Feast for Odin: Active and Passive Engines

While many of Uwe Rosemberg’s worker placement games have an engine building aspect, often in animal breeding and agricultural food engines, Feast for Odin includes numerous options for engine building, so many that you can see the game played several different ways at the same table.

Engine building in Feast for Odin includes preparing active engines and passive engines. Active engines require viking actions to implement (pillaging, whaling, crafting, weekly market, perhaps augmented by “every time” occupation cards), while passive engines only require viking actions to set up, but once they’re in play, require no viking actions to implement (bonus spaces, income, and “anytime” occupation cards). A successful play in Feast for Odin is marked by two or more active engines and as many passive engines as possible.

The Active Engines

Again, active engines are implemented by Viking actions on action spaces, perhaps augmented by orange “every time” Occupation cards.

The general rule of thumb is that you want one active engine per player at the board, with a minimum of two (due to blocking in solo), adding one active engine per round until you reach this number. Which is not to say that you can’t succeed with less, if other players are not paying attention or feeling generous. But when playing the game with four players that know Feast for Odin well, it can be nice to have up to four active engines.

Why is having multiple active engines important? Let me describe a situation that may have happened to you in Feast for Odin: having built a longship in round 1, and whetted your taste for raiding and pillaging in the early rounds, you are subsequently blocked every round in the mid to late game, and have nothing to fall back on to fill your home board.

Some other examples of this that may sound familiar to you: if another player makes ore and has a longship, and you only have a longship, and no ore, they will hit 2V pillaging first–blocking you–then 3V Crafting. Or the player who has sheep and whaling ships, when you only have sheep, will hit the 4V Weekly Market first, then can go whaling if you take the 3V market spot.

The good news is that some alternate active engines are not difficult to set up, so that you can enjoy them and block others as well, which will then make them think twice about taking your productive spot. Yes, there is a “chicken” factor in Feast for Odin, in that if the sheep player starts pillaging, there is nothing to stop you from buying two sheep so you can take their weekly market spots if or when they open with pillaging next round. Or if you begin to make ore, the crafting specialist who was hitting the pillaging spot might think twice about which spot to hit first next round.

The active engines in Feast for Odin include Animals, Longship (Pillaging/Raiding/Plundering), Knarr (Trade), Building, Crafting, and Whaling Ship (Whaling). Crafting and Animals also have various subcategories.

Longship (Pillaging/Raiding/Plundering)

Pillaging is very strong, but as it’s one of the most economical spots on the board in terms of VP conversion (points/viking), it is contested in every game. This is why if you plan to pillage, you should a) look for other active engines, b) develop your passive engines by exploration, and c) start pillaging as soon as possible.

Raiding can be nice for small tiles or to spend accumulated swords. If you have tons of swords, this can be the best spot on be Board, at least in terms of VP conversion. If i roll a 7, and spend six swords to get the shield, I just got 12 points– as the shield covers 12 negatives–for one viking. Someone often does this in the last round of the game when they have negatives to cover.

If you’re combining pillaging with crafting (ore), save an ore for the crafting spot. Don’t be too quick to throw all your ore aboard your longship.

If you don’t have an occupation card, and plan on hitting something in the 4 viking or the fifth column later, pillage on the three viking spot instead of the two viking spot. Three Vikings for pillaging and a card is just as good as two Vikings for pillaging alone, so long as you’re definitely going to play the card or use it to get a VP chip. It’s always good to play occupation cards when given the opportunity.

A longship is one of the more expensive active engines, at either 8 hacksilver, or from 3-4 viking actions. While it can be absolutely great sometimes to build one in round one if you’re going to be aggressive with raiding and pillaging that game, afterwards you should only build one on the 4V spot or pay 8 hacksilver cash. Paying 3V to build a longship in round 4, with so many better opportunities available, is a waste of vikings, when you can use your income as a free action, or get a longship, a stone house, and an occupation card play / VP chip for 2 stone additional and one more viking.

Generally speaking, what I wrote on longships holds true for the other ships. If you’re not going to build one in round one, then in later rounds, when you have your income going, it is much better to pay hacksilver for one, or, in the case of the knarr and the longship, get one with all the other goodies on the 4V Build spot.

While a round one build gets your chosen ship engine going as soon as possible, a later build will cut into the viking actions you need to implement your active engines.

In the case of the longship, a round one build action will be expensive, but is very strategic, and sometimes pays off, as it gives you the only ship you need for exploring any island you want to explore, compared to players who chose other engines and paths for play, and often pay 8 hacksilver to build a longship as an anytime action before grabbing a 3V island. This means that the round one longship build will save you 8 hacksilver in the midgame, when you could be using that income to unlock exploration bonuses.

All this said, a round one build could backfire on you, if bad luck plagues your raiding and pillaging dice, and you can’t get a tile bigger than a runestone or the skates for your boards.

