With Christmas less than two months away, here is our review of Fate – Defenders of Grimheim.
Grab your axe, your bow or whatever else is lying around and get ready to save your village in Fate – Defenders of Grimheim, the cooperative Norse fantasy game from FryxGames, the Swedish family studio best known for Terraforming Mars. Designed by Jonathan Fryxelius, it supports 1 to 4 players and is rated for ages 14 and up.
With Freyja and all of the village’s proper warriors off at a wedding in Asgaard, Loki has unleashed trolls, the dead and the fire horde on Grimheim. All that stands in their way is a group of keen but very green young heroes – and that’s you.
Monsters march in from every edge of the board and every one that gets into the village knocks down a house. Kill them to earn experience, spend it to make your hero stronger, and complete quests to earn better gear. If Freyja’s Well is still standing when the time track runs out, you win.
Features
- Cooperative tower defence for 1–4 players on a hex map of Grimheim and the valley around it.
- Four heroes – Alva, Bjorn, Boldur and Embla – each with a miniature and their own 40-card deck.
- Three monster families with their own tricks, plus six Legends including Grendel and Surt.
- Heroes block monsters just by standing in their way.
- Unlock new abilities, upgrade cards and earn equipment through quests.
- The number of town pieces scales with player count, so solo play balances itself.
- Short and long time tracks, an optional Monster Dice and other ways to raise the difficulty.
What’s in the box?
The box contains the Game Board, 2 Hero Boxes holding 4 Hero Miniatures and their 40-card decks, 4 Player Boards, 141 Monster Tiles, 54 Monster Cards, 20 Attack Dice, 8 Damage Dice, 1 Monster Dice, 150 Crystals in green, yellow and red, 12 Player Markers, 10 Town Pieces including Freyja’s Well, 1 Rune Stone and the Rulebook.
A Closer Look
Final Thoughts
The first thing you notice is the board. Grimheim sits right in the middle, surrounded by forests, mountains, lakes and roads, and the monster stats are printed around the edge so you don’t have to keep digging through the rulebook.
Turns are quick to pick up. You get two actions and they have to be different, so it’s always a juggle between moving, attacking, drawing a card, adding mana, healing or practising to earn experience. Cards, abilities and equipment can be used on top of that as free actions.
The monsters are where the clever bit comes in. They always follow the arrows and roads towards Grimheim, but any monster standing next to a hero stops moving. That means where you stand is just as important as how hard you hit, and getting your heroes into the right spots to plug the gaps is a lot of fun.
Each monster family plays a bit differently too. Trollkin get stronger in groups, the fire horde can attack from two spaces away and the dead turn your rune results into hits. Then the Legends turn up, and if one of them gets into the village it flattens three houses at once.
Levelling up feels great. Gold and experience are the same thing, so every kill counts towards your next upgrade, and you choose between grabbing a new ability or flipping a card to its stronger side. New weapons and armour only come from quests, which can pull you away from the fighting at exactly the wrong moment – a nice dilemma.
There are a few things to be aware of. Combat is decided by dice, so a bad roll can still ruin a good plan, although there are cards and abilities that help soften the blow. It also needs plenty of table space, and with 30 to 40 minutes per player a full four-player game on the long track can run well past two hours.
FryxGames rate it 4 out of 5 for complexity, so it isn’t really one for younger kids. Don’t worry if you get too good at it though – you can bring in the Monster Dice, switch to the long track, start without your opening bonus or make upgrades cost more. The rulebook also suggests you contact the nearest Fryxelius brother to run the monsters himself!
Solo works really well, because you simply play with fewer town pieces and the monster waves scale with the number of players. If you enjoy cooperative games with real tactical choices, this is definitely one to look at.
Fate – Defenders of Grimheim is available now priced at 600 SEK direct from FryxGames, which also includes the Equipment Promo Pack for free.
