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Arguably Thorsten Gimmler’s most well known game, ‘No Thanks!’ is one of my favourite filler games (a game that takes no more than 30 minutes), offering both simplicity, tactics, luck and risk all at an incredibly reasonable price and so my expectations were high when playing Odin’s Ravens for the first time.
Luckily, I was delighted to find that Odin’s Ravens is a wonderful game that goes against the trend of two-player games feeling reliant on confrontation, without losing the fun of player interaction.
Set-Up
Set-up for Odin's Ravens is rather simple:
- Shuffle the land cards and place 16 of them in a line between the players. When laying them down, all you need to check is that no two spaces in a row are the same – if they are, you just need to rotate it 180 degrees or put the card to the bottom of the pile and select a new one. The remaining deck of cards is just placed faced down nearby.
- Ravens are then placed at one end of the land cards- each ready to take a different route.
- Each player is then given 25 flight cards and eight Loki cards of their colour and these are shuffled separately and placed face down in front of each play.
- Finally, players draw a total of five cards (from either pile or a some from each), for example four flight cards and one Loki card and then you are ready to begin.
Odin's Ravens - Gameplay
The aim of the game is the move your raven into the final space on your opponent’s side; otherwise known as the end of the world! Gameplay in Odin’s Raven is very simple. On your turn, you can play flight cards and/or Loki cards. You can play as many cards as you would like and once cards have been played, they are placed in your discard pile.
Finally, you need to draw three cards to end your turn and, like at the start, these can be taken from either or both piles. If a player ends up with more than seven cards, cards are simply discarded onto your discard pile until you are left with seven. The real tactics come when deciding which card(s) to play;
Flight Cards
Flight cards simply must match the land in front of you to move along and, to avoid ever having hands that do nothing, two of the same card can also help you move along to any new land. If there are two or more of the same land in a row, usually as a result of the Loki cards, you can use the matching flight card to move over all of these spaces.
Loki Cards
Whilst just using flight cards would be fine, the real fun comes when using the Loki cards. Loki, being the God of mischief, is all about mixing the game up. His cards allow you to do a variety of actions such as rotating cards, removing cards, swapping cards and adding extra cards to your hand and it is these cards that can be used to make incredible comebacks and slow your opponent down!
Ending the Game
The game ends when your raven reaches the final space on your opponents side. If that is the player that went first, your opponent gets one more turn to see if they can reach the finish point. If they make it, the player with the most cards left in their hand wins. If that is the same, you must race again!!
Final Thoughts on Odin's Ravens
Although this may sound like a very simple, uneventful game, that could not be further from the truth. Odin's Ravens is a brilliant two-player game with all the drama of a chariot race! Thorsten Gimmler has once again created a game that is incredibly simple to learn and yet has a good amount of strategy to keep it interesting.
The way that it is set-up means that games will always be slightly different and this means that the tactics that you used in the last game, may not work so well if you play a second time and I’m yet to play this and not want at least a second game!
I have never known a game with so many comebacks and nail biting finishes. You can be sat there looking at your hand thinking ‘I’ve won this!’ as your opponent plays a few cards and whizzes to the finish. Components are of good quality – the box, ravens and cards are all great and the price of the game is definitely a plus as it can usually be purchased for around £16.
My only minor criticism is that the theme is simply okay. There is nothing wrong with the theme, it is just that, despite the name, it does not feel like Norse mythology. Overall though, I would highly recommend anybody who enjoys two-player games to add this to their collection.
