tiles for yourself.

2) Some bonus squares are too good to cover when using a sheep strategy, like ore and stone, which you will want for crafting and puzzling, and longhouses, respectively, as well as any tile bonuses you can activate, as your strategic goal is to fill your homeboard, 1-3 islands, and as many longhouses as possible. Not activating your stone bonuses means you may end the game with a pile of fruit baskets; not activating your ore bonuses means you may have a troubling game due to having an excess of green and not enough gray. So as you’re puzzling your home board and exploration boards, be sure to activate ore for crafting and puzzling, and stone for longhouses. It will save you actions in the long run.

3) Timing is everything. The longer you have 2 or more sheep, the better they are as a wool and occupation card generating engine, not unlike having a longship in this regard. Hence, it can be good to make a sacrifice of workers earlier so that you can have them longer. Just as a round one build of a longship means you have first access to raiding and pillaging, and possibly unrivalled access for two straight rounds back to back, so a round one sheep purchase can give you early and unrivalled access to some great action spaces, and one of those actions is even better the longer you have the sheep (the 3V Weekly Market).

4) Getting your sheep is either expensive or Viking-intensive, and sometimes both.

While in the base game, getting more than one sheep round one is impossible, with Norwegians and/or Harvest you can buy a breeding pair round one. I’m not saying this is the only way to implement a Sheep Strategy, but it is a great way to start if this is an unfamiliar strategy for you, as it ensures you have early and ongoing access to the good action spaces for this strategy. While going into round two with a pair of sheep and little else can be daunting, you are about to spam Norwegians’s enhanced 3V and 4V Weekly Market, not only making scads of tiles to get your income going and activate tiles, but play an array of occupation cards.

In the base game, acquiring sheep can be somewhat expensive, not only hacksilver but Vikings. For this reason, sheep are better as a B strategy than as a main strategy in the base game. In the Appendix of this post, I’ve provided some examples for how to acquire sheep in the base game, as well as the expansions, of A Feast for Odin, as well as some commentary here and there on which ways might be better. You can jump to that section now if you want, but I’ve shunted that text to the back for a better reading experience.

Is it good to buy your sheep early? For instance, in the Norwegians long game, you can spend five of your six Vikings getting two sheep—is it good to get your sheep this early, sacrificing most of your actions starting that game engine? Consider your limited options in round one of A Feast for Odin. One path often chosen by player one in any version of A Feast for Odin is the classic opener: 1V or 2V mountain strips; 3V build longship; 2V pillaging, or 1V island+ 1V raiding. Buying two sheep round one is like this—a big viking expenditure to start your engines early.

Buying two sheep round one means you can hit the 3V and 4V weekly markets in round two, making three wool, a spice, an herb, a fruit basket, and a total of three occupation cards, two in hand and one in play. In round 3, you can upgrade the herb to a pig. This isn’t bad, although it leaves you without an exploration board. This is a good path to pursue for your first multiplayer game or solo playing the sheep strategy, as it familiarizes you with these engines and shows you how early you can get them into play and working for you. Later you will learn that it can be more productive to alternate sheep action spaces with ore crafting, and have at least one exploration board by the end of round two so that your income will rise faster.

The Action Spaces

Once you have a breeding pair of sheep, a surprising array of action spaces become competitive for you in A Feast for Odin.

3V Weekly Market (base game: 1-3 wool and an occupation card produced by 1-3 sheep; Norwegians 2-3 wool produced by 2-3 sheep, plus an occupation card and a fruit basket). In the base game, making wool is a good B action when you have two or more sheep, but in Norwegians, the fruit baskets make it even better. If you buy 2 sheep round one, starting in round 3, your 3 sheep make 3 wool, a fruit basket, and an occupation card on this action space. If you acquire a longhouse for the fruit basket, that is potentially a 16+ point move, more consistent than pillaging and better than plundering, and if you draw a sweet card, it’s even better. And if you prefer to activate longhouse bonuses rather than cover them with fruit baskets, the baskets can be parlayed swiftly into cloaks via the 4V mountain strips action space (see below). Even with only your breeding pair, you make 2 wool, a fruit basket, and an occupation card on this action space, which is a 12+ point move, grabbing you useful tiles in the early game rounds. The 3V Weekly Market is the mainstay action of the sheep strategy, not unlike the pillaging action for longship strategy.

Speaking of pillaging, remember that proper utilization of the Sheep Strategy, and specifically the 3V Weekly Market wants a B engine, to space out all those green tiles with special or blue tiles. Crafting is best in early rounds, as your sheep actions cost a lot of Vikings, and it will be easier to snipe an ore or activate your ore bonus with Elk Hunt, or two wool and a hacksilver, than to build or buy a longship. When your income rises to 8+, saving it in your supply gives you the option in the upcoming round to buy a longship or knarr action free to hit pillaging or the special tile market before wool, which you will have a chance to do if knarr and longship holders shop islands that just flipped.

3V Weekly Market combined with 3V Crafting can puzzle some income and bonuses on exploration boards. Take a large tile on Crafting and work the wool around it, e.g. the anvil and two wool gives you a head start on Orkney, two wool and the fibula (E special tile) activates the oil barrel and cabbage on Shetland; the hammer, two wool, and one silver get you to two income on Isle of Skye. The 4V Weekly Market (below) is slightly better at activating bonuses and income on a single 1V exploration board, but the 3V Weekly Market is better when you’re puzzling more than one exploration board and have plenty of places for the wool. Some of the later exploration boards, like Waterford, Labrador, and Newfoundland, have a lot of 2×2 spots to place wool.

Don’t ignore your accumulating occupation cards. If you hit this action space often, you have a large assortment of occupation cards to pick from and no shortage of 4V actions to play them on, whether the 4V Weekly Market, the 4V Mountain Strip (upgrading your fruit baskets to cloaks, or surplus sheep to jewelry), or 4V Crafting if you produce silverware.

4V Weekly Market (Spice; Wool if you have sheep; 1 silver; 1 herb; meat if you have pigs; play an occupation card). The 4V Weekly Market doesn’t make as many tiles as the 3V Weekly Market, but it is just as strategic for Sheep Strategy, giving you a good blue tile, the spice, in addition to one wool, an herb, and a silver, and, most importantly, letting you play the occupation cards you accumulate on the 3V Weekly Market.

Another reason the 4V Weekly Market is super strategic for Sheep Strategy is that here is where sheep strategy makes pigs. Save the herbs you acquire on this action space to upgrade them to pigs. Voila! Now you have sheep and pigs. Once you make your first pig, the next time you stop here, you also get the meat tile (and, as it is a Production Space (labeled with ‘from’) not an Exchange Space (labeled with an arrow), you keep the pig. If you’ve been losing the pig on this action space, your table plays it wrong, and should check the rules on Production and Exchange action spaces on pages 14-15 of the A Feast for Odin rulebook. If you prefer to appeal to common sense, here is the expansion designer’s explanation for that (INSERT LINK)).

While the 3V Weekly Market in combination with 3V Crafting can cover more ground, the 4V Weekly Market combined with 3V Crafting is better at activating early income and bonuses on 1V exploration boards, due to giving you both blue and green tiles when you’re trying to start your engines. The combination of 3V ore crafting with 4V Market can solve the income and strategic bonuses of a few key islands, like Isle of Skye, Isle of Man, Isle of Mull, and Orkney. Just take a spice, a wool, a silver, and the anvil, armor, or hammer on some of these islands and see what kinds of solutions, or near-solutions, you can create.

So long as you have both sheep and pigs, and houses where you can place surplus food tiles for points, the 4V Weekly Market remains a great action space in the mid to end game, worth up to 16 points plus the occupation card play. Spice and wool are a good fit nearly anywhere, and the meat and herb are great for longhouse bonuses.

1V Livestock Market. (Trade a sheep for 1 wool, 1 pelt, and 1 meat). While this is easy to use, it is also easy to abuse and overuse, as each time you land here, your herds—which is to say, your game engines—diminish, and smaller herds are less productive on the 3V Weekly Market, your go-to spot. Use this spot only when you really, really want those exact tiles and the timing of the action is crucial and too good to pass up, like if it will let you activate the cow bonus on Orkney, or the whaling meat on Greenland. Otherwise, It’s best to use this spot only when you have more than three sheep, as having three sheep for the 3V Weekly Market is too good an engine. The best sequence to use this spot: you have three sheep, and one of them is pregnant; you hit 3V Weekly Market, then the 1V Livestock Market, trading in a non-pregnant sheep; in breeding phase, your pregnant sheep makes you a replacement sheep, so you have three sheep again for the following round. With 4 Vikings, you just got 4 wool, 1 pelt, 1 meat, 1 fruit basket, and an occupation card, and you didn’t hurt your engines.

Hitting this action space in the mid to endgame once or twice is good, as you don’t want to enter the final round with 4 or more sheep to upgrade. Upgrade actions become a high priority in endgame, as players race to fill their homeboard and exploration board for income points, and you do not want to be edged out of upgrading tour sheep, See Endgame below.

4V Crafting (Base game: trade silverware for jewelry and wool for cloak, plus 4 silver; 3P-4P Norwegians: trade silverware for jewelry and wool for 2×5 wadmal tile, plus 2 silver). As you’re already making wool, this becomes a useful action space if you also produce silverware, whether from Wexford, Shetland, raiding, pillaging, or upgrading/overseas trading of pelts produced on the 1V Livestock Market or the 1V Hunting action. Assuming you can get the full benefit here, you’re trading 7 points for 20-21 points, plus the occupation card play. While this becomes expensive if you must make the jewelry first with an action, it’s excellent when you have the Wexford or Shetland silverware bonus, as you are already making wool with the Sheep Strategy. When you’re looking for spots to play your accumulating occupation cards, try to work this one in.

Mountain Strip 1V-4V upgrade spots.

Not only are the mountain strips excellent for upgrading sheep to hides and jewelry in mid to endgame, in Norwegians, the 4V mountain strip action space turns accumulating fruit baskets into cloaks. (While you could turn two fruit baskets to cloaks the slow way, by hitting the 1V Mountain Strips twice, that way requires a certain amount of luck in multiplayer, as the 2X upgrade action space is hotly contested, and, moreover, it defers the income from the cloaks for a round, and doesn’t give you an occupation card play and 4 resources. Likewise, hitting 1V Mountain Strips then 2V Mountain Strips in the same round might be just as good for generating income, but for an additional viking you’re playing a card, grabbing 4 resources, and getting it done faster before the good actions get blocked by other players. In AFFO, timing is just as important as efficiency.) This is a good move for plugging holes in your homeboard and playing a strategic occupation card. Cloaks fit well on many exploration boards, like Waterford, Limerick, Iceland, and so forth.

Sheep can be easily upgraded to hides on many action spaces in the mountain strips, and you should be considering this when you have, or are about to have, surplus sheep. While you can also upgrade sheep to jewelry on the 4V Mountain Strips, upgrading sheep to hides is a lot cheaper, and can be still done in one action on the 1V-3V action spaces. Unless you need the blue tiles, upgrade sheep to hides and save your Vikings.

1V-2V Overseas Trading (Spend 1-2 hacksilver to flip one of each type of green tile in your supply to blue). As you will be potentially making wool, pelts, and hides with your sheep, and cloaks from your fruit baskets, you could have at least four green tiles to upgrade when you hit overseas trading. In later rounds, when you have surplus sheep to trade in on the 1V Weekly Market or Mountain Strips, you could conceivably trade a pelt, a wool, a hide, and a cloak, for a silverware, a small chest, a jewelry, and a large chest. Overseas Trading should be rarely used, as you can place your green tiles on boards directly, but when you have a lot of green tiles, or a few large green tiles, it becomes a more valuable action. Spending a viking and rwo hacksilver to flip green tiles to blue can often be better than using all your income to cram your green tiles onto your board.

Endgame

In the endgame, the sheep strategist’s priorities must change, as if he or she’s been exploiting the 3V Weekly Market to the max, he or she has at least three sheep remaining, and you don’t want to end the game with these in your shed, but upgraded to hides or jewelry for placement on your boards. The two points they’re worth each is a pittance compared to the negative points they can cover on your boards.

You may want to plan on your last round actions the round before, as if you have 3 or more occupation cards worth playing, it can be great to hit 3 4V actions to play them all in the final round. This would mean you’re not going to be hitting the 3V Weekly Market in the final round, so after hitting it in the next-to-last round, you may want to proceed immediately to upgrading them, which will also mean that you’re going to get their income for two rounds rather than one.

Upgraded sheep can cover a lot of ground on your boards, so acquiring a 3V island can be great if you have the opportunity to do so. Other players may struggle to fill them, but you certainly won’t, not with all those sheep you’re itching to upgrade. But if you get blocked from acquiring a 3V island, you can finish plugging the holes in your homeboard and simply turn them into income VP.

Appendix 1: Getting Your Sheep

Getting Your Sheep in the Base Game

It is rare, but possible, to get two sheep in round one of the base game. Assume enough players at the table, and all of them whittle down the mountain strips far enough that you can spend one Viking getting a pair of hacksilver. One hacksilver would be spent on the 2V Livestock Market, and the other on the 3V Livestock Market. This is extremely unlikely with skilled players at the table, but it is possible, as every now and then, the table might be hungry for stone or ore. If you want to try the sheep strategy in the base game, and see this opportunity, you should absolutely do it, as otherwise, you will have to spend a lot more time setting up your sheep engine. Sure, you’re going into round 2 with no income and nothing else but two sheep and an extra occupation card, but it is a rare opportunity, and you should take it.

