Betrayal at House on the Hill literally has a houserule that we don't play it, apparently. Our host informed us that for the near-Halloween game night, we will be allowed to play it for that night only without he and his wife objecting.
Now it's time, I finally got to play Feast for Odin! 2-player, short game which is 6 rounds instead of 7. Bear in mind this was the short game and I did horribly, so this is not some indepth review.
Overall I really like it, and it feels miles less boring, and more unique, than Agricola.
I really like how open it feels.
You start the game with literally 60+ action spaces. Many require payment, but once you get a few resources the possibilites expand dramatically. I am unsure if the balance is perfect, but apparently it went through testing starting in 2014 so I sure hope some balance got put in there.
Occupations add replay value.
Each player starts with a "starting" occupation card which can affect your overall strategy by giving you a bonus in some way (e.g. you get a resource each time you hunt game). Throughout the game you can get more occupations which bend the rules, add bonuses, and so on. There are two additional decks ala Agricola with what I assume are even fancier occupations.
For example, you can be a pirate -- you lose a point because pirates are evil, but at any time, as much as you want, you can spend a wood and 6 silver to build a treasure chest. You can be a princess -- each time you build a house, you get free silverware. You can be a drunkard -- each time you raid and fail, even on purpose, you get free consolation mead.
Interaction is minimal.
If you are doing 2-player then you may try the same strategy as your opponent occasionally, like fighting over whaling or something, but a lot of the time you are doing two different things. Certain things are theoretically limited like special resources or buildings.
The Tetris income and bonus concept feels very unique.
For those unfamiliar with the game, everyone has a sudoku-looking board with stuff like income spaces, bonus spaces, and penalty spaces. Each round you earn the lowest visible income number, but you have to cover parts of the board following various rules before you can increase your income. Green tiles cannot be placed directly next to each other, only diagonally. Blue tiles are luxury resources that can be placed wherever you want. If you surround bonus spaces but do NOT cover them, they give you special resources every round. If you cover penalty spaces, you avoid -1 for each space. Throughout the game, all players build a tetris-style board layout attempting to maximize their income and minimize penalties. Various types of food cannot be used for this purpose, but you can build a special food house or use actions which exchange the food for fancier resource types.
You can also buy houses and ships which open up other possibilities for storing resources, getting bonuses, and/or taking actions.
You have to feed your vikings, but it's not hard.
Each player has a little banquet table they must tetris up with food each round to avoid point penalties. You get free harvest food throughout the game, and this is generally enough with some spare silver to avoid any problems.
Dice elements seem fine if you remember the reroll rule.
The game comes with nice D8 and D12 dice. These are used for hunting, whaling, and raiding elements. I screwed myself over 4+ times failing these actions because I forgot a key rule: You get to roll up to 3 times, overwriting your result each time. This helps against bad rolls. Additionally, you can spend certain weapons or resources to improve your rolls after the fact. If you fail, you get a weapon and resource without spending anything, and on certain spaces you even get worker(s) back as extra compensation. The result seems like a nice balance between dice rolling and strategy.
Rules are acceptable but take some study.
I had read some of the rules before the game, but there was a lot of time spent puzzling over sections. It's been ages since I looked at the Agricola rules and I think these are an improvement. There are a good many visual examples, and lots of nice boxes, but some boxes just aren't where you expect. The dice reroll thing is on a totally different page from the detailed explanation of whaling, for example. Occasionally there are small errors like white tiles being called dark yellow, or an example board in the appendix being invalid in the English rules, but overall it's not awful.
The game has some interesting historical stuff.
There is a 20-page almanac with history about the Vikings if you're into that. You might think the "Thing Square" on your board is dumb. But did you know the "Thing" was actually a people's court and assembly according to old Germanic law? And in Switzerland, it is still used? Now you do.
The overall concept is not hard to learn, but understanding all the actions takes time.
You get resource tiles, you cover penalties, you acquire stuff worth points, and you trade stuff for other stuff. However, figuring out which actions to go for, remembering everything, and optimizing your board layout without screwing yourself with negative actions really takes some time and thought.
Scoring is a spreadsheet but not awful.
Scoring is a big category list like Agricola, but everything is actually pretty easy to add up since you just look for things with point value markers and then count up -1 squares.
I need to play it more and also try solo (your action choices from the previous round block the current round), but I am quite happy with it.