Two longships also allow you to plunder, an underrated action space which I will discuss more in a subsequent post

Knarr Market

At the 3V Knarr market, you basically double your investment. That is, if you spend 10 hacksilver, on average you buy special tiles covering 20 squares, and best of all, you can pick and choose just the ones you need to unlock bonuses on your exploration boards.

Even with small income, you can buy good tiles early on, given the 0 and 1 cost tiles. Hence, going there every round can be a great engine–so long as you are also grabbing exploration boards. The small special tiles are great for exploration boards, not so great for the home boards.

These early stops are also more effective in terms of hacksilver to point conversion, if less so in terms of Vikings to point conversion. But in the early rounds you are engine building anyway, and you want those little pieces to unlock bonuses. Which is not to say that as your income rises you shouldn’t buy the biggest pieces you can.

The Knarr buy action can also work competitively against crafting, in that the Knarr player may specifically buy pieces that can be taken at the crafting spot.

While the Knarr market is less effective than crafting ore in the early game, when income is small, it is more so as the game goes on. Given ore, a player can grab a huge piece in round one with ore crafting, while the Knarr buyer will not be so lucky. On the other hand, in round 5, many of the choice crafting pieces will be gone, while the Knarr owner will still be loading his boards with special tiles.

Building

When I speak of Building as an engine, I’m not talking about hitting the Mountain Strip with 3 Vikings, then the 4V Build space. Anyone can build a longhouse and a knarr with seven vikings, given the right resources queued up on the mountain strips. By a building engine, I mean when a player does the hard work of unlocking two stone and two wood bonuses as well as a food engine (see the passive engines, below), so that the player only has to spend 4 Vikings every round to buy a longhouse and a knarr, and even has the food to put into it from their food engine. This is a true active engine.

That said, building is a hard active engine to make work. But if you can get two stone and two lumber bonuses activated on your home board, exploration boards, and artisan shed, as well as food bonuses flowing in every round, hitting that 4V Build spot can be awesome—in multiplayer, when you’re not blocking yourself, and only so long as you are able to draw occupation cards from other actions to play there. It will probably be better to alternate the 3V and 4V spots for this reason. The houses are what you want anyway. If you really want to hit the 4V Build spot every round, you can get an occupation card for one viking by intentionally failing at Whaling (see below).

If you’re doing this with six to eight Vikings a round, it’s not an effective investment. The build engine is best when you’re making lots of bonus food plus two bonus stone a round, and two bonus lumber as well if you’re hitting the 4V spot. You only want to spend vikings on building.

Crafting (ore)

This is the easiest active engine to unlock, as all you need to do is upgrade flax to linen (1V) and use that and two coins to activate the ore bonus on your home board. As it is not on your income strip, there is nothing stopping you from doing this, and Uwe advises doing this in the notes to certain occupation cards in the appendix. This is even easier to unlock with the Elk Hunt in Norwegians.

Once you make one ore per round, there is nothing stopping you from getting all those chunky special tiles from the 3V crafting spot, and on top of that, you get an occupation card to play later. The armor suits from Norwegians, the hammer, and the axe, are particularly good pieces to get on the ore crafting action space. If you make two ore a round, you can also hit the <9 ore crafting spot on the right of the Norwegians board, and by playing an extra viking there, you can play the occupation card you drew on the 3V spot.

Crafting (Tailor)

This is a niche active engine, but it can be pretty effective.

1) buy stone house. Unlock pelt bonus.

2) never pass up a chance to upgrade flax to linen.

3V) Trade pelt and linen for 12 green and 2 coins on 2V crafting spot.

If you get Labrador in round 5, that produces linen as a bonus, and you could get two free linen to feed into this engine.

Crafting (tailor) is super easy to block until then, and whoever blocks you (on 1V flax to linen) may not even be intending to do so, but only wanting the thin four green to fill a spot on an exploration board.

Animals (Sheep)

Buying 2 sheep in round one (e.g., 2V Weekly Market + 3V Animal in Norwegians) makes the 3V and 4V Weekly Market spots super nice, not only giving you tons of food and green and blue tiles, but setting up a rhythm of draw card / play card to fuel a variety of extra actions or VP chip grabs. Moreover, the spice and wool tiles are just the right size for filling your exploration boards and unlocking additional income and bonus tiles.

It’s still good to do this in round 2 and 3, if you want to set up other active engines first, and possibly even later, if you want to mess with a sheep player’s engine. Just as getting a longship, knarr, or whaling ship increases your ability to mess with other players using those active engines.

In Norwegians, you buy two sheep, but if you take the first herb you get from the 4V market spot and upgrade it to a pig, every time you hit this spot afterward, you’ll get the salt pork piece, and your food will be handled. In the base game, if you want the milk from the 4V weekly market, you should get your first sheep on the 2V spot and your second sheep with a cow on the 4V spot.

While sheep are good in Norwegians, they were also a good alternative engine in the base game (although you could only buy one sheep at a time, only one sheep is required to make the 4V spot start flowing for you), and there will usually be some competition for this engine in both versions of Feast for Odin. But if there’s not, you get to spam those Weekly Market action spaces all game long.