More typically, you buy your first sheep in round one of the base game, hit 1V weekly market (bean, silver), then 2V Livestock Market (-1 silver, +1 sheep), then use remaining Vikings to establish income. You could hit 3V Weekly Market to make one wool (giving you 2 homeboard income), but there are more efficient routes, as the wool-gathering action space doesn’t shine until you have two sheep. However, taking this action would get the job done, and couldn’t be blocked round one, unlike a riskier series of actions which could be blocked in multiplayer. It would also get you a second occupation card. In round two you would get your second sheep, possibly acquiring it with a cow and an occupation card play on the 4V Livestock Market, or you could simply hit the 2V Livestock Market again. Your breeding pair would make your third sheep at the end of round 3, meaning you would have 3 sheep, the magic number for the 3V Weekly Market, in rounds 4-7 The earliest you can have three sheep in the base game, however, is round two. Assuming the previous series of actions (1V Weekly Market (bean, silver), 2V Livestock Market (sheep), 3V wool), you would enter round 2 with two income and one sheep, and in round 2, you could perform the following series: 2V Livestock Market, 3V Livestock Market. This would mean you would have 3 sheep in rounds 3-7. But you are shorting yourself many Vikings to make an extra wool in round 3. It would be better to simply perform the following series in round 2: 2V Livestock Market for your second sheep and 3V Weekly Market (2 wool), which would mean you would have 2 more Vikings to get other things.

If this all sounds difficult, you’re not wrong; the sheep strategy is harder in the base game.

Getting Your Sheep in Norwegians

Sheep are much easier to get going in Norwegians.

Here is what I call the classic two sheep opener for pre-Harvest Norwegians: 2V weekly market (2 silver, mead, flax), 3V two sheep (-1 bean, -2 silver), 1V build artisan shed. With extra food from the 2V market going into the shed, you’ll have one income from your shed, two occupation cards, and two sheep, one pregnant, which means you’ll make 2 wool, a fruit basket, and an occupation card on the 3V weekly market in round 2, and 3 wool, a fruit basket, and an occupation card there starting in round 3.

Another good round one action series for Sheep Strategy in the Norwegians long game: 2V Weekly Market, 3V two sheep, 1V Elk Horn. While you have no income, with luck you just activated an ore every round for crafting. The elk horn tile fits very nicely over the ore bonus on the home board.

Getting Your Sheep in the Harvest Expansion

In the Norwegians + Harvest long game, the hacksilver token gives you other options for grabbing a breeding pair round one, such as the 1V weekly market + 3V Livestock Market, letting you play two more Vikings instead of one.

In the Norwegians + Harvest short game, every player can buy sheep the opening round, as you start with 3 hacksilver. As you start with a grain 75% of the time in Harvest, player one often takes two horses or two cows on the 4V Livestock Market, leaving two sheep available on the 3V market for players later in the turn order. Horses are worth a lot of points in and of themselves, but sheep give you tons of scoring opportunities. If you like playing a sheep strategy, it is better to take the sheep for your opening move and get the horses or the cows later if it still makes sense. It is also possible for two players to start with two sheep in the Norwegians + Harvest short game, as one could get two sheep on the 3V Livestock Market, and the other could get two sheep on the 4V Livestock Market. Getting two sheep on the 4V Livestock Market is still an absolutely good play, especially if you have a strong starter occupation card, but it is better to take the 3V Livestock Market if you have the option.

As you start with an extra Viking in the Harvest short game, after buying your sheep you still have 3-4 Vikings left depending on which action space you used to get your sheep. This means you can hit either the 3V or 4V Weekly Market round one! Here is an ideal round one action series for Sheep Strategy in the Harvest Short game: choose the lumber token if you can, then play your Vikings on the 3V Livestock Market (2 sheep, -2 silver); 3V Weekly Market (2 wool, fruit basket), and 1 V Whaling Ship + Exploration Board (-1 lumber, -1 silver). Place the two wool on your home board and your exploration board.

In the base game + Harvest long game, the hacksilver token can mean you can buy both a sheep and a cow round one: 2V Weekly Market (2 mead, 2 silver), 4V Livestock Market (cow + sheep, -1 silver, play card). It can also mean you can buy two sheep your opening round much easier: 1V Weekly Market, 2V Livestock Market, 3V Livestock Market.

In the base game + Harvest short game, you could hit the 4V Livestock Market right off the bat, then get some starting income or your second sheep.

Appendix Two: Occupation Cards That Enhance the Sheep Strategy

I’m not covering the banned or recommended-to-remove occupation cards here.

The Starter Cards

If you’re so lucky as to draw Messenger (118c, +1 stone and +1 mead on every Weekly Market visit), Milkman (119b, +1 Milk on every Weekly Market space), or Middleman (120b, spend 1 silver to upgrade one tile on a Weekly Market space) for your starters, play it as soon as you can, as they make the Weekly Market action spaces even stronger, and, as I’ve already noted above, you’re going to be hitting those action spaces a lot. Messenger can get longhouses without spending actions on stone, and Middleman means you can upgrade a tile from red to green on your Weekly Market visits, tiling your boards faster. Milkman is the weakest of the three, but it should still be played as soon as you can.

Farm Shop Owner (53b; as an anytime action, pay one silver to upgrade any orange tile to red) means you can upgrade your fruit baskets to whaling meat as an anytime action for 1 silver, which means you can upgrade them to cloaks for fewer Vikings. You can also upgrade your herbs to pigs this way, saving you an action.

Meat Inspector (26c) or Shepherd (34a) can pay off well if you play them at the right time.

The Dark Brown Occupation Cards

All of the upgrade cards are strong for a Sheep Strategy. These include: Traveling Merchant (78B), Wholesaler (83A), Foreign Trader (37A), Dorestad Traveler (185B), Field Farmer and Orient Shipper (66A and 17A, great for a fruit basket), Merchant (152A), Clerk (88C), Shipowner (117A). Note that Traveling Merchant and Clerk pay off even better for multiple knarrs.

Breeder (79A) and Cattle Breeder (35A) both affect breeding, and hence should both be played as soon as possible. Note that 79A works with sheep, even though it only depicts a cow. Shepherd’s Boy (80B) simply gives you a free sheep, which can help you get three sheep earlier, or maintain your production stock of sheep while using the 1V Livestock Market.

Chief (5A) will be much easier for you to play because you make additional food on the 3V and 4V Weekly Markets and the 1V Livestock Market.

Hornturner (63C) is an excellent engine builder, and one of the only times I might trade in a sheep early in the game. It basically gives you two points plus a free 1V Livestock Market action, plus the ability to trade 3 silver for the drinking horn. Without the drinking horn, this card isn’t as good, but if you can reap all the benefits of this card, you should play it as early as possible. The drinking horn is one of the better special tiles, a great piece for many exploration boards.

Sheep Shearer (33A) is an odd card, considering how difficult animals are to acquire in the base game. I have never seen any one player have 6 sheep in the base game, but this card foresees the possibility. Most often this will get you one or two wool and is a great card to play when you already have sheep.

Storeman (31C) will let your wool or fruit baskets reproduce.

Master Tailor (44B) you might be able to trigger a few rimes when you’re playing a Sheep Strategy in Norwegians, as you make not only wool but pelts, and would just have to make the linen with 1V crafting, Labrador, or some other path.

Ship Architect (46B) can be great if you get a few lumber engines going, as it can be worth a ton of points and saved actions to trade 3 wood and a wool for a longship.

Skinner (157C) I have already covered at length in my Occupation Card thread, which also appears in an edited format on my blog.

Miller (10A) might pay off well, and an even higher payout possible using Norwegians.

A Feast for Odin: Occupation Card Guide

What follows is not a comprehensive guide to the 190 occupation cards in A Feast for Odin, but my play notes from using or choosing not to use the occupation cards I have drawn. With 114 plays of A Feast for Odin under my belt, I have probably seen most if not all of the cards, but I only started these notes–which originated as a Board Game Geek thread– after I passed the 100 games mark, the point at which i realized I definitely had my favorite cards, as well as certain cards that would oddly make their way to me despite the improbability of seeing a particular card in back to back games (Farmer perhaps being the most conspicious example of a card that likes to fall into my hand).

This post will periodically be updated as I play more A Feast for Odin, as I find it easier to write the card commentary after I have used it, or not used it, in a recent game. Currently, 31 of the 190 occupation cards have commentary. However, I doubt I will write anything for the banned cards or the “recommended to remove” card list that appeared in the Harvest expansion.

The cards that I have played in recent games:

Farmer (48 A; as an anytime action, exchange a cow for a jewelry) is one of the strongest of the blue anytime cards. Sure, you can upgrade cows to green jacket tiles with viking actions, but with Farmer, you can shoot them all the way up to blue tiles with no vikings. Towards mid to end game, you need larger blue tiles to abut your green tiles, while large green tiles often have too many points of contact to place them easily on your board without spending hacksilver. If I have to spend vikings to turn my cow into a jacket and then spend silver to fit it on my board, that’s not as good a deal as simply placing a jewelry tile, and using the vikings for some other action. The combination of free upgrade actions and easier puzzling makes Farmer an incredibly powerful card, and if you draw it, you should make a run on acquiring cows, whether through the animal market or through Orkney. In Norwegians, with Farmer in play, the 4V animal market could be used to get 2 jewelry tiles (spend 3 hacksilver and a grain for 2 cows, then trade them in for jewelry with Farmer immediately), which isn’t as strong as the 4V crafting action, but farmer is much easier to do with this card in play.

Any card that gives you free tiles should be played, and Cottager (15 C; when played, get 1 mead per house, and thereafter, receive one pelt per house built) is no exception. It’s better to play this card early than late, as pelt income is better than bonus mead.

Wholesaler (83 A). A yellow “one-time” card which lets you upgrade four tiles of the same type. Another card good for animal or market strategies, also whaling, or any other spot you can spam round after round for the same tiles. It’s really strong if you have a pile of cows you’re done with—voila! Four jackets. On the four viking mountain strip action space, I’ve used this to flip four fruit baskets to whaling meat, then double upgrade two of those to the large chests. But probably strongest with a pile of cows and a bunch of exploration boards you want to capitalize on quickly.

Ore Boatman (9 A, +1 ore per longship, just prior to income phase. Must be placed immediately on a board (i.e. not on a ship.)) Ore is extremely useful in A Feast for Odin, and any way you can produce it should be explored. If you have the income, it’s definitely worth buying extra longships before income phase to make the extra ore. Even if you can’t use it for crafting, whaling, or pillaging, making some free ore every round to fill gaps will save you hacksilver, which will save you points. The point value of this card is probably pretty high if it is used early and capitalized upon by shrewd longship purchases. If you have four longships, this card is basically making the equivalent of a small (2×2) chest every round. I’ve had three longships with this card, and it’s still nice at that level of production. With one longship, it’s moderately useful.

Modifier (39 C, allows you to return ore to your supply from ships.) Basically, you can swing your ore from your longships to your whaling ships and back again with Modifier in play. You can also snitch one for crafting or to fill in a pesky spot on one of your boards that you really need to fill to jump from 6 to 8 income. Also, at the end of the game, you can empty all your ships and use the ore to cover negatives.

Middleman (120b; on every weekly market stop, upgrade one tile for one hacksilver). Middleman is super strong with animal strategies, especially in Norwegians, with its enhanced Weekly Market action spaces. In a recent game, I used this a lot to flip fruit baskets to whaling meat, then to cloaks. Upgrading cows to jackets when you’re already getting a ton of milk or wool is pretty great. In a recent game with Middleman in play, on the 4V weekly market, I got not only a spice, a wool, a meat, and an herb, but used the hacksilver from that space to upgrade a cow to a jacket, then played Storeman (31C; see below) for an extra wool. All told: for four vikings and a cow, I got a spice, two wool, meat, herb, and a jacket. That’s 26 squares worth of blue and green to put on my homeboard and exploration boards. That’s 216% of a plunder action, not counting the food tiles for houses or the feast.

Forest Blacksmith (103C). Grab a resource from the mountain strips before any ore-consuming crafting action. A great source of action-free ore for crafting or puzzling, or stone for houses.

Master Tailor (44B; as an anytime action, trade a wool, a pelt, and a linen for a jacket and three hacksilver) is worth it if you can use the card at least once, but it’s even better if you have a way of making some of this stuff action free, which in a recent game I accomplished through bonus tiles from Labrador and the Cottager card. As I was already making wool with a sheep strategy, the combo gave me everything I needed to make several jackets in the endgame.

Herb Gardener (182C; as soon as you have two houses, exchange 2/5 lumber for 1/2 spice tiles) is a great card if you set up a lumber engine (e.g., homeboard bonus, Isle of Skye, Isle of Mull). If you must use actions to get the lumber, not so much. But it’s great thing to hand in five action-free lumber for two spices.

Milkman (119 b; +1 milk with every weekly market action) is one of the better unbanned starting cards, but Messenger (118 c; +1 mead and +1 stone with every weekly market action) is better. As I like animal strategies,
both are auto plays for me. Middleman (120 b; see below) is the strongest of the weekly market enhancing starting cards.

Chronicler (187B). Anytime card. Any time and as often as you wish, trade three flax for a chest. Also, but only during one of your viking actions, you may trade two flax for the belt special tile. Chronicler is ok in the base game, but it is one of the best anytime cards when expansions are in play. In Norwegians, flax is much easier to make, whether from the flax shed, Isle of Skye, or the 2V weekly market.

Chronicler also adds to a horse strategy, as it increases the value of the 2V market action, with the flax there feeding into chest production. Without horses, you’ll still get the flax from the 2V market, but you want the bonus grain to put in houses. You could hit the 2V market six or seven times in multiplayer, as many players undervalue the market, and all this saved flax would translate to possibly 18 points worth of chests. Maybe more points than that, as chests are good pieces on 3V islands like Waterford, Labrador, or Newfoundland, activating the big bonuses on these islands).

If you draw Chronicler early, take Isle of Skye and unlock its flax bonus, then buy horses if you can to make the 2V market better. In the best case scenario, having the flax shed, Isle of Skye, and 6 stops on the 2V weekly market, you’re looking at as many as 6 chest tiles, or about half the coverage of the homeboard. Plus you’ll have all that grain and mead from the market for your houses.

Chronicler’s restriction on taking the belt (which can only be taken with Chronicler on a viking action, unlike its anytime action of producing chests) is no doubt to prevent someone from taking the belt as an anytime action in the middle of another player’s raiding or pillaging action. Without this rule in play, you could roll an 8 on raiding, and another player with Chronicler could snipe the belt just as you’re picking your tile from the special tiles. A good limitation for this card.

Host (19C; 1x take a free silk, spice, or jewelry if you have 3, 4, or 5 special tiles). A one time yellow occupation card. As it is so easy to get five special tiles, I always play this mid to end-game for the jewelry. I suppose with a small island like Lofoten, it can be better to play earlier for the silk.

