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Let’s Talk…
I’ve been playing the Assassin’s Creed video games for years now. Ever since Altair first revealed his hidden blade, I’ve been hooked. The recent switch to a more open-world RPG style with Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla have played on my intrigue of the mythological. (If you want to play some mythology-inspired games, check out these top five!) You may be wondering why I’m talking about video games. “Luke,” you may cry, “you’re a board game blogger. Stop talking about video games!” Patience, my friends, I’m getting there.
In the most recent iteration, Valhalla, a mini game called Orlog was introduced. Based on historical evidence of games played, Ubisoft created this two-player dice game, akin to Yahtzee, which the protagonist would play across their adventures. It proved to be so popular in-game that a physical version was Kickstarted and has now shipped to backers across the world. Including me! (Told you we’d get to the point.) I got it to the table last weekend, so here we go!
How To Play
To set up, each player takes a tray, fifteen stones and a set of six dice. Then you decide which of the difficulty modes you want to try. The Beginner game gives you three recommended gods to use, the Casual level lets you choose from your own set of twenty and the Expert difficulty lets you draft from just one set. More on the gods shortly.
Pick a starting player and place the coin in front of them. That player picks up their dice and rolls them. The faces will show some combination of arrows, axes, shields, helmets, and grabby hands. Like in Yahtzee, you can choose to fix as many dice as you like then pass to your opponent to roll. Once you’ve rolled a third time, any dice you haven’t set aside is now fixed. Something else worth mentioning is some die faces have a border on them. This means you gain a favour token when things resolve.
Back to the gods. In the favour step, you can choose one of your three gods to pay a number of favour tokens to and trigger their power. This can range from dealing extra damage, healing yourself or manipulating the dice of yourself or your opponent. Each god has a priority order, so resolve these in order from lowest to highest. Any ties start with the starting player of that round. Next, you enter the resolution phase, where we look at the dice. You firstly gain the favour tokens from your dice, then you resolve the axes and arrows. Both of these deal damage equal to the number of these faces you have showing. However, if your opponent has helmets, these block axes, and shields block arrows. Finally, the grabby claw hand steals a favour token from your opponent. Once these are resolved, pass the coin to the other player, and keep on rolling. The game ends once one of the players runs out of hit points.
For Glory And Valhalla!
Orlog is a brilliant little filler game. When I played it, I was waiting for dinner and we managed to play two rounds relatively quickly. I love the little dice trays that came with the game. They are completely unnecessary, but they do condense the chaos, even if they are a smidge on the small side, and they are crafted to look like the ones in the video game. My copy came directly from Kickstarter, so some of the components aren’t the standard ones, like the dice. I have two separate sets, one glows in the dark, the other is a nice sparkly set. The hit point stones are also very nice. Yes, you could have a piece of cardboard and one stone to keep track like in Welcome to the Dungeon but having multiple stones feels a lot more thematic, like how a Viking would have played.
For extra fun with this small game, the publishers have provided a dry erase bracket board for setting up competitions, which I can see being a lot of fun at conventions. I love this game, there are a lot of different layers and play styles you can throw out there and no two games will ever go the same. You can be super aggressive and buddy up to Thor or be passive and take the hits whilst making small strikes with Freya. Whatever your choice, you’re going to have a quick game on your hands, so if the bones don’t go your way, rack up and try again! Some video games don’t translate well to board games, but this little game? Absolutely does it.
For extra fun with this small game, the publishers have provided a dry erase bracket board for setting up competitions, which I can see being a lot of fun at conventions. I love this game, there are a lot of different layers and play styles you can throw out there and no two games will ever go the same. You can be super aggressive and buddy up to Thor or be passive and take the hits whilst making small strikes with Freya. Whatever your choice, you’re going to have a quick game on your hands, so if the bones don’t go your way, rack up and try again! Some video games don’t translate well to board games, but this little game? Absolutely does it.
