Orc-lympics review

Game review – Orc-lympics

Mechanics: Card Draft, Auction

Game difficulty: Easy

Duration of the game: 15 min

Number of players: 2-5

Best number of players: 4-5

As I review my game collection more and more, I realize that I have a pile of very serious strategy games, but few good, fun and short games (the so-called "fillers") are missing. The lack is especially felt in moments when many have arrived, but you have to wait until someone is late, or in moments when you have to wait for the other group to finish the game. Today a review of one dynamic short game - Orc-lympics.

Subject matter

It turns out that fantasy races also have their own Olympic Games, where teams compete in agility, strength and ingenuity. The games feature orcs, elves, jinn, goblins, and many other popular, clichéd races of the fantasy genre. As you'd expect from a short, highly mechanical game, the theme isn't the most important thing, but it's still there. There are different disciplines for which there are gradually competitions between different teams. The game gives you the feeling that yes, this is the competition where finally the team will do everything to win.

Components

Orc-lympics is a card game, so the main component is the card kava. The cards are of reasonably good quality. The author of the game's visual design is Reinis Pētersons, which already says a lot. A very interesting and atypical style for our latitudes has been chosen for the game's fantasy races. They are designed in the Chibi style, a common Japanese animation style with cute characters characterized by disproportionately large heads. Personally, I don't usually like that, but this time it didn't bother me, it even seemed appropriate because the characters aren't sweetly bland. The chosen design makes them different from the all-too-common fantasy genre, so I consider the design a plus. The game also comes with two cups that clip into the stands. It looks very good on the table, but a small minus is that they do not fit into the box with the stands, so the cups have to be dismantled every time. It's really a little thing.

Mechanics

The mechanics are very simple, but the secret of their success lies in well-thought-out nuances. The game consists of two main phases - team building and sports games. Team building is based on draft cards. Respectively, each player starts with 8 cards, of