Storeman (31C; 1X if you have three tiles of one kind in your supply, get another of that kind). While Storeman CANNOT be used to get a free animal, it can be used to make a free wool or a fruit basket. This is a good card to combo with tiles you can either make quickly (wool, milk), or orange tiles that can accumulate in your supply, like the fruit baskets you accumulate when you’re making wool on the 3V weekly market in Norwegians, or like the cabbage bonus tiles you get from Shetland or Wexford. While it’s tempting to save jackets so you can make a free hacket with Storeman, you’re missing out on tons of income you might have made had you simply placed the jackets on your board immediately.

Preacher. (87A; 1X take the cross or four items from the mountain strip)

While there are competitive spots to lock down in multiplayer—fishing, the fur trapper—generally it is best to perform your planned 3V actions first, so the occupation card draw can factor into your strategy.

For instance, in a recent game, I had already planned on taking Isle of Skye to synergize its runestone bonus with my Undertaker card, but when I hit 3V crafting to take the anvil (among the best tiles for Skye), and drew Preacher there, I knew I should play Preacher before Undertaker, to combo the cross and the anvil in filling Skye. Taking an oil barrel from 1V fishing, and a linen from 1V craft flax to linen, I unlocked Skye’s income, wool, and runestone bonuses in round one.

Metalsmith. (73C; 1x pay 0/2/5 hacksilver for a silverware, the cross, or the chalice)

When you draw Metalsmith, you often don’t have the hacksilver to play it to full effect, so it figures into next round‘s actions. In this regard, it is somewhat less useful than Preacher, which has no prerequisites and can be played the round you get it. While you could take the cross with Metalmisth if you have 2 hacksilver, it usually seems better to save the card and the two hacksilver for next round, paying it towards the 5 hacksilver you need for the chalice. Despite the delayed effect of this card, the chalice is useful on many exploration boards, and I am usually happy to draw this card.

Metalsmith can be less useful when your table is focused on acquiring special tiles, especially in Norwegians, in which crafting is much better and you can use the Theft action. Sometimes you can plan to take the Chalice next round only to watch another player take it this round with a Viking action. If the chalice and the cross are both gone, this card isn’t nearly as good, although taking the silverware can feed into the powerful 4V crafting action.

Carpenter (121B; take one good from the mountain strips whenever you build houses or ships, an “each time” card) Carpenter is worthwhile in house-focused games, depending on the timing of your build actions. Combined with an early stone bonus, like on Isle of Man, Carpenter can be pretty strong. For instance, if you have a stone bonus activated, and a stone is open on a mountain strip, you can use the 3V build longhouse without going to the mountain strips, as you made one of the stone, and take the other stone prior to the action through Carpenter. To use Carpenter most efficiently, focus on the 3V and 4V build actions.

Undertaker (100b; get 1 hacksilver whenever you place a runestone on a board) is an overrated starter card. It earned me 7 free hacksilver in a recent game, and since the card is -1VP, it was a net 6VP overall. And I received five free runestones from Skye, one from my homeboard, and another from an oil barrel upgrade on overseas trading, so you can’t say I wasn’t exploiting this card. There are many better occupation cards than this, and most of the starter occupation cards are better.

Maximizing Undertaker to a greater degree would involve overinvestment in 1V crafting or upgrading too many oil barrels, so I can’t see this card breaking the single digits in VP production without undermining other areas of your strategy. Perhaps Undertaker might pay off more VP with frequent stops on overseas trading, assuming a good green tile engine to make it worthwhile. The reason to play this card, though, is it’s one of a handful of cards that provide you hacksilver between income phases. Need an extra hacksilver to buy a knarr? Undertaker can give you that extra coin if you have a runestone.

Dorestad Traveler (185B; on the raiding action space you may instead upgrade two tiles, an “each time” card) is a great card if you can play it early and build an early longship. (As the appendix says nothing about the prerequisites for using the raising action space, we can presume they are the same, and Dorestad Traveller requires a longship for this nonstandard use of the action space). A 2x upgrade action space for one Viking, and you get to block raiding when you use it. In multiplayer this card can be quite strong, as you get to enjoy a popular action space but with an entirely different use. In solo and 2P Norwegians, there is no 2x upgrade spot, and Dorestad Traveller gives that powerful action to only one of the players.

Ironsmith (108c; when you exchange ore on a crafting space, pay 1 hacksilver to return a Viking). One of the more powerful starter occupation cards, as it effectively lowers the cost of the 3 Viking ore crafting to two Vikings and a hacksilver, due to the refund of one Viking. Ore crafting is already one of the better early paths in the game, requiring neither ships nor hacksilver compared to raiding, pillaging, and the knarr market, and it is easy to get started with a minimum investment of one ore, and you can keep it going for as long as you like if you activate just one ore bonus. Ironsmith makes ore crafting even easier and cheaper in terms of actions. Ironsmith can be less useful at higher player counts due to blocking, as special tiles are wanted by any means available, and hence the card is strongest in solo and two player. Ironsmith is stronger in Norwegians (the Armory; more ore bonuses on islands; the sickle or elk horns easily unlock the homeboard’s ore bonus), and Harvest (ore token).

With Ironsmith, 2V chest crafting also becomes more interesting, as you can use your hacksilver from the action to refund one of your vikings, effectively giving you a 2×2 blue tile for one viking.

Sympathetic Soul (92C) and Wanderer (95A). As I played both for the first time in a recent game, and as they’re both similar to each other, providing useful resources when there is no harvest, I’m covering them in the same entry. We could call these cards, and others like them, “Alternative Harvest” cards, in that they give you a yield when you’re not supposed to get one, not unlike the brown backs of harvest tokens in the Harvest mini-expansion. These cards synergize well not only with Harvest, but WITH each other.

Wanderer provides two free resources from a mountain strip in non-harvest rounds, which means, if you could play it round one, you would be guaranteed three payouts, or six resources, in a classic long or short game and anywhere from three to four payouts for a Harvest long game or two to four payouts for a Harvest short game. I played it round two of a recent Harvest short game, and it paid off three times, giving me lumber and stone in early rounds, and hacksilver and ore in the endgame. What a sweet card! I can’t believe I never played it before.

Sympathetic Soul is not quite as strong, as it requires engine building to make it worthwhile. That said, it is worth more straight VP. With Sympathetic Soul, on no-harvest rounds you get 1, 2, or 3 hacksilver if you have 3, 4, or 5+ special tiles. I played it mid-game and got paid out 3 hacksilver twice. Counting its 1VP card value, this card was worth 7 VP to my score. Extra income is always nice.

Etiquette Teacher (176B; receive 1 peas tile every time you play an occupation). Any card worth 3+ VP should probably be played, as it’s already worth as much as a VP chip, aside from the first two VP chips. Additionally, each pea tile in a house covers a negative VP, and hence is worth 1 VP.

Don’t get me wrong. This is one of the least exciting cards in the game. No one gets dealt Etiquette Teacher and thinks, “WOW! I have to rethink my entire strategy!” It is, however, a useful card.

Ship’s Architect (46B; as an anytime action, you may trade 3 lumber and a wool or a linen for a longship).

Ship’s Architect is more useful with an early lumber bonus, either from the Lumberjack’s Hut, or the lumber bonuses on your homeboard, Lofoten, Isle of Mull, or Isle of Skye. Skye synergizes particularly well with this card, making not only lumber but wool.

Generally speaking, I prefer getting my ships action-free. I often buy longships and knarrs as anytime actions with hacksilver rather than build them with viking actions. Ship’s Architect gives you another action-free method to make ships. Three lumber and a wool sounds expensive, but when you’re making lots of wool from Skye or a sheep strategy, and have a lumber bonus or two, it can seem better to trade three lumber, a wool, and NO vikings for a longship rather than THREE Vikings and two lumber, especially in the mid-game to end-game, when vikings are worth more and more points. And if we ompare it to the standard buy longship anytime action (8 hacksilver–>1 longship), a pile of lumber isn’t worth any VP, and a wool is only worth whatever negatives it covers, while 8 hacksilver are worth 8 VP.

Ship’s Architect can also surprise your opponents when they’re not paying attention to your occupation card plays. When you have no longship in your harbor, they might think the pillaging and 3V explore actions are safe from you, and choose other actions, letting you pump out a quick longship with Ship’s Architect before your Viking action, so that you can take the action space unexpectedly. Having no ship, but a wool and a pile of lumber, you could even play Ship’s Architect on the 4V Explore action space, churn out your first longship, and take Waterford, as occupation card plays and 4V Viking actions can be performed in whatever order you wish.

Skinner (157C; each sheep or cow used in the feast gives you a bones (2×3 green)).

A weaker but more versatile version of Farmer (see above), although drawing either makes my eyes light up, as I like animal strategies in A Feast for Odin. Skinner is similar to Farmer in that it provides an action-free method of animal conversion into tiles, it is more versatile in that you can translate sheep as well as cows, and it is weaker in that it is not an anytime action (although it does not cost an action to use, it occurs outside of action phase entirely), and you get a smaller green tile rather than a blue tile. While the conversion rate for Farmer is better (cow->jewelry is 3:8), Skinner’s conversion rate for cows is still acceptable (3:6). To use Skinner to its fullest potential, get sheep and cows breeding as soon as possible, and use those non-pregnant sheep and cows that aren’t being used as a milk or wool engine in feast phase for the free green tile. Note that you can use Skinner as often as you want in a feast, so you can place one sheep vertically and one horizontally to get two bones tiles.

In the final round, you could potentially place three sheep in the feast (right side up and two vertical) to make three bones after action phase to finish filling in your homeboard and islands. There are lots of places to slip 2×3 green tiles on the exploration boards, and if you’re planning for it, you can make this even easier for yourself.

One nice side effect of Skinner, and certainly a plus when compared with Farmer, is you can save smaller food tiles to place in longhouses. Hence, longhouses become a priority on playing Skinner, or you might end up with a heap of unused food. If you are not inclined to buy longhouses, you shouldn’t convert cows with this card, as it would be better to use harvest and bonus food on the feast, and upgrade cows on the mountain strips with no more than 2 vikings. But sheep are always worth converting with Skinner (2:6 action free, saved hacksilver during feast phase, and saved food for houses).

Best strategies: sheep, cows, longhouses, with cows being contingent on longhouses.

Linen Weaver (59A; as an anytime action, trade two flax + two hacksilver for two linen.) Another flax-converting card. I love the flax converting cards. While Linen Weaver is not as strong as Chronicler (see above in this thread), it is still a strong card, and worth playing if you capitalize on flax production (Isle of Skye, Weekly Market/Horses).

If you draw both Linen Weaver and Chronicler, play Chronicler. Three flax for a 3×3 blue chest is better than two flax and two silver for 2 1×4 green. While the linen are more versatile tiles, useful on small islands like Loftoten or big islands like Wateford, they are green tiles, not blue, and you have to pay silver to produce the tiles. Chronicler is better, but Linen Weaver is still a good card.

Linen Weaver can feed into 2V crafting (linen+pelt=>jacket+silver), especially if you have a method of pelt production, like hunting, the Cottager card, or a stone house.

Best strategies: Isle of Skye, Horses, Longhouses. While you can get the flax on the 2V Norwegians Weekly Market without horses, it is a shame to stop there to get flax, and not be able to take the grain. Taking two horses early on will make 24-30 VP worth of horses by endgame, plus when you hit the 2V Market for flax you will get more food for your feast or houses. So Horses/Longhouses aren’t necessary to make Linen Weaver work, but they do feed into each other nicely, letting you make tons of points from horses and houses. Why wouldn’t you do this if you were planning on exploiting this card?

Clerk (88C; before Overseas Trading, one diagonal upgrade (see below) per knarr, at a cost of one hacksilver per upgrade.) A fantastic card. There are three cards like this (the other two are Ship’s Cook 36A or Foreign Trader 37A), and this one is more versatile, and arguably the stronger of the two. While Foreign Trader lets you upgrade one item before Overseas Trading for free, and it is a straight upgrade of the same size, Clerk lets you upgrade on the diagonal once per knarr, at a cost of one silver an upgrade.

A So while Foreign Trader lets you flip a cow (3×4 red) to a jacket (3×4 green) before overseas trading, which you can bump up again by overseas trading to a loot tile (3×4 blue), with Clerk, if you have three Knarrs, you can pay three silver, then upgrade a cow to a cloak (3×3 green), a whaling meat to a fur (2×4 green), and a sheep to a bones (2×3 green), then upgrade ALL of those to blue with your overseas trading action, ending with a chest (3×3 blue), jewelry (2×4 blue), and a spice (2×3 green).

If you draw Clerk, it may be better never to buy a longship, and instead fill your harbor with knarrs. While this bars you from raiding and pillaging, and any 3V islands like Waterford, it also lets you do 4 upgrades before overseas trading, which is a fantastic advantage. There’s no reason why someone who draws Clerk in round one shouldn’t have their entire homeboard filled up by midgame, even while working on an island or two.

When you consider just how much fast income Clerk can give you on your homeboard or islands, this may be the most valuable card in the game. Being not only a quick tile converter but an action saver (giving you all those upgrades for just one viking, or maybe two), it would be hard to estimate just how many points Clerk is worth. Ship’s Cook and Foreign Trader are strong cards too, but not as strong as Clerk.

Best strategies: Cows, Sheep, Whaling, Fast Income (for buying knarrs, so Isle of Man or Iceland could be good). You want big red tiles every time you land on overseas trading, so you should try to start cow breeding as early as possible, or acquire Orkney if you can get it. If you focus on getting cows and sheep breeding in the early game, you could get your whaling meat tile as a bonus by grabbing Greenland. Shetland could also be good, as you’d have a 2×3 meat to convert to a 2×2 chest.

Catapulter (89a; when raiding and pillaging, stone is worth not +1, but +2 each)

Catapulter is the one die-roll bonus card that I like, as you can use it on both raiding and pillaging, and stone bonuses are now pretty common between the homeboard and the exploration boards. On playing Catapulter, it’s good to activate as many stone bonuses as possible. I would buy the longship after the stone bonuses are unlocked, as activating the bonus stone will feed into income production, which can be used to then buy your longship without using valuable actions.

