F@#$ Olympus

Olympus (not Olympos)

a review of Olympus (not to be confused with Olympos)

Warren had bought a scratch and dented version of Olympus mistaking it for Olympos, which I had demo'd at Gencon then purchased a few months later.

Hilarity of buying a similarly named but different game aside, the Nerdy Friday crew intrepidly learned the mechanics of this game.

It's a game about victory points. You acquire victory points purchasing buildings, using those buildings, improving your economy, culture or military and through selected actions.

The game play runs like a combination of Stone Age and Puerto Rico. You place a meeple in the 'alpha' slot of one of the gods in the greek pantheon. Your opponents may place a meeple in the 'beta' slot. Alpha slotting gives an additional benefit. Once that god is chosen, it is done for the round (a round ends when no one has any meeples left to play). Once the round is over, the first player marker moves clockwise.

You need resources to buy buldings. You get resources by alpha or beta selecting certain gods. Purchasing a building also requires an alpha or beta selection in addition to the resources. Buildings provide exceptions to the core rules, for example a Temple to Poseidon lets you wild card fish for any other resource.

Every track except culture, be it military, resources or whatever is capped by your population. At the end of a round, if that track exceeds the population track it is adjusted downwards. Aphrodite increases population. Ending a round at 6 population earns you an additional action per turn.

Culture is a pre-requisite for buildings. Athena increases culture. Ending a round at 8 culture earns you an additional action per turn.

Military, Culture and Population are all capped until buildings are purchased unlocking the next tier.

You can effect other players with wars and plague.

Ares (or Zeus, Zeus is a versatile god and allocating to Z allows nearly every action in the game) fights wars. Winners are determined by the military track, and the winner plunders the difference between those tracks in resources.

alpha Apollo gives 2 VP or gives 1 VP while bringing plague. By calling down the plague you are automatically immune to its effects, which are losing 1/3 of your population rounding down. Opponents can beta Apollo for immunization or gaining 1 VP.

So the game play was decent. Saving meeples for alpha selections was important but getting into critical god functions even at a beta was also important so that balance worked fine. The actions that effect your opponents was also decent. Getting hit by a plague or a marauding army was a setback for sure, but not a major one, likewise a succesful war or calling the plague yourself was benficial but not broken. And because of the PR-like task selecting mechanism, you may pre-empt wars and plagues yourself.

No the problem was the buildings. There are 16 unique ones and at least 20 common to every player. That is simply too many. 35 buildings leads to massive analysis paralysis. Furthermore, the unique buildings are extremely powerful. I don't anticipate many replays of this game, but if we do play again it will be a race of who can acquire the most uniques the fastest. Its not exactly a run away leader problem, but someone falling behind early will find themselves at a huge disadvantage.

So the replay.

Warren taught the game. This is a problem, because Warren tends to get distracted by the shiny bits and overlooks important steps, like how you win. We had a drawn out discussion of the various gods, trying to decide who was 'best'. Zeus was the prohibitive favorite, duh. He certainly is the most versatile, every action but plague can be done by Z.

Mike gets the Temple of Aphrodite really early, which grants him two resources every time he selects Aphro whether alpha or beta. He reads what the card does and everyone throws up their hands in disgust, dammit! Mike has this game sewn up already! Why bother reading the rest of the cards!

My goal was to get the extra population action ASAP, which quickly went off the rails once the rules for plague were re-explained. I pre-emptively plagued to get the immunity, and that became my theme. Mike coined the term Nurgle (see anything Warhammer), and I Nurgled every chance I got. It actually turned out to be not horrible to plague often, you grind a VP with this and everyone else loses people or spends an action getting penicillin shots. There are severe diminishing returns with this though, I absolutely Nurgled too many times and would of had a better final score if I just eliminated the plague by taking alpha Apollo for 2 VP instead.

Eric goes for the Temple of Poseiden and really expands fish production since ToP wild cards fish, he buys the ToP with an emphatic "THERE! Did what I set out to do!"

Ryan buys the Temple of Ares, and after reading the card, gets a wicked gleam in his eye. A successful war gets him a free action (a fraction?), alpha Ares allows two wars, so he actually gains actions if he gets to Ares first. There was no literal drool, but plenty metaphorical.

The game progresses, everyone can now anticipate my and Ryan's horseman of the apocolypse moves, Eric buys the Temple of Apollo which grants plague immunity. I say "Rasim Frasim". I start tracking resources and buy actions carefully, because if I don't, I am just giving resources to Ryan (and screw him!).

There are too many damn cards. Honestly, those kind of choices make it really easy to overlook something. I absolutely know I did, but I can't tell you what I overlooked. I only examined cards I had unlocked, and I rarely increased Kul-cha. That was still too many damn cards.

No one seems to be getting ANY victory points. We are 90 minutes in and the leader has like 9, and the VP track goes up to 60, wtf?

Game ends when 4 of the 6 tracks (Kul-cha, Population, Military, Wheat, Venison and Fish) are maxed out claiming the glory bonus. I claimed the Wheat glory bonus, which is another effing card, then got confused on what the hell that was. There are too many damn cards. Mercifully 4 glory bonus' are claimed (trying really hard not to refer to them as holes, but I am crass enough to let you know I was thinking that...) and are fairly evenly split.

Congratulations Eric, whose pick of the ToP and fish production seemed really shrewd in hindsight. About 75-80 VPs were claimed in total, and he got 1/3 of them leaving the rest of the table fighting over the scraps.

Darren's overall rating: 5/10. This game will not be played regularly. But possibly once every 4-5 months when we are sick of everything else we will break out "Olympus with a U not an O"