As an Amazon Associate we may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page.
By: Grey Fox Games Players: 2–4 Ages: 14+ Time: 60–90 mins Released: 2015
Champions of Midgard is a middleweight Viking worker-placement game whose combat is settled by dice — and that single decision is the whole buying question. You spend eight rounds placing workers to gather resources, recruit warriors and carve runes, then send those warriors at trolls, draugr and sea monsters and roll to see what happens. If you want a worker-placement game where a well-built plan can still go wrong, this is the one. If that idea annoys you, it is not.
The Jarl of Trondheim has died, and without strong leadership his prosperous port has fallen into catastrophe. Monsters are causing chaos everywhere they go and the people cry out for help. Each player takes the role of a Viking leader seeking glory for their clan: defeat monsters, earn the favor of the gods, and claim your place as the new Jarl.
Our verdict: this is Lords of Waterdeep with a way for things to go wrong
The most useful way to place this game is against the worker-placement title most people already own. Our own read on Lords of Waterdeep is that its theme is a coat of paint: “just because it’s thematic doesn’t make it any less of a strict Euro. It’s a cube contract fulfillment game.” You take a space, you get the thing, you convert it into points. Nothing between the plan and the payoff.
Champions of Midgard puts something in between, and that something is a fistful of dice. You can win the race for the space you wanted, buy exactly the warriors you needed, provision the longship properly — and still watch the roll come up short and lose the lot. Grey Fox Games’ own pitch is explicit that it is chasing the Lords of Waterdeep and Raiders of the North Sea audience, so the comparison is not ours alone.
That is the recommendation and the warning in one sentence. The dice are not a flaw bolted onto a Euro; they are the reason to buy this instead of the Euro. Players who want their planning rewarded cleanly tend to bounce off it, and they are not wrong to — they are buying the wrong game. Players who find pure worker placement a little bloodless get exactly the missing ingredient. There is real mitigation available, too: more warriors, better weapon types against the right monsters, and leader abilities that tilt combat, so the luck is something you invest against rather than simply suffer.
What Champions of Midgard is
Champions of Midgard was released in 2015 by Grey Fox Games and blends worker placement with dice-driven combat. Players recruit fierce warriors, gain powerful runes and defeat mythical beasts, all with the goal of amassing enough glory to become the new Jarl.
The game runs over eight rounds. Players place workers around the board to collect resources or warriors. Resources are used to carve runes, build ships or feed followers, while warriors are sent to neighboring villages or across the sea to fight monsters and claim glory.
A spec correction worth repeating, because the marketplace and the publisher disagree. The publisher rates this for ages 14 and up. Amazon’s listing title for the game says “ages 10 and up,” and an earlier version of this review repeated that figure. Grey Fox Games’ own key art prints 60–90 MINS · AGES 14+ · 2–4 PLAYERS, and the publisher outranks the marketplace listing. Checked again for this update.
Setting up an embattled Viking harbor town
The board spans both land and sea and looks genuinely good. There are a sizeable number of token types (food, resources, warriors, coins) and decks of cards (rune, destiny, troll, draugr, monster, journey) to organize into their areas. Both small and large longships go on the board, along with market stall tiles scaled to the player count.
Along with a set of meeples, each player starts with a small number of resources and a destiny card, and places a token on the score track that runs around the outside of the board. Other worker-placement games like Stone Age and Lords of Waterdeep set up similarly; the Viking theme is what sets this one apart.
Each player also chooses a Viking leader. All five have special abilities: most offer combat bonuses in some form, while others grant extra glory for achieving certain goals or extra cards at certain locations. Which one is best comes down to the strategy you intend to play.
How to play: placing workers, then fighting monsters
At the top of each of the eight rounds several cards are revealed from the various decks — trolls, draugr, monsters, runes and merchant ships — so the opportunities on the board change every round.
Players then take turns placing one worker at a time on an available location until all meeples are used. Locations are color-coded. Brown and blue locations mostly let players collect or trade resources and warriors, and their effects resolve either immediately or at a set point in the round. There is also a sage house where players collect destiny cards, which act as secret missions worth bonus points at the end of the final round. Red locations are combat, and they resolve once everything else has.
Players who assigned workers to red locations send warriors against the threats. These can be local trolls and draugr attacking the village, or epic monsters reached by longboat across the sea. Send Vikings overseas and you must supply them with food for the journey, and expect to meet hazards on the way in the form of a journey card.
How combat actually resolves
Combat is resolved by rolling dice. There are three warrior types carrying swords, axes and spears; their die faces differ, and some monsters are immune to certain weapon types, which means those warriors cannot be sent against them at all. When attacking, you roll your dice and place a damage token for each weapon result.
Each enemy has an attack and a defense value. Once your warriors have attacked, you must remove dice equal to the monster’s attack value — those warriors are dead. If the weapon results still match or exceed the monster’s defense value, it is defeated and you claim the reward on the card. If not, the fight continues the same way until either the monster or every one of your warriors is gone.
Afterwards workers return to their players and certain cards are discarded to make room for the next round’s reveal.
Scoring and how the game ends
After all eight rounds, players tally final scores. On top of glory already earned, players gain extra glory for completing destiny cards, defeating sets of monsters (one of each color), and collecting runes, longships, coins and favor with the gods. Players lose glory for blame tokens, which go to anyone who failed to defeat a troll during a round and can also be handed to another player at certain points. Whoever has the most glory is the new Jarl.