Once you’ve accumulated a stash of stone and a longship, of course you use it to grab the largest tiles that you can. Catapulter and enough stone can bring the largest special tiles within your reach much sooner than the other players.

Mountain Guard (122A; when taking 2/3/4 goods from a mountain strip, take a mead/pelt/small chest)

Mountain Guard proved a surprisingly strong card in a recent game, especially combined with Catapulter, above. While you get the free tile on any mountain strip action space where you get 2-4 resources, the trick to maximizing Mountain Guard is to have big tiles to upgrade, and hit the spots that give you both upgrades and resources at the same time, like the 4V Norwegians action space which gives you 4 resources and two double upgrades, or the 3V 1-2P Norwegians action space which gives you 3 resources and two upgrades. When I played Mountain Guard, I accumulated cows and sheep, as per usual, so when I hit the 4V mountain strip, I got not only 4 resources and a small chest, but upgraded two cows to two loot tiles. While I was mainly taking the action space for the upgrades, having to cart away goods, I took as much stone as I could, which synergized well with Catapulter. A great card combo to have, as all the stone I was taking put the larger special tiles in my reach very early in the game, not only the shield but the English Crown.

Some cards I did not play in recent games:

Meat Trader (25B; a one time bonus of one 1×4 red meat for each knarr in your harbor). A very situational card. It could be a strong play, and I did have three knarrs when I drew this card recently, but I drew it in round seven, when my strategy was basically already committed for the round. While I had longhouses, I already had food to fill them, so I passed on this for another 1x card.

Punchcutter (173B; when ore is taken from a mountain strip to the supply, get 1 silver; when silver is taken from a mountain strip to the supply, get 2 silver). I have never played this card. While my intuition tells me it could be strong, especially in a multi-player game featuring lots of mountain strip actions, the card is too passive to get me excited. I should try it some time? Free income/points sounds good. The more I play, the more I save hacksilver for the point value, so this would only add to my score. And in a recent game (See above in this thread), other passive cards–Sympathetic Soul and Wanderer–proved very strong in the Harvest expansion. So while I’ve never played this card, it makes me think every time I draw it.

Sword Fighter (90C; remove ore from your longship for +2 on raiding). Essentially, Sword Fighter lets you use ore on raiding, and doubles the value of that ore to boot, even if it does make the ore a consumable resource.

Unless I’m really wanting to change things up, I rarely play die roll bonus cards. In multiplayer, a card like Sword Fighter is too easy to block, and in solo, you can only use raiding three or four times. Should I waste a valuable card play on that, or something that converts or acquires tiles without risk, and in many cases, without an action? (The one exception to this personal rule is Catapulter, which is a pretty good card, as you can use it on both raiding and pillaging, so you have more opportunities to use it).

Sword Fighter can be stronger in two player than in solo or higher player counts, as there is less competition for the raiding action space, especially when only one player has a longship. If you can activate multiple ore bonuses, so you’re not wasting actions on acquiring ore, and if you can hit raiding five times or more, Sword Fighter can be worth it. At higher player counts, too many people want that action space, and you’re better off playing another card. At 4P, you may only be able to take the raiding action space one time.

Innkeeper (71C; take the drinking horn from another player’s board and replace it with a chest/runestone combo from the supply). Even considering the -1 VP, Innkeeper is a great card if the drinking horn is taken, but absolutely worthless when it’s not. Much better at higher player counts, when the drinking horn is more likely to be taken.

Village Leader (165A; if you have a jacket (3×4 green) in your supply, get 2 hacksilver before the feast). It’s worth 3 VP, and about as good as a VP chip, and probably the only reason I would ever play this card. Having this and Etiquette Teacher in hand, I chose to play the latter instead. Should I keep a valuable engine builder like a jacket in my supply or unlock income on my boards?

Weapons Supplier (32A; a one-time card which gives you 2/5/10 weapon cards if you have 1/2/3 longships). I have used this one in the past, and it worked out handsomely. I tend these days to work non-risk paths like crafting, sheep, and animal upgrades, only jumping into raiding and pillaging when I can make a longship action free, but I almost played this card to get some extra weapon cards on the Theft action space. Remember, the occupation card and the action can be played in any order, so you could use Weapon Supplier to give you a big bonus on the Theft action. I chose to play another card instead.

Sower (169C; during harvests, produce an extra flax or grain if you already have flax or grain in your supply). I have played Sower before. While it isn’t a horrible card, it is more of a helper card that links with other, stronger cards. Hence, it is rarely played. It synergizes well with Chronicler, Linen Weaver, and the other occupation cards that consume flax. I may not be seeing the full potential of this card, such as how making extra grain can quickly fill houses or feed into a heavy animal strategy.

Two-Player Strategy Guide #1: Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small

 

Introduction

With quarantining and/or social distancing limiting your choice of opponents, you may find it currently easier to get two player games to the table. If you’re finding this not only just as pleasurable and diverting, but in some ways, better than playing at higher player counts, there are many reasons for this. While an increasing player count shifts the focus of a board game to table interaction, as the player count decreases, each player has more time to appreciate the game. Moreover, with fewer players waiting on your move, you have more time for decision-making and strategic experimentation.

While two player games are quite different than four player or six player games, they aren’t any less of a board game, and in some ways are even more of a tabletop gaming experience. Those board games that have stayed with us for centuries or millennia–chess, checkers–are no doubt two player games for this reason, as two player games enhance the opportunity for strategic focus.

While you may wait a while for future installments–my last post was in November–this post is the first in a series on two player strategies, not only for games that are specifically two player games, like today’s spotlight game, but for games that are best at two players, or games that become highly interesting at two players.

My choice of game for the first installment is Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. While it is neither the highest ranking two-player game (that would be Twilight Struggle), nor my favorite dedicated two-player game (that would be Fields of Arle), nor my favorite game at a player count of precisely two players (that would be A Feast for Odin, of course, which you have likely guessed if you’ve been following my blog), nor my favorite quick game at two players (that would be Barenpark), Agricola All Creatures Big and Small is a fascinating game with immense replayability that should hit your table dozens of times after you buy it, and will scratch a particular itch that no other game can in its circa thirty minutes of play. What makes Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small so mesmerizing is its intense compression: while you will have a more or less satisfying farm at the end of the game, you only have 24 actions by which to get there.

Your First Rule of Thumb: You Only Have 24 Actions

As you’re deciding what to do in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, always remember it is one of Uwe Rosenberg’s fastest worker placement games. With a knowledgeable opponent, you might be done in fifteen or twenty minutes. Even when two people are learning the game, don’t expect it to last more than 45 minutes.

Always remember that you only have 24 actions in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. Unlike many of Uwe Rosenberg’s games, you have no way to expand this number of actions–other than building a few of the buildings that give you free actions. (Rosenberg enthusiasts will know that adding on free actions and finding action savers in his games is of immediate importance when you are playing to win.)

Because you only have 24 actions in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, you want to familiarize yourself with the available buildings for purchase, pick those that you will aim at building, and plot out the quickest path to accomplish this. Because buildings are such an important component of your strategy, your first focus is grabbing building materials.

Your First Focus is Building Materials

Other than the single animal you can store in your starting home, you can’t do anything in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small without lumber, stone, and reed. If you never grab resources in this game, your score will probably end in the single digits. So don’t be tempted to let accumulating spaces accumulate goods–they won’t accumulate, as your opponent needs them as much as you do, and there is a very limited resource supply in this quick, eight-round game.

In round one, grab building materials. The best action spaces for this are “3 lumber” and “1 lumber + 1 stone + 1 reed.” But “1 sheep + 1 reed” is good too, especially if most available buildings have a reed building component. Player two may want to seriously consider grabbing the “2 lumber + 1st player marker” as their second move, if player one hasn’t already taken it–which he very possibly will. It is much better to be player one in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small than player two.

Other than grabbing building materials, the other extremely powerful round one action is “one farm expansion + 1 fence.” While you’re only getting one fence, rather than letting fences accumulate, grabbing farm expansions is much better earlier in the game than later, as you will definitely need the space to outscore your opponent, and the animal action spaces become increasingly valuable. Taking a farm expansion round one will mean not having to take that action later, when you could have had 4 sheep + 1 cow. As you often want not one, but two farm expansions, by endgame, getting the first one in round one is a great opportunity.

Your Primary Tactical Focus is Animals

Whereas strategy defines long-term objectives, tactics defines short-term objectives. In board gaming, tactics defines what you do round to round, or action to action, whereas strategy defines the shape of your decision-making over the whole game. In Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, your primary tactical focus is animals.

That is, round to round, you should be grabbing breeding pairs of sheep and pigs when they’re available, or grabbing that horse or cow you need to start or complete your breeding pair of those animals. The sooner you have all four animals breeding, the faster your animal victory points will accumulate. With all four breeding, you’re making 4+ victory points a round, so long as you have the pastures, stables, and buildings to accommodate your animals. I write “4+” points a round, because the animals become worth more as your animals pass the thresholds for bonus points. Obviously, the sooner you have all four animals breeding, the faster your animal bonus points will accumulate as well.

You may occasionally want to grab accumulated animals to deny your opponent points, although it is generally better to build your own strategy than to sabotage your opponent’s strategy in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. That said, if four sheep and a reed are built up, and you don’t have a place to put more than one of them but your opponent does, it is good to deny your opponent those four points and that valuable reed needed for strategic buildings.

Your Primary Strategic Focus is Buildings

While animals are the primary component of your score, buildings represent your most strategic decisions of the game, as each building provides not just an extra ability or bonus resources/animals, it also provides up to four walls for your farm, depending where you place the building. Buildings are extremely important strategic decisions that affect not only the shape of your farm, but the shape of your strategy, in the long term.

Your first buildings should be in central locations on your board, perhaps bordering where you will place your first farm expansion, so that you can use it and your starting house to create some large pastures cheaply and easily.

As you’re only going to build around three to four buildings in a game–remember, you only have eight rounds to acquire materials, expand your farm, build, and breed animals–you should have an idea of what buildings you’re shooting for from round one. While you may occasionally be able to build as many as five or six buildings, or there may be the occasional game where you may prefer a more or less straight stall, stable and fencing strategy, three to four is probably the average number built in a game. My highest scoring game (66-48), and my best scores, have been with three buildings.

You don’t want to overthink placing your buildings. While placing four buildings in a star formation creates a free pasture, and is a decent action saver if you can accomplish it, focusing on this can delay your points from breeding. I did this one time, and it did not pay off like I thought it would. The main things to accomplish with buildings is 1) raising capacity for animals, and 2) “pre-fencing,” or dropping a few building tiles onto your farm, so that their outside walls can be used to abut the fences you are about to run.

Fill In Your Farm With Fences

While beginning players often see a heavy lumber/fence strategy as being a good way to create space for a lot of animals, you will soon find that it is better to have a farm expansion and build a few strategically placed buildings first before you do much fencing. Not that you’re occasionally taking an early fencing or walls action when it’s the best thing for you to do, but generally, the first rounds it is better to grab building materials, build buildings that can house animals, and start a few breeding pairs.

Once you have a few buildings constructed, you will find that your few starting fences, and those you grab on the farm expansion action space, go a lot farther.

Which Buildings?

As it is important to have a flexible strategy in Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, it is of little use to list all the buildings. There are certain kinds of buildings that are good for most strategies, however, and the key things to look for here are buildings that save you actions and buildings that provide you space for animals (technically, another action saver). That is, buying a building which can make stables (there are a few of these) will ensure you never need to stop on the build stables action space, and this will give you a strategic edge in a game in which you have only 24 actions. Buying a building which can hold three animals, even if they have to be one particular type of animal, is a great move, as it means you have less fencing work to do. A building that houses three animals, plus gives you a free animal–especially if it is a horse or a cow–is a much better purchase than a stable.

Generally the stalls are the weakest buildings available for purchase, but they may look more attractive if the special buildings available don’t have capacity for animal storage, or aren’t desirable action savers.

Endgame

By round 7 and 8, the end shape of your farm’s structure should be more or less visible. Certain action spaces are less useful then, particularly taking a farm expansion, as you only have a handful of actions less to develop it. Ideally, you want to focus on 1) stables, if there are any left, for while they aren’t points in and of themselves, they’ll allow you to add more animals, which are not only extra VP, but extra bonus VP; 2) adding animals when you have capacity for them; 3) denying your opponent animals if you don’t have room for them; 4) grabbing a building for VP if you have remaining resources; 5) filling in farm expansions to get their bonus VP.

If you have focused too much on buildings, and not enough on animals, then you may be in the lead going into round 8, only to lose in the last breeding phase, when your opponent outdoes you in animal VP and animal bonus VP. To prevent finding yourself in this situation, tweak your capacity wherever you can, and, if you don’t yet have all four animals breeding, make sure you do by the end of round 7. Two horses breeding round 7 will become 4 horses by the end of the game, which avoids the -3 VP penalty for horses. Even in round 7, it is not too late to focus on a new breeding pair of an animal you haven’t yet added to your farm.

Hopefully, I have inspired you to bring Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small back to your table. If you’ve never played it before, I highly recommend it as minute for minute, being just as fascinating as any of Uwe Rosenberg’s worker placement games. Unfortunately, it is out of print, which makes it a bit difficult to acquire at MSRP prices. (For the Amazon product page, click on the image below.)

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Feast for Odin: The Harvest Mini-Expansion (A Review)

Currently only available for 5 Euros overseas, in German online and brick and mortar stores, I can’t think of another tabletop expansion that, euro for euro or dollar for dollar, brought as much innovation to a game as Gernot Köpke’s Feast for Odin expansion, Harvest, has.

Deceptively minimal and light, players will initially see Harvest as a kind of icing or accent on the game that they already love and have mastered, and will come to be surprised at the renewed sense of urgency that it brings to the long game, and the vitality that it brings to the short game, of Uwe Rosenberg’s Feast for Odin.