Animals (Other)

The other animals are not quite as good as sheep, in that while there are weekly market spaces that give bonus production for having them (grain for having horses, milk for having cows, and so forth), these animals do not spawn tiles for your occupation boards and homeboard, like the sheep.

That said, pigs reproduce quickly and can fit inside houses, and all the animals can be used to fuel an upgrade strategy, in that breeding will give you large red tiles you can upgrade to green to tile your boards. Cows are the best animal for an upgrade strategy, in that they cover 12 squares. While horses cover 10 squares, they are worth 6 points to begin with (cows are only worth 3), so the conversion rate is not quite so good. Many players simply buy horses as a VP generator and leave them alone, as upgrading them in the endgame costs valuable Viking actions. Sheep can also be upgraded, and upgraded sheep are often more useful than upgraded cows in filling exploration boards.

To sum up, pigs for a house strategy; cows for an upgrade / homeboard strategy (the large green tiles being less useful in covering the smaller areas of exploration boards); horses for farming VP. Sheep as above in the Animals (sheep) section, and perhaps you might upgrade them in the final round once you’ve sheared all the wool you can.

Whaling Ship (Whaling)

The nice thing about Whaling in Feast for Odin is not what you think it is.

That is, it’s nice that you get all that return for your gamble. An oil plus a bones plus that huge whale meat you can upgrade to green for one of your boards. It’s somewhat less nice when you invest lots of coin and/or lumber and Viking actions to make it happen more often.

But the really nice thing is that if you fail, it’s possibly the best one viking spot, as you get two of your Vikings back, and get one lumber, one spear, and an occupation card. One lumber, one spear and an occupation card is pretty great for one viking. If you need a card prior to a four viking play, this is the cheapest and best way to get one, assuming you have a whaling ship.

The other nice thing is that it is rare for more than one person to do a heavy whaling strategy. In the last five multiplayer games I have played, no one ever did any whaling at all. This means you might have this spot all to yourself.

Even when you have a lot of Spears, the prospect of rolling a zero or less on a d12, and spending three Vikings for the privilege, seems kind of inimical, unless you spend all the actions or hacksilver necessary to build a whaling fleet. Actions or cash that could be better invested.

But if you have one whaling ship, you can take a gamble, block another player’s whaling fleet, and if you fail, get your occupation card, spear, and lumber for one viking. Then do the 4 viking spot you wanted to do.

Some players can make a lot of tiles out of whaling by alternating this action space with upgrades. Alternatively, it can make a good occupation card engine.

While whaling is a pretty cheap engine, ranging from 3 hacksilver or 1+ viking actions, you can sink a lot into whaling, paying for up to 3 whaling ships (9 hacksilver, of 3+ viking actions).

The Passive Engines

Passive engines work without expending Viking actions, like Exploration Board and Home Board bonuses and blue “anytime” Occupation cards. They do, however, require initial Viking action to set up, with the exception of bonuses unlocked by other bonuses.

These include food engines (red and orange tiles), income engines, commodity engines (blue and green tiles), and resource engines (lumber, stone and ore).

Food Engines

Food engines are created by unlocking food bonuses in long houses or exploration boards. The food engine can not only save you actions in providing for your feast, but they will fill your long houses and Stone houses, making a food engine an important part of a Building engine (above).

Food engines are generally undervalued in Feast for Odin and I am also guilty of this, only unlocking two or three in the early to mid game. The reason to unlock food bonuses on exploration boards is that a good food engine is an action saver and will prevent you from spending your limited number of Vikings on food. However, it is also good to unlock more then you need, so that you can fill houses if it becomes strategic to get houses.

Income Engines

Income engines are created by investing in your home board and exploration boards, with the fastest income growth generally available through the 2V Islands.

Income engines can be used to unlock bonus squares—which can feed into other engines—help with food here and there, buy special tiles with a Knarr, and buy ships as an anytime action, another action saver.

Commodity Engines

Commodity engines are free green or blue tiles derived from island and house bonuses.

Commodity bonuses are the gift that keeps on giving, in that the silverware and oil barrel you make on Shetland can be reinvested on Isle of Skye, unlocking the wool and runestone, and then you can use all three to unlock the oil, tools, income, and ore on Linerick. Once Shetland, Isle of Skye, and Limerick have all snowballed like this, you’re making basically 30 points a round, and you can more or less fill any island you get thereafter the round that you get it. A good commodity engine is often part of a winning game in Feast for Odin, as well as a decent income engine, a modest food engine, and at least two active engines.

Resource Engines

Resource engines are created by unlocking the resource bonuses on exploration boards and your home board.

Resource engines can be used to fuel crafting engines (above), and building engines.

The usefulness of resource engines should be obvious. To make a house with three Vikings is great, but if I have to collect the stone from mountain strips first, it actually costs from 4-5. Unlocking free stone on bonus squares drives down the cost of my house acquisitions.

A Feast For Odin

Z-Man Games Feast for Odin: The Norwegians Expansion

A Feast For Odin: Mini Expansion 1