That blame-token rule is the part worth noticing before you buy: the game does not merely reward doing well, it actively penalizes ignoring the trolls on your doorstep. You cannot quietly optimize in a corner for eight rounds, which is precisely what you can do in a gentler Euro.
Who it is for, and who should skip it
Buy it if you like worker placement but find it too tidy, you want a Norse theme that is doing real mechanical work rather than sitting on top, and you have three or four players. It is also a reasonable first step up from a gateway Euro, because the rules stay simple even though the decisions do not.
Skip it if losing a planned turn to a bad roll ruins your evening, or if you mostly play at two. The whole tension here is rivals taking the space you needed and dice deciding the fight; at two players the board opens up and a lot of that pressure disappears. Lords of Waterdeep is the better buy for a group that wants its planning to pay off exactly as planned.
Expansions and replayability
Champions of Midgard has two main expansions, Dark Mountain and Valhalla, which add new mechanics and challenges. Grey Fox Games also sells the line directly and currently lists a Jarl Collector’s Box, a dice promo and a game mat on its own store, so the line is still actively supported. The base game stands on its own: random setup, variable leader powers and multiple scoring routes carry it for a long time before you need anything added.
If you liked Champions of Midgard
These are the closest neighbors. We checked every link below actually sells the game described, and we have said so where one does not.
Blood Rage
Ragnarök has come, signalling the end of the world, and it is the Vikings’ last chance to claim a place in Valhalla. Players control Viking clans and battle for glory in a game renowned for its miniatures. Where Champions of Midgard is a Euro with dice in it, Blood Rage is a card-drafting area-control game where dying on purpose is a legitimate strategy. CMON lists it at ages 14 and up, 2 to 4 players, 60 to 90 minutes.
Lords of Waterdeep
The worker-placement benchmark, set in the Dungeons & Dragons city. Play as one of the secret lords of Waterdeep and send agents to recruit adventurers for quests that earn rewards and influence. It is the cleaner, calmer game and the direct alternative if the dice in Champions of Midgard are what is putting you off. Our honest note on it is that the theme is a veneer over a strict Euro, which is a criticism for some buyers and the entire appeal for others. Listed at 2 to 5 players, 60 to 120 minutes.
The Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom
Not a competitive Euro at all, and included because it answers a different version of the same craving: dice-driven adventure with a strong story, played cooperatively at family weight. Kosmos lists it at ages 10 and up for 1 to 4 players. Pick this one if what appealed about Champions of Midgard was the journey and the rolling rather than the competition.
Raiders of the North Sea — no purchase link, and here is why
As Viking warriors, players seek to impress the Chieftain by raiding unsuspecting settlements: assemble a crew, collect provisions, then journey north to plunder gold, iron and livestock. It is the closest design cousin on this list and a Kennerspiel des Jahres nominee. We are not linking it, because it is not reliably buyable. The affiliate link that used to sit here resolved to a Renegade Game Studios product that is not Raiders of the North Sea at all, and is itself listed as currently unavailable; a fresh search returns no in-print US listing for the game. A local game store is the honest route.
Also worth a look
- Ankh: Gods of Egypt — play a god of ancient Egypt competing to survive as society forgets the old ways. Build caravans, summon monsters and convert followers.
- Shadows Over Camelot — a semi-cooperative hand-management and deduction game of Arthurian quests, in which one knight may be a traitor working quietly against the rest.
- Stone Age — the other classic comparison for this game’s setup and rhythm, and a gentler introduction to the genre.
Frequently asked questions
Is Champions of Midgard worth it?
Champions of Midgard is worth it if you want a worker-placement game where your plans can genuinely fail. Sending warriors at a troll is a dice roll, so a good position can still collapse. If you want a Euro that rewards planning cleanly and never punishes you with luck, Lords of Waterdeep or Stone Age is the safer buy.
What age is Champions of Midgard for?
Grey Fox Games prints ages 14 and up on its own key art for Champions of Midgard, alongside 2 to 4 players and 60 to 90 minutes. Amazon’s listing title has said “ages 10 and up,” and an earlier version of this review repeated it. The publisher outranks the marketplace listing, so treat 14+ as the real figure.
How is combat resolved in Champions of Midgard?
Combat in Champions of Midgard is resolved by rolling warrior dice. Swords, axes and spears each have different die faces, and some monsters are immune to certain weapon types. Each weapon result places a damage token, then you lose warriors equal to the monster’s attack value. Match or beat its defense and you claim the reward.
How many players is Champions of Midgard best with?
Champions of Midgard plays 2 to 4 players and is at its best with 3 or 4. The whole tension of the game is rivals taking the spot you needed, and at two players the board opens up and that pressure drops. Eight rounds take 60 to 90 minutes at any count.
What expansions does Champions of Midgard have?
Champions of Midgard has two main expansions, Dark Mountain and Valhalla, which add new mechanics and challenges. Grey Fox Games also sells accessories and promos directly, including a Jarl Collector’s Box, a dice promo and a game mat. Start with the base game, which stands on its own across eight rounds.
Champions of Midgard is the most uncompromising game on our ranked list of the best worker placement board games, where we ordered six designs by what they hand you back when a rival takes the space you planned on — and Grey Fox Games’ own “send your worker there first!” rule puts this one at the punishing end on purpose. If the heavier end of that shelf is where you are shopping, see our heavy Euro roundup; if you are usually playing with three, the best 3 player board games covers what actually holds up at that count.
Also read: A Comprehensive List of Marvel Champions Expansions.
New to worker placement? Our free Top 10 Must-Have Games guide is the shortlist we hand to people who want one box that always works.