Feast for Odin: the Prelude

Inevitably, Harvest will be compared to the Terraforming Mars: Prelude expansion, another potent but small package, in that the Harvest resource tokens, and especially the revised short game rules, give players a ton of extra options in the first round, really opening up a host of different start-up strategies. While in the long game, each player picks one resource token, providing each player with one of two different resources depending on whether it is a harvest or non-harvest round, in the short game, each player starts with two of these, and also gets either immediately to put in play one of two dark brown (non-starting) occupation cards when playing with only the base game and Harvest, or, to choose an artisan shed when playing also with the Norwegians expansion, which starts pre-built, so that you have only to shove some food tiles into it to get its engines started.

Moreover, the revised short game starts each player with 3 hacksilver and an extra weapon card, so that, to sum, each player of the Feast for Odin: Harvest short game starts with 5 weapon cards, 3 hacksilver, two resource tokens, and one pre-built artisan shed. If this sounds exciting to you, you are right, and you will no doubt want to try this, “Prelude”-inspired, short game. In previous incarnations of Feast for Odin, the short game was unpopular due to feeling shafted out of a bonus round and a harvest, having six bonus rounds and four harvests in the long game, and 5 bonus rounds and three harvests in the short game. Moreover, pillaging-heavy strategies really need those back to back harvests in round one and two of the long game to get their engines going. And, worst of all–and this part is still unmodified in the short game–the cheap one viking islands flip much faster, making heavy exploration strategies more difficult and more of an investment in Vikings, when you are already missing 6 Vikings when comparing the long game (63 Vikings) to the short game (57 Vikings).

Feast for Odin: Harvest, the Overture

Cue up some pastoral music, whether Beethoven’s Pastoral, or your Aaron Copland of choice, if you will. It may help you with the crunchier and mathier aspect of this segment of the review.

Harvest is played exactly like Feast for Odin, aside from harvest randomization and set-up enhancements. Interestingly, Harvest takes the current status quo of plentiful harvests in the long game, and sparse harvests in the short game, and flips them, making it somewhat more likely that you are walking into a “dearth scenario” in the long game, and abundance in the short game. That Harvest accomplishes this through applying an identical randomization mechanic to both the long game and short game is highly interesting.

There are eight harvest tokens: four brown ones with a dash, signifying no harvest, and four orange ones, each of which indicates a different harvest. In round one, instead of getting the 1-1 Harvest (beans, flax, peas), you shuffle the four harvest tokens and pick one, which means you have a 25% percent chance of getting the basic 1-1 harvest you’re used to getting, but you also have a 25% chance of starting with the 1-4 harvest (fruit basket, cabbage, grain, beans, flax, peas), which usually don’t come out until round six. Whichever harvest you get in round one is removed from the tabletop, and the three remaining harvests are shuffled with the four no-harvest tiles, which means that in round two, you might be lucky to get another harvest, but most likely you won’t; the odds, actually are 4/7 that you will draw one of the dashes, or a 57% chance of no harvest in round two.

What does the randomization rule mean for the long and short games of Feast for Odin?

By the end of the seven round long game, there will be one unused harvest tile, making it roughly 50% likely that a long game will three harvests, and 50% likely that it will have the regular four harvests. As you’re also not guaranteed to get the 1-4 harvest, this means that, if you calculate all the odds, the Harvest long game actually feeds its Vikings slightly less, on average, than the base game. That is, instead of four guaranteed harvests, and a guaranteed round six windfall of the 1-4 harvest, you’re 50% likely to have three harvests, in which case, you’re 25% likely not to get the big one (with a combined likelihood of 1/8 or 12.5% of Harvest long games having three harvests and no fruit baskets). Food engines are much more important in the Harvest long game, giving the revised long game a more Uwe-ish feel.

By comparison with the long game’s tendency towards dearth, the short game tends to fructify more often, as you’re exchanging three guaranteed harvests, and no chance at all of the 1-4, for two to four harvests, with an equal chance for each harvest appearing in a particular harvest year. This means that you’re 2/3 likely to have either the same or more food than the base short game, and a 25% chance each harvest of one of those being the 1-4, which never appeared in the base short game.Additionally, the revised short game’s sense of plenty is accented by additional resource tokens, which often have food on their fronts or backs, the pre-built artisan sheds, and the additional food engines you may or may not have by the end of round one, depending on how you invest your starting Vikings. As you have enough money for animals in round one of the short game, some players may-wisely-choose to invest these in animals, resulting in even more food for some players.

In general, it is much easier to unlock some decent engines with 7 vikings and 3 hacksilver than it is with 6 Vikings and no hacksilver at all.

As to the set-up enhancements, the long game allows each player, in reverse player order (which wonderfully changes the first round choice of strategies), to choose one resource token, each of which yields the resource depicted on its orange front in a harvest round, and the consolation resource on its brown back in a non-harvest round. In the short game, you get to pick two of these, with the second token also being selected in reverse player order, and, on top of this, you either get to play one of two dark brown occupation cards before round one in the base game, or you get to choose an artisan shed, again in reverse player order, and start with it pre-built.

Along with the rules modifications, Harvest also brings additional content, not only an additional exploration board (1V Isle of Mull/ 3V Caithness), but a bunch of new 1×1 tiles, one of each color, which I’ll cover in the next section.

The Resource Tokens

There are ten resource tokens, which means that with with up to four being selected in each long game, and up to eight being selected in each short game, there are opportunities to try different paths in each game. When selecting your resource token(s), it is very important to check the back, as there is a very good chance you might be getting that bonus more than the front side, due to the randomization of harvests in Harvest. (More on that later.)

The resource tokens are super-asymmetrical, to the point that you can predict which ones will be selected most often; in a four player long game, the resource tokens that will be selected will probably be lumber, ore, stone, and either the hacksilver or the mead horn/beans token. Here I’ve listed the ten resource tokens in the order of what I predict will be their popularity with veteran Feast for Odin players:

Lumber / spear card.

Ore/peas.

Stone/sword card.

Hacksilver/berries

Mead horn / Beans.

Peas/oil barrel.

Shell/Mead horn.

Goldgubber/egg.

Bow/peas.

The goldgubber is a 1×1 blue tile; the shell is a 1×1 green; the egg 1×1 red; and the berries are 1×1 orange. The goldgubber is a neat inclusion, and there will no doubt be some players whose eyes light up at the thought of a free blue tile, no matter how small; I would urge them to reconsider their choice, as a hacksilver is also a 1×1 tile, and a spendable one, making it much more versatile. By comparison, think of a guldgubber as hacksilver that doesn’t spend. After a few plays, the only person who might be taking the goldgubber/egg resource token is player one in the short game, although the shell/mead horn resource token is a bit stronger.

While I think the starting Hacksilver is stronger than starting with a stone, particularly in the long game, where you could often use an extra hacksilver in round one, I’ve listed them in the above order due to my prediction that most players will favor starting with a stone over a hacksilver, due to feeling that three or four stone in a game is better than three or four hacksilver. And they would no doubt be right if things had the same value every round. But an extra hacksilver is just so useful in round one, as it helps you jump start animals or puzzle out extra income or a bonus square, or even hit the knarr market for one of the 1 hacksilver items plus the skates or the beads. In the short game, having 4 hacksilver is just so, so, so much better at the Knarr market than having only 3 hacksilver, letting you walk away with the hammer and the skates for a great start on Iceland, just naming one possibility.

I also think that while many players will love ore crafting in round one, the lumber resource token will end up being the choice token among experienced players, especially in the short game. The ore token may be 50/50 with the lumber token in the long game, but in the short game, when you start with all that extra stuff, plus an additional viking, there are amazing exploration paths you can take with the lumber resource token. (See my analysis of the Harvest short game below.)

There are two great things about the resource tokens, really: 1) they are indispensable action savers, which keep you from stopping at the mountain strips or the 1V and 2V weekly market in the first round; 2) they are exciting jump-starters, which allow you to get your favorite strategies and engines started even earlier. While in the long game to date, it has been tough to do any ore crafting in round one, unless it is pretty much all you do–spending 5 of your 6 starting vikings between the mountain strips and ore crafting–if you take the ore resource token, you still have half of your vikings left after doing ore crafting, which allows such wonderful combinations as 1V Flax to Linen; 3 V Ore Crafting (large armor suit), and topping it with a hacksilver in the short game, or a hacksilver or ore grabbed with your remaining vikings, so as to unlock three income and the mead horn bonus on your home board.

The choice of resource tokens is equally strategic in the long game and the short game. While in the long game, you want to consider the strength of the back side along with the advantage provided by the front side–especially any food they might provide–in the short game, you have to remember that whatever you pass on when it’s your turn to select a resource token will likely be selected by the next player in the second round of resource token selection. So, in the hypothetical scenario where player four chooses the lumber token, player 3 chooses ore, and player 2 chooses stone, player 1 must decide not only whether to take the hacksilver or the mead horn/beans, but resign himself to which one he wants player 4 to have. Because while taking the horn/beans token will extend your food a great deal, letting player 4 have the lumber and the hacksilver is much too strong (see below).

The usefulness of the available resource tokens diminish quickly, so that in a 4 player Harvest short game, player 1’s second choice is likely to be a pretty disappointing one, being either the shell, the bow, or the goldgubber. With last choice of artisan shed, and 5th and 8th choices of the ten resource tokens, player one is likely feeling that the strength of his starting position is not as strong in Harvest as it was in the base game or Norwegians. Anything he might do, short of being the first to build a longship, might be pre-empted by a player later in the rotation. Player four may actually be overcompensated in the revised short game of Feast for Odin. While the long game is more balanced with the reverse turn order selection of a single resource token, the last player in turn order has multiple advantages in the Feast for Odin: Harvest short game. Player one may actually feel like he or she’s starting in the hole in the revised short game, not unlike player four in the base game.

Let’s discuss some of the other strategic consequences of our dearth-ridden Harvest long game and our comparatively bountiful Harvest short game.

Feast for Odin: Harvest: The Long Game

Unlike the long game in the base game or Norwegians alone, the Harvest long game is marked by preparing for lack, so that there is a new emphasis on food engines. With less food likely to come in, and, in fact, a four round dearth of no-harvest rounds being a real possibility (there are three possible scenarios: H(arvest)/-/-/-/-/H/H, H/H/-/-/-/-/H, and H/H/H/-/-/-/-), one new goal for round one is trying to get a food engine going along with your prior expectations of having 2 or 3 income. And having a red food engine, such as the mead horn on your homeboard, Beekeeper, or Isle of Man, or the fish on Isle of Skye, is much preferable to an orange food engine, given that one red food will stretch your harvests by quite a bit. If you decide to play as if you have the round 2 harvest definitely coming in, and just focus on starting your blue/green/special tile production, you will be 57% likely to be caught flatfooted in round 2.

Due to this emphasis on food engines, one popular start for the last player will be: ore resource marker selected; 1V Flax to Linen; 3V ore crafting (large armor); and, 1-2V to grab the hacksilver or ore that will let you complete the 3 income / mead horn quadrant on your home board.

With randomization of artisan sheds in effect in the long game, you can’t guarantee nabbing the Beekeeper, but if you’re lucky enough to start with it, definitely play that side in the long game of Harvest. Even if you’re heading into a four harvest long game, the extra mead will be helpful in filling your houses. And if you’re heading into a dearth scenario, the mead production will be invaluable.

In the long game of Harvest, Isle of Man is the new Isle of Skye, due to having fast income, tons of food, and stone production to fuel making houses. Bonuses, in general, are even more useful in Harvest than they were in the base game and Norwegians alone, with players now giving serious consideration to whether they ought to unlock bonus squares or income first. Especially at higher player counts, in which action spaces are quickly exhausted, leaving each player highly dependent on their ability to produce bonuses on their exploration boards. Isle of Man is a great compromise here, as to unlock the pig bonus, which will eventually net you two pigs a round (one from the bonus, and the other from eventual breeding), you must unlock the income. Which isn’t to say that Isle of Skye isn’t strong in Harvest, just that if you plow straight ahead for the income, the wool, and the runestone, you might be caught flatfooted not just in one harvest, but in multiple harvests.

Feast for Odin: Harvest: The Short Game

I should say first that, until Harvest, I have never been a fan of the short game in Feast for Odin. It isn’t really much shorter–57 Vikings played instead of 63–and for that 10% reduction in game time, you’re losing an entire late game bonus phase, which might be worth thirty or forty points if you’ve been doing lots of exploration or building. Moreover, you lost the fourth harvest, and didn’t have two back to back harvests as you did in the long game, the better to focus on your engine building in the early game. When you’re speaking of the base game or Norwegians alone, Feast for Odin is so much better with the long game.

By contrast, I rather like the short game of Harvest. While it’s extremely asymmetrical and highly unbalanced–hints of which I’ve dropped in the preceding paragraphs–especially at higher player counts, in which the value of the resource tokens drop considerably with each selection, it’s very rewarding for experienced players to have, literally, everything that they’ve ever wanted to have in the first round, to fund impressive round one engine building or early point grabs. You’ll see players grabbing not only sheep, but cows or horses, or making remarkable progress on an exploration board in only one round. It’s even possible to hit the 4V Build Ship + House action in round one if you have the right resource tokens and another player sets up a mountain strip for you. I should say that this isn’t always very likely, though, as experienced players may never have to hit the mountain strips in the short game, though, given the right starting resource tokens, and being able to roll them into lots of lumber, stone, and ore bonuses through careful investment in sheds, houses, and islands.

While I’m a fan of asymmetry and imbalance in games, if it has led to one drawback in the Feast for Odin: Harvest short game, it’s the remarkable strength of the lumber resource token path, which results in Knarr actions being buffed considerably in opening rounds, and especially the first round. That is, whichever player choose the lumber resource token has some great options, and if you let a player have both the lumber and hacksilver resource tokens, they have outstanding round one engine building. Consider the following: 2V (Build Knarr), 1V Explore (Isle of Man), 3V Knarr Market (both 1 hacksilver pieces, the helmet and wand), 1V Theft (which will be pretty strong, given that you will have from two to four applicable weapon cards for this space in the short game). If the other players let you hit the 1V Explore, there is no competition for your next two actions, as no one else has a Knarr. You can easily unlock 4 income, the mead horn, and the stone bonus on Isle of Man in the first round, and be set for a round 2 fill. If another player realizes what you’re about to do, and pays 3 hacksilver for a whaling ship to take Isle of Man before you, you can take Iceland instead, which with 4 hacksilver at the Knarr Market follow-up action (3 starting plus one on the token) has a great start with the skates and the hammer, unlocking three income, and giving you the option of grabbing the fish or the oil barrel bonus. In a recent solo, I had the helmet and the wand from the knarr market, and the chalice from theft, having rolled an eight plus 4 of my 5 starting weapon cards applicable to that action space. I started with 4 income from Isle of Man, the stone bonus, and the mead horn, and my build on the island was pushing well towards the grain and the pig. While this is a lucky start, and you’re unlikely to be so lucky in every game, I would have been happy with receiving any of the size 9 pieces or better from the Theft action space. Moreover, there are no doubt other quick fills possible with the Knarr+1V Explore+Market+Theft combo, but Isle of Man is the one that I have latched onto, due to what I perceive as the island’s strength in this expansion.

Conclusion

Whether you’re playing solo or multiplayer, my experience is that each game of Harvest has been even crunchier and even more strategic to boot, due to Feast for Odin‘s puzzle shifting from the visual field of the tabletop to the mental field of planning. In the long game, concerns for food may change your investment strategies, and in the short game, starting the game with abundant cash and resources leads to surprisingly strong openings.

Moving from the abstract to specifics, in both of our multiplayer sessions of the Harvest long game, there was a four round dearth, which drastically impacted our engine building, and made those games as much about the cunning of our sacrifices as about the puzzle solutions we brought to the boards in front of us; these games were as much about what we lacked as about what we were producing. It’s a startling and creative evolution of Feast for Odin, in that now we must either plug these future holes in our resources with strong planning at the start, or otherwise puzzle how we are to make do without these tiles. Puzzling with tiles in front of us is one thing; puzzling with missing pieces is quite another.

Consquently, I predict many will choose to mod Harvest toward predictability. Some on the BoardGameGeek forums are already discussing such mods. I believe this is a mistake, as this expansion hits as high a standard as previous Feast for Odin expansions.

A Feast For Odin

Z-Man Games A Feast for Odin: The Norwegians Expansion

A Feast For Odin: Mini Expansion 1

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Feast for Odin: House of Bricks, A 192 Point Solo (no Emigration)

Feast for Odin: House of Bricks, A 192 Point Solo (Norwegians; no Emigration; moderate Exploration; Risk and Pillaging-lite; Animal, Crafting, and Building heavy)

Due to my endgame picture, which shows a preponderance of longhouses and pigs (as well as other animals), my starting occupation card (Master Bricklayer), and artisan shed (The Hermit’s Hut, obviously named after someone who likes to hole up in their house), I dubbed this solo “House of Bricks,” after the house of the wisest of the Three Little Pigs.

I should say that a little of this is postmortem analysis, in that my memory of what I did isn’t crystal clear. Often I’m setting up this game relatively late, after lots of writing. But I would say the following is a 95% accurate interpretation of my post-round photos. I’ve been snapping pics after the end of every round in recent solos, from the feeling that I have something to share with people who A) feel stuck in a rut of going from risk spaces to upgrade spots, or B) want to refine a risk-free crafting/animal strategy to be competitive with pillaging/raiding/whaling. While I did a few risk spots (Fishing and Theft in round 5; Pillaging in round 6), by then I had activated my weapon card bonus on Orkney in order to make two of these actions more or less risk free, only feeling that I was taking a gamble in my round 6 pillaging action.

Not that I rested my game entirely on crafting and weekly market action spaces, as you can see that I do a bit of Exploration–a bit less than usual, as I’ve wanted to work on my house game–and Building, in which I unlock as many bonus squares as possible on islands and longhouses, and use these action-free engines to generate VP.

Set-Up:

Weapon cards: sword, spear, net, bow.

Harvest: Pea, Bean, Flax, Mead horn.

Starting occupation card: Master Bricklayer.

Artisan Shed: The Hermit’s Hut / Icehouse. (You can find my analysis of Artisan Sheds through this link.)

The two starting mountain strips included the long strip from Norwegians, as I wished to contribute to a survey on Board Game Geek posted by the expansion designer, Gernot Kopke, who wondered how it would impact games to play this strip first. This is a bit of a change for me, as while the Norwegians rules advise shuffling it in, so that it could come out in any round, previously in the Board Game Geek forums the designer advised to place it on the bottom of the mountain strips stack, so that it arrives in the last round, and this is the way that I usually set up solos, as well as multiplayer games. It did impact round 4 a bit, when I took the two paired ore one the 1 resource / upgrade 1 Viking action space, and used one for crafting, and one on a crucial square on Isle of Man that let me fill in most of the island, all of its income, and go on after income phase to unlock the pig bonus.

Round One:

1 Viking: Mountain Strip, 2 lumber

1 Viking: Build Artisan Shed (-1 lumber, The Hermit’s Hut)

2 Vikings: Craft Chest (-1 lumber, 4-blue, +1 hacksilver)

2 Vikings: Weekly Market (herb, +1 hacksilver, mead horn) + Play Occupation Card (Master Bricklayer, -1 Stone when Building Houses)

The chest went on my homeboard, unlocking 2 income; the herb, two mead horns, and my pea went in my hut, unlocking the herb bonus and 1 income. My feast was flax/hacksilver/bean.

Income: 3. Between income, feast, and Viking actions, I have 4 hacksilver going into round 2. My only bonus was an herb.

Things I might have done: 1) as I didn’t end up building a house until round 5, I could have played Master Bricklayer later. I chose to pass on another action–such as a risk action, like fishing–because vikings are worth more later in the game, and I definitely wanted to get this card into play. Master Bricklayer is one of the better “unbanned” starting occupation cards. I was considering fishing to fill my hut, and then taking the whaling ship + exploration board action on the fifth column instead, which is a great action saver. Overall, though, I was happy with my opener, as 3 income, 4 hacksilver going into round 2, an herb bonus, and my starting occupation card in play, is a pretty strong start.

Round 2:

Usually, I like to play animals in Norwegians, perhaps because I did so much whaling and pillaging in the base game. However, for my last half-dozen solo games, I’ve been changing it up, going heavy crafting or knarr market strategies, in order to keep my interest in the animal strategy fresh, but in this game I decided to return to animals at last. This ended up paying off extremely well, due to a lucky occupation card draw.

Harvest: Pea, Bean, Flax, Grain.

Weapon Card: + 1 spear. So I have Sword, Spear x2, Bow, Net.

3 Vikings: Buy 2 Sheep (-2 Hacksilver, -1 Bean). I drew Inspector! A super great card, especially to draw so early in the game, when I actually had hacksilver to use it! Because while Inspector is free to play, returning one viking from the game board to your home board, if you have 1 hacksilver per round, you can double its effect, returning two vikings to your pool.

4 Vikings: Weekly Market (Spice, Wool, 1 hacksilver) + Occupation card play (Inspector, detailed above, -2 Hacksilver, +2 Vikings returned to home board).

At this point, I had one hacksilver remaining, and it occured to me that if I got a lumber, I could hit the Whaling Ship + Occupation Board action space in column five.

1 Viking: 1 lumber + 1 upgrade (upgrading herb to pig, so that next time I hit the 4 Viking Weekly Market, I would get the 4-red tile as well).

1 Viking: Whaling Ship + Occupation Board (-1 lumber, -1 hacksilver). I took Isle of Man.

As you can see, I placed my spice and my wool on Isle of Man, unlocking 2 more income and the mead horn bonus. My new income was 5, but as my feast was grain/hacksilver/pea, I only had 4 hacksilver going into round 3. At this point, my bonuses were mead horn, herb. My tile collection was: 2 herbs, flax, mead horn.

Animal Breeding: one of my sheep flips.

Round 3:

Harvest: none.

Weapon cards: sword, bow, spear x2, net x2.

3 Vikings: Weekly Market (2 wool, 1 fruit basket). Occupation card: I drew Hornblower, which will work great with my then-plan to fill Isle of Man.

At this point, I wanted to hit the 3 Viking ore crafting space, and needed ore. I hate going to the Mountain Strips, but there was an ore and two hacksilver sitting there.

1 Viking: Mountain Strip (+1 ore, +2 hacksilver)

3 Vikings: Craft Ore. I usually draw my occupation card before I pick a special tile, as sometimes your plans change, and this was one of those times. I drew Farmer (it gives you an anytime action by which you can trade a cow for an 8-blue jewelry tile, an awesome VP engine for later in the game), which changed my whole game plan. Instead of filling Isle of Man, I decided to grab Orkney. So I took the large armor suit from the ore crafting space, which works great with that exploration board.

1 Viking: Explore 1 Viking island, taking Orkney.

At this point I had six hacksilver, two wool, and the armor suit, five of which I laid underneath the middle island piece, and one of which I put on Isle of Man, to unlock another income. This gave me 3 income from Isle of Man, 3 income from Orkney, and 9 income total. Six of these were used to unlock the cow bonus on Orkney, so I would get the full benefit from Farmer later on. (Not that I intended to use it until round 6, after my initial pair of cows would have a chance to breed in round 5.) I had 3 hacksilver left over going into round 4. My feast was herb, mead horn, flax. Bonuses: herb, mead horn, cow. My tiles going into round 4 were two herbs, a mead horn, and a fruit basket, not to mention my cow, my pig, and now three sheep, as my flipped sheep reproduced this round in the animal breeding phase.

Round 4:

Harvest: pea, bean, flax, grain, cabbage.

Weapon cards: sword, bow x2, spear x2, net x3.

4 Vikings: Weekly Market (+1 hacksilver, spice, wool, 4-red meat, herb) + Occupation card play. I played Hornblower (-1 sheep and -3 hacksilver, but yielding a pelt, another wool, another 4-red meat, and the horn special tile). I had three hacksilver going into this round, so after this action space I had one.

1 Viking: Craft Flax to Linen.

2 Vikings: Craft Linen and Pelt to Jacket + 2 Hacksilver.

At this point, I didn’t really know what to do, and was regretting not starting my ore bonus on my home board, so I could do the ore crafting on the fifth column. I also wanted to get pig breeding started.

1 Viking: Mountain Strip, taking the two paired ore at the end of the Norwegians mountain strip, and upgrading another herb to a pig, giving me my breeding pair.

1 Viking: Craft Ore >9, taking the sickle. The sickle is such a great piece! It’s great for unlocking nearly any bonus.

This was an excellent round, giving me a heap of tiles to lay on my boards, and letting me start on my home board. However, I only had three hacksilver and one ore to fill in around these tiles. This meant that I could either choose between unlocking a little income on my home board, or a lot on Isle of Man, so I chose the latter, by placing the three hacksilver, the ore, the sickle, one of the wool, and the horn, unlocking 6 income there. This gave me 13 income, 4 of which I used to unlock my pig bonus (so now I was making two pigs a round!); 5 of which went on my home board, so that I could lay the jacket, the spice, and the wool, unlocking 3 income for next round, as well as a mead horn, a lumber, and an ore bonus; and three of which I used to unlock my weapon card bonus on Orkney. While I wasn’t doing a lot of risk actions yet, I didn’t need the hacksilver the following round, couldn’t unlock any other bonuses, and thought I might luck into some swords for late game pillaging/raiding. This left me one hacksilver going into round 5. My total bonuses were now: 1 lumber, 2 stone, 1 ore, two mead horns, 1 pig, 1 cow, and 1 weapon card. I now had a breeding pair of cows, but as breeding comes before bonus phase, they didn’t have a chance to breed this round. However, I now had 4 pigs and one of my sheep flipped. My feast was an herb, one 4-red meat, and a pea. My tile collection: fruit basket, herb, two mead horns, grain, bean, cabbage. At this point, I feared I was overproducing food, but wanted to keep it going, as my plan was to start getting some use out of my Master Bricklayer.

Round 5.

Harvest: none.

Weapon card: At this point, I can’t remember, and my picture was taken after the round, during which I did not only Fishing, but Theft, and spent most of my stash of cards. What I can say is that I had 9 weapon cards after my weapon card draw this round, and spent all but one of my cards, ending the round with a spear and a net (one of which was from my Orkney weapon card bonus).

At this point, I really wanted to get some use out of Master Bricklayer, plus I wanted to make some use out of my weapon cards. I also wanted to chip away the rest of the blanks from the home board. While I would want a longship next round to take Waterford or Newfoundland, I decided to go knarr/longhouse rather than longship/stone house. I don’t like stone houses that much. I see how they can be a great engine builder early in the game, making three points a round from the pelts, but in the late game, they’re a pain to fill, as they have an odd shape, making the negatives harder to cover than the ones in long houses.

The problem was that I only had one lumber and one stone, and even with Master Bricklayer, I needed another lumber. So back to the Mountain Strips again.

1 Viking: Mountain Strips (+2 lumber).

4 Vikings: Build Knarr/Longhouse (-2 lumber, -1 stone due to Master Bricklayer), play occupation card. I played Farmer. While this unlocked the anytime action, I wasn’t to use it for a little while.

3 Vikings: Craft Ore. I took the axe (the 9-square special tile). I think I drew one of the occupation cards I exchanged for a VP chip here. I don’t remember what it was. I only remember I didn’t want to play it on the Theft action space.

1 Viking: Fishing. While I wanted to have a great show on theft, I also wanted to get some use out of my long house. Plus, I had some nets, which you can’t use on Theft. I think I rolled a 2 here, and spent two nets. +2 fish, +1 oil barrel.

1 Viking: Theft. I scored the chalice (the special tile covering 10 squares).

Feast: grain, meat, mead horn.

Placing the hacksilver, the chalice, and the axe, I unlocked 5 income on my home board, which gave me a new income of 16, another of which I placed with the oil barrel to unlock my rune stone bonus on my home board; 5 of which I placed to unlock my grain bonus on Isle of Man; and, one of which I placed to unlock my pea bonus in my longhouse. This left me 9 hacksilver going into round 6. Having also placed two herbs, a pig, the two fish, and a bean in the longhouse, this added an oil barrel, a bean, and a pea bonus. My total bonuses at this point were 1 lumber, 2 stone, 1 ore, 2 mead horns, 1 rune stone, 1 grain, 1 pig, 1 cow, 1 weapon card, 1 oil barrel, one pea, and one bean. My tile collection was now up to 3 mead horns, 1 rune stone, one oil barrel, a cabbage, an herb, a grain, a pea, a bean, and a fruit basket. And look at all that stone and lumber! I could have hit the 4 viking Build action space again in round 6, if I didn’t just block myself due to the solo rules of Feast for Odin. In the stables, my sheep flipped, taking me to three sheep; I got two more pigs, but as one went in the long house, this took me to five total; and, one of my cows flipped at last, plus I got another one from Orkney, taking me to three total, one of them pregnant.

Round 6

Harvest: Pea, Bean, Flax, Grain, Cabbage, Fruit Basket.

Weapon Cards: I’m not sure what I drew, but it wasn’t a sword, which would have been the only useful weapon card to my Viking actions this round.

I used eight of my remaining hacksilver from round 5 to buy a longship, which I now did as an anytime action.

Anytime action: buy a longship (-8 hacksilver).

3 Vikings: Exploration Board. I took Waterford. I drew an occupation card here. This might have been when I drew Homecomer, as I am beginning this round to plan for three 4 Viking actions in round 7, and know that I want to have enough occupation cards either to play or exchange for VP chips. Hence the 3 hits on the 3 Viking action space column.

3 Vikings: Build Longhouse (-1 stone due to Master Bricklayer). Normally, I wouldn’t do this, but I have been wanting to work on my house game–and, moreover, I have scads of food at this point. I drew an occupation card here, which was destined to be exchanged for a VP chip.

3 Vikings: Weekly Market (+3 Wool, +1 Fruit Basket). Another occupation card that became a VP chip.

2 Vikings: Pillaging, I placed an ore on my ship and, based on what I have in the end of the round picture, spent a stone here. But I must have had no swords. So I am guessing I rolled a 10 here, as this is when I took the other armor suit, covering ten squares.

This is when I made my first use of the Farmer occupation card. By leaving the pregnant cow in the stable, I would make two cows, one from breeding and one from bonus, but this still left me with two cows to upgrade, action free, to jewelry tiles. Which I did. Placing those jewelry tiles, plus my bonus rune stone, oil barrel, and one remaining hacksilver from the previous round, I unlocked 7 income on my home board. This gave me 18 income. After placing the armor suit and three wool on Waterford, I had to place 9 hacksilver to unlock all of this island’s bonuses. I also placed one in my feast and one on my second longhouse, along with an herb, a pig, a cabbage, two mead horns, and a flax, to unlock all of its bonuses. This gave me 7 hacksilver going into round 7. During animal breeding, I flipped a sheep, and added a cow and a pig, and after bonuses from Orkney and Isle of Man, had 3 sheep (one pregnant), 6 pigs, and 3 cows. Total bonuses: 1 lumber, 2 stone, 1 ore, 2 mead horns, 1 rune stone, 1 grain, 1 pig, 1 cow, 1 weapon card, 2 oil barrels, two peas, two beans, 1 knarr, 1 longhouse, and the 10xblue tile from Norwegians. My tile collection going into round 7: 3 fruit baskets, 3 beans, 3 peas, two oil barrels, two mead horns, one rune stone, that big Norwegians blue tile, two grain, one herb. Also, notice my longhouse community and my harbor are growing due to Waterford’s bonuses.

Round 7:

Harvest: none.

Weapon cards: irrelevant, no risk actions.

So my strategy going into this round was to get my maximum oomph out of Homecomer. Homecomer lets you return one Viking on every 4 Viking action space, which means using it in round 7 is often your best play, if you can squeeze out three 4 Viking actions. Which I did.

4 Vikings: Build Knarr + Longhouse. This fills my harbor, and gives me my fourth longhouse, as well as a 4 VP chip.

4 Vikings: Weekly Market. +1 Spice, +1 Wool, +1 Hacksilver, +1 herb, +1 4-red meat. Plus another 4 VP chip.

4 Vikings: Mountain Strips, sweeping up four hacksilver and an ore from the end of a mountain strip, and double upgrading two fruit baskets to cloaks (nine-green tiles). While this only let me take three things from a mountain strip, rather than the full four, I took the extra hacksilver and ore for puzzling and points. This is when I played Homecomer, returning 3 vikings. I hate going to the Mountain Strips so late in the game, but can’t deny that it works well with a sheep strategy to double upgrade your growing pile of fruit baskets from the 3 Viking Weekly Market. Two cloaks is 18 points, which made this an 18 point play, or 4.5 points per Viking, plus a lot more if you count the next two actions due to my occupation card play. At this point, I had 12 hacksilver, 7 from the previous round plus 5 from viking actions this round.

1 Viking: Livestock Market, trading a sheep for a wool, a pelt, and a 4-red meat.

2 Vikings: Craft Ore >9, taking the helmet, and another 3 VP chip.

I turned my three remaining cows to jewelry, and placed two of them with the cloaks, the giant blue tile from Norwegians, the spice, my oil barrel and rune stone bonuses, and some of my remaining hacksilver and ore from the previous round, to finish my home board. Then I took my slew of food and filled my houses. The other jewelry, along with another oil barrel, another wool, and the pelt, went to Waterford. The helmet went to Isle of Man. The last wool went to Orkney. My income was 29, and after placing a couple on some -2 squares on Waterford and Isle of Man, I had 34 hacksilver remaining.

Ships 26

Emigrations —

Exploration boards 53

Sheds and Houses 75

Sheep and Cattle 10

Occupations 21

Silver 34

Home board —

Final income — (scored as silver, above. If you’re wondering why I didn’t score 29 points here, you’re scoring your Feast for Odin games wrong–see page 23 of the Feast for Odin rules, and Commonly Missed Rules in Feast for Odin.))

Exploration boards (negatives) -23

Sheds and houses (negatives) -4

Total 192.

Wait!!!! There’s an ore sitting with my unused loot. I could have had 193 if I tossed that on Waterford. This happens a lot to me. Don’t forget to place all your unused ore on your boards after the final round.

A Feast For Odin

Z-Man Games Feast for Odin: The Norwegians Expansion

A Feast For Odin: Mini Expansion 1

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Feast for Odin: Which Artisan Shed?

The Prologue: Which Side Do I Pick?

I’ve wanted to do an analysis of the Artisan Sheds for some time, but with one already on Board Game Geek, I was waiting until I could contribute something not only useful but original.

What’s interesting to me is that often the sides you think are good aren’t as good as their flip sides. For instance, while most glom on the Hermit’s Hut, thinking they can upgrade the herbs to pigs, for a whaling strategy, the Icehouse can be better. The Icehouse is a wonderful artisan shed, even though you have to give up a whale meat to activate it, rather than upgrade it to a nine-green, because the Icehouse is the only artisan shed to produce a green tile you can lay directly on your exploration boards and homeboards, so that together with the income, it produces a potential three points a round.

Which isn’t to say that the favorite sheds–the Armory, the Mason’s Shed, and the Lumberjack’s Hut–aren’t wonderful sheds to have. The Armory is the best one, no doubt, not for the sword, but because it lets you get started ore crafting before other players. Any free resources early on gives you a wonderful advantage in saved actions, so the Mason and the Lumberjack are also nice to have.

However, many of the other favorites aren’t quite as good in play as we envision. So many times I’ve activated the Hunter’s Lodge, thinking I will use the extra bows on theft and the extra nets on laying a snare, but my actions get tied up in other active engines, and I end with a slew of weapon cards. So the Hunter’s Lodge is perhaps not as good as you think.

Often passed over, the Beekeeper’s Hut is actually pretty awesome, in that it’s very small, easy to fill, and makes a red food every round. The Pig Sty is even better, although slightly harder to fill, in that it makes a LONG red food every round.

Because one indissoluble facet of strategizing with the artisan sheds is your choice of which of the two flip sides to play, my mode of presenting the Artisan Sheds will be a mirror of the choice offered to players: that is, I’ll cover not each Shed individually, but each two-sided board, touching on both sides grouped together, which side is generally better than the other, and, sometimes, when the reverse might be true.

Armory / Cowshed

The Armory is the best Artisan Shed, not for the sword, but because short of a successful Elk Hunt unlocking the ore bonus on your home board, it is the easiest way to get an ore bonus going early, to fuel lots of ore crafting. (Otherwise, you have to snipe ore from Mountain Strips, which costs actions, and can result in you getting blocked from something else you wanted to do that round.)

The Armory is a little troublesome to fill in round one, but doable, through hitting the Weekly Market fifth column space, and laying down your starting bean, mead horn, and pea, as well as the mead horn and the hacksilver you just got. This means your round one feast will require the income that you just started making in the Armory, but that’s ok–you just unlocked an ore a round, or six ore for the long game.

The Cowshed is one you’d usually fill in the mid-game, as you’re generally unable to make cows in round one, and unwilling to part with one until you have breeding going. If you get Orkney in round 3, you could activate the Cowshed easily in round 4 if you don’t plan on breeding your bonus cows. One Cow plus one grain and the Cowshed is done.

As the Cowshed will generally only make two or three milks in a game, compared to six ore from the Armory, the Armory is the better deal. Moreover, the Armory’s swords will pile up until you build or buy a longship, giving you some great mid to late game pillaging actions. All this said, I could see someone ignoring this shed until they explore Orkney and Cork, unlock the cow and shed bonuses, and use the first shed bonus to activate the Cowshed, then fill it with the bonus cow, and a grain or a pea and a mead horn. It’s an easy eight points compared to the basic sheds, for which you have to stockpile all that useful lumber and stone in order to score the full eight points. However, why would someone wait until the mid game to activate their shed if they were lucky enough to start with the Armory? The Armory is such a useful shed–producing six ore, whether for ore crafting, chest crafting, pillaging, whaling, or simply filling those tiny spots in exploration board or your home board–that this would probably never happen, assuming a skilled player.

Mason’s Shed / Beekeper

This one isn’t so cut and dry as the previous choice. Both options here are pretty solid strategic choices. Either you unlock free red food, saving you actions during the game, or you unlock a less useful orange food and a stone, which fuels building houses, pillaging and crafting.

As there have been many games where I have never touched the 1V Craft Stone square, and many more in which I don’t build a house until round six or seven, by which point I have the stone unlocked on an exploration board and/or my home board, the Mason’s Shed isn’t the clear choice here for me.

Having red food bonuses is such an outstanding action saver in Feast for Odin that nine times out of ten I would choose Beekeeper. Moreover, Beekeeper is eight points instead of seven, only eight squares to fill instead of ten, and you only have to use one of the mead horns it makes to avoid the -2, compared to two of the six stone bonuses for the flip side. To top it all off, I have ended a half-dozen games with a half-dozen leftover bean tiles, so the Mason Shed’s bean bonus simply isn’t attractive to me at all.

There are a few starting occupation cards that would make me play Mason’s Shed, however, such as the one giving you a one stone discount on houses, so that with every stone it makes you could build a long house. That would be a sweet game of Feast for Odin.

Pig Sty / Hunting Lodge

At first glance, the Hunting Lodge looks like the clear choice. Players like to hit the risk actions, and the Hunting Lodge will let you succeed more often on those action spaces. Moreover, the Elk Hunt action space lets you grab big green tiles for your board, and the Hunting Lodge will impact that action space as well. Plus, the bow-a-round it gives you could make a difference on the Theft action space.

But look at the flip side. If you’ve read my other Feast for Odin posts, you know how easy it is to make pigs in Feast for Odin. You can make two by round two or three without going to the Buy Animal action spaces, simply by upgrading herbs you’ve acquired on weekly market action spaces. If other players let you do this (because in multiplayer, not everyone will be able to do this in the early rounds), you could get the pig sty going in round two, if you don’t care about starting pig breeding, or in round three, if you want to breed your first two pigs. If you don’t care about breeding pigs, you could grab an herb on the fifth column action space round one, upgrade it to a pig in round two while grabbing a lumber in the 1st column Mountain Strip action space, then build your shed, toss your grain in, and voila, one four-red tile every round. While you sacrificed breeding pigs, you’re breeding pure pork at the rate of one a round! Plus the income.

So the Pig Sty is a great action saver. It will make your harvests last a long time, and make it easier to fill houses. In most cases, the Pig Sty is the better of the two choices. If your play style is going to lots of hunting action spaces, you might fight me on this, but you should try playing a game with the Pig Sty and see how you feel about it then.

Lumberjack’s Hut / Barn

In this case, the obvious choice is the good one. If you’ve played even one of Uwe’s sandbox games, you know how important lumber is. If there’s one rule of thumb for playing most Uwe games, it’s “when in doubt, grab lumber.” Lumber is incredibly useful in Agricola, Caverna, and Fields of Arle, and it’s no surprise that it’s useful in Feast for Odin. In Feast for Odin, lumber fuels build ship and shed actions, hunting action spaces, and the 2V craft chest action.

As experience at Feast for Odin will teach you that most of this lumber should be obtained from action-free bonus spaces, the Lumberjack’s Hut is an awesome way of making sure you will rarely have to hit Mountain Strips for lumber after you build this shed.

On top of the lumber a round you get from the Lumberjack’s hut, you get an extra weapon card.

Compared to the Barn, it’s just no contest–so if I activate the Barn, I get 6 points, but I have to give up a six point horse I just got on a 2V/4V Buy Animal action space? And my bonus is ORANGE food? And unlike flax, it’s an orange food without any kind of quirky usefulness, as grain doesn’t really pop up in the occupation card anytime actions like flax does. Even though the Barn is the only shed to have more than one income, the two income is not a sufficient enticement to giving up a horse to get it going.

I will no doubt never build the Barn in Feast for Odin. Even if I luck into getting Wexford (which has never happened in multiplayer, due to the usefulness of Isle of Skye).

Hermit’s Hut / Icehouse

This is a tougher choice than any so far. Not that either of these sides are as good as the Armory or the Pig Sty, but they’re pretty decent options.

Actually, both of these sheds are pretty exciting on first glance, and they would be a lot better if they weren’t so expensive to fill.

The Hermit’s Hut, for instance, gives you a bonus herb a round, which can be upgraded to pigs, and get pig breeding going in round 3 without every buying pigs. After that, it’s a free herb and pig a round, and this combo is outstanding for filling long houses. You should never have to use Vikings to get food with this artisan shed in play.

However, no doubt because Gernot Kopke saw how useful the Hermit’s Shed would be to a skilled player, eventually producing much, much more than any of the other sheds once the pig breeding was underway, the Hermit’s shed has a larger area than any of the other sheds, including the Armory. The Armory only has eleven squares to fill, while the Hermit’s Hut has thirteen squares to fill. The top two on the left don’t have to be filled to unlock the bonus and the income, though. You could unlock the Hermit’s hut income and herb bonus in round one by hitting the 5th column weekly market, and placing one herb, one mead horn, one hacksilver, and one pea or flax, left to right.

On the other hand, the Icehouse is super easy to fill, given that you produce just one whaling meat tile and a peas tile. A lucky player might be able to activate this one in round one (1V Mountain Strip, getting two lumber, 1V Buy Whaling Ship. 3V Whaling, 1V Activate Shed on 1st or fifth column), producing one oil barrel a round. This would be quite a start, by the way, in that you would have the six-green bones tile to start 2 income on your home board, giving you a total three income going into round 2. Plus you’d have an extra oil barrel for starting off whichever exploration board you’re able to get in round two.

Oil barrels are great for helping to unlock bonuses on your exploration boards, as you can slip them in anywhere. I don’t like whaling in Feast for Odin anymore, but I might consider it, given this artisan shed at the start of the game.

Most times I get dealt this artisan shed board I choose the third alternative–play Feast for Odin without an artisan shed. They’re often prohibitively expensive alternatives. If I get Cork later, I might activate one of these sheds with the shed bonus on Cork, assuming I have good food bonuses coming in.

Whaling Hut / Spinnery

This is another one I often elect not to play, unless I get dealt some good early occupation cards that consume flax, in which case I play Spinnery. I also do hit the 1V Flax to Linen spot at least once per game, sometimes twice.

To my mind, Whaling Hut is simply too expensive, considering how useful a Whaling Ship is for Exploration in the early to mid-game (Orkney and Limerick are 1V islands, remember), and also considering that I’m giving up 3 victory points (a whaling ship) to unlock 7 on my shed.

The Spinnery can also sting you, as you will always want to use the linen you make from your flax to slip in on narrow spots on your home board grid or your exploration boards. I have ended more than one game with the -4 spot still open on the Spinnery. If that doesn’t get filled, the Spinnery is only worth 4 points, and not 8, although it has saved you lots of actions with the food, perhaps fueled some crafting or filled some houses, and given you a trickle of income.

While a red food bonus early in the game is nice, because the Whaling Hut is prohibitively expensive in the early game, I rate the Spinnery higher than the Whaling Hut.

If your income is coming in strong, you can buy a spare whaling ship for only three hacksilver to finish off your Whaling Hut. I am guessing you will need those three hacksilver for something else, though, such as going toward the cost of a knarr or longship so that you can explore the better islands ready to flip in the mid to late game. Usually by the time you can fund the completed Whaling Hut, you have a fish bonus from some other occupation board, as the fish bonuses are more common on exploration boards than most bonuses.

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Feast for Odin: Go Big or Go Home

Conventional wisdom in Feast for Odin strategy is that 1V and 2V actions are better than 3V and 4V actions, while I have found precisely the reverse to be true.

This isn’t because big actions speed up the game, although this is certainly true. No, it’s because 3V actions give you an occupation card, and 4V actions give you an occupation card play, and many occupation cards emulate the 1V and 2V actions. So if you like the small optimizing actions on the left hand side, you still get to do them when you go big in Feast for Odin. Instead of spending vikings going to the mountain strip for lumber and stone and ore, for instance, you can grab a free resource every time you hit the the crafting or weekly market strips (Apprentice Craftsman, Messenger). And if you do must hit the Hunting Game spaces, why not do it after you play Forester, giving you a free resource from the mountain strip every time?

Sure, you get to do more things if you spend your vikings one at a time. But let’s say you do hunting (1V), fishing (1V), and craft a chest (2V), producing three red tiles (12 squares, two small green tiles (5 squares), a blue chest (4 squares) and a hacksilver. You could instead hit the 4V weekly market which gives you an herb (5 orange), a salt pork (4 red), a spice (6 blue), a wool (4 green), a hacksilver, and an occupation card play. The former plays cost one or more lumber, and one or more weapon cards, and the latter cost nothing but your initial investment in sheep. You get to keep not only your sheep but your pig (see Commonly Missed Rules in Feast for Odin). But not counting the cost of the former, the latter play is still much better, as you either play a lucky or useful card, or get a VP chip. Some of the yellow one time cards are so good that you might reach a total of 22 points from this one 4V viking action.

Similarly, plundering (4V) is undervalued compared to pillaging (2V/3V), when you forget the impact of the occupation card play on the 4V spot. Sure, you could get the 12 blue tile by rolling a modified 15 on the 2 Viking or 3 Viking pillaging, or even get it on Raiding with a ton of swords and stone, but on the 4V Plundering square, you don’t have to spend your resources. You can save your stone for a house, save your swords for pillaging and raiding, and on top of that, play an occupation card. You can either play a useful occupation card that mimics the Viking actions, perhaps with an ongoing effect, giving you free “Ghost Vikings,” play an incredible card that synergizes excellently with your strategy, or play a less useful and less incredible card by exchanging it for a VP chip. If you’re drawing the right cards, these plays can feed into your other engines, even pillaging and raiding, or those engines you have set up competitively against other players.

In order to have an effective occupation card engine, balancing occupation card draws with occupation card plays, it is good to find a rhythm between the 3 Viking and 4 Viking spots. Unfortunately, there are plentiful 3 Viking spots that are super strategic, while many of the 4 Viking spots are more situational. So your choice of a 4 Viking spot to strike may not only change from one game to another, depending on your strategy, but it may alter over the course of a game.

The spots I will not be mentioning are the 3V and 4V Mountain Strip spots, as I do not want to encourage bad play styles in Feast for Odin. Grabbing resources and upgrades from the Mountain Strip action spaces is an infrequent activity for high scorers, as after round one you should get the majority of your resources and blue/green tiles from bonus squares or active engines. Sure, if you have a pile of cows sitting there, it can be great to upgrade them to green, or double upgrade them to blue, but this is something you only need to hear once, and I have already mentioned it in other posts. In any event, it isn’t something you do every round, or even every other round, like you want to do when you’re finding the right combination of 3V and 4V spots to hammer during the game.

The Best 3V/4V Combos

While I’ve titled this section “The Best 3V/4V Combos,” there are a few subsections which have 3V/2V Combos instead, where the 2V action is a fifth column viking action in Norwegians, allowing you an occupation card play.

Build Longhouse 3V / Build Ship + Knarr 4V

If you’re making the stone and lumber from bonus squares, alternating between 3V build longhouse and 4V build house + ship is a pretty dynamic engine. You can do this all day long, if you have ways to tile your home board.

Great engine builders for this combo would be Lofoten, the Mason’s Shed, and Isle of Man. All have stone bonuses on them, and Lofoten has both a stone and a lumber on it, meaning that with just this one island, plus working on your home board, you can get two lumber and two stone a round, exactly what you need for this combo. Lofoten is also an extremely small island and easy to fill, so you could possibly be working this combo as soon as round 3 or 4, depending on the efficacy of your active engines in filling Lofoten and your home board.

Weekly Market 3V + 4V

Alternating between the 3V and 4V Weekly Market spaces can be quite strong. When your sheep breed, you will be alternating between 3 wool one play and 1 wool + 1 spice + 1 hacksilver on the next, plus all the food, plus the occupation card plays.

As you already have two occupation cards in hand from hitting Buy Animals (3V), this combo will lead with Weekly Market 4V, then alternate Weekly Market 3V with Weekly Market 4V.

Weekly Market 3V + Crafting 4V (Base game or 4 Player Norwegians)

On the 4V Crafting spot, you’re trading 7 victory points (wool + silverware) for 20/21 victory points (the two blue tiles plus the hacksilver), or 13/14 points plus an occupation card play. If you have sheep, the only problem in making this work is where do you get the silverware? The answer is Shetland, which is available on round 1. So if you’re going for an animal strategy in the base game or 4 Player Norwegians, you may want to grab Shetland.

For a sheep + Shetland strategy, this one is slightly better than the 4V Weekly Market. So in 4 player Feast for Odin, this action space gives sheep buyers another possibility to work into their strategy, as well as yet another reason to fight over Shetland, one of the better engine builders in the game.

(If you have Shetland and Isle of Skye, you don’t need Sheep to hit the 4V Crafting Spot. You’re getting Silverware from Shetland, and Wool from Isle of Skye. This is a very good active engine to set up if you can.)

Craft ore 3V/ Craft ore 2V (Norwegians only)

In this combo, you are making two ore a round from bonus squares ideally, one from your homeboard, and another from the Armory artisan shed, Islay, Iceland, or some other ore producer.

After hitting the 3V Craft ore action, taking the best special tile you can and grabbing an occupation card, you spend all but two of your other vikings, and for your last play in the round, you hit the 1V/2V Craft ore action in the fifth column, using your two remaining vikings, grabbing one of the <9 special tiles and playing the occupation card you drew. If it is not a useful card for your chosen strategy, discard it for the VP chip.

Pillaging 3V + Plundering 4V

I know you love the 2V Pillaging action space. We all do. But alternating between 3V Pillaging and 4V Plundering is so, so, so, much better if you can manage to set this up early on. All those occupation card plays can snowball nicely.

To do this, it is best to build your first longship in round one with 3 vikings, and pillage with 2, trying to unlock 2 income (8+) or 3 income (11+). (Your sixth viking could be used on Elk Hunt to try to unlock your ore bonus.) From there, try to increase your income, so that you can possibly buy a longship with hacksilver on round 3 from your combined round 1 and 2 income.

This is an awesome engine, but you must not forget to grab exploration boards. Assuming the opening outlined above, your round two opening action should be grabbing an exploration board. No one else should be pillaging yet.

Knarr Market 3V (buy special tiles) / Theft 2V (Norwegians only)

The Knarr Market is a super strategic 3V action space without an obvious follow-up 4V action space. That said, if you are a flexible strategist, there are numerous 4V action spaces that would be good to alternate with this one, if it might be a different choice from one round to the next (Build Ship + House / Explore + Emigrate Whaling Ship / Emigrate + Emigrate Whaling Ship, Buy Animals, Weekly Market if you already have animals), and there are few 2V fifth column plays in Norwegians that combo pretty well with this, especially Theft, another Knarr-specific spot in Feast for Odin.

Unfortunately, you may not have the weapon cards needed to profit on the Theft space one from round to round, so a Knarr Market / Theft occupation card engine works best when you have a weapon card engine, like Orkney, the Armory, the Hunting Lodge, or the Lumberjack’s Hut. You really want to be making two or more weapon cards a round if you’re going to be hitting Theft a lot.

Whenever you fail on Theft, you do make three weapon cards you can use next round, but two vikings for three weapon cards and an occupation card play is not that good of a deal.

You could also make this strategy work by conserving your weapon cards on the Theft action space, and taking a smaller tile every round instead of the biggest one you can get, and making gradually more liberal plays as the game goes on. That said, so you will be really tempted to blow 4 weapon cards to score a big chest, the axe, or the hammer. But for purposes of unlocking bonus squares and getting game engines going, the smaller tiles are often better than the larger tiles anyway.

Other Strategic 3V / 4V Actions Without an Obvious Combo Play

Craft (tools, chest, runestone)

This is probably the most situational 3 viking action space, in that if you have 2 lumber, 1 stone, and 1 ore, you should probably be crafting a special tile on 3V Craft ore, then get one more stone so you can hit build house + ship.

That said, this can often be just what you need to unlock a lot of stuff on your exploration boards. These pieces are just the right size. But you probably won’t want to hit this every round, or even every other round.

Explore (3V Island), Play 1-4 Occupation Cards, and Buy Animals are generally not combo plays, although you could envision an animal completist who kept grabbing two of every animal and alternated this with the 4V Weekly Market. Your animal VP would be insane, but you would be missing out on other engines and VP.

Explore + Emigrate Whaling Ship

This 4 player multiplayer action space is an awesome addition to the board. If you don’t have a whaling ship, but have three hacksilver around, it can be absolutely worth it to buy a whaling ship as an anytime action before stopping here.

With four vikings, you are grabbing a 3 Viking island, getting an uptick in victory points and a small reduction in your food costs, plus an occupation card play.

Very nice, but you won’t be able to do it very often, as this spot will be contested when it becomes strategic (round 5+).

Tiera Del Fuego is a pretty weak island, but if you’re curious, and want to try it, why not grab it on this spot?

Emigration + Emigrate Whaling Ship

Emigration is often not worth it. Feast for Odin is an engine builder, and the ships and hacksilver you’re giving up on Emigration would be better invested in building your engines. Heck, the knarr or longship you’re giving up on the 2V action space is an engine, in that they fuel either the buy special tile or pillaging/raiding action spaces.

That said, this action space can be a nice bit of icing here and there if you have extra ships from Cork or Waterford bonuses or occupation card plays.

But it’s not as good as you think. The later in the game you hit here, the less it is worth. If you’re excited about the 18 or 21 points on the back of the ships, you forget that you’re giving up not only the ships but hacksilver, both of which are also victory points. So if you have a whaling ship and a longship to give up, on round seven it is worth 21+7=28 points for the emigrations, but minus 7 for the hacksilver, and minus 8+3=11 for the value of the ships. Net value for this action space in round seven=28-18=10 points plus the occupation card play. Hitting 4V Weekly Market is better, at 6 (spices)+4 (wool)+1, or 11 plus the occupation card play. While hitting the 4V emigration can be cheaper early on, and worth a bit more, it also can derail your engine building.

Sure, all those emigrations sit there looking pretty, and save you a bit of food, but they’re not an engine. They don’t make any tiles for your board, increase your income, or give you free resources.

A Feast For Odin

Z-Man Games Feast for Odin: The Norwegians Expansion

A Feast For Odin: Mini Expansion 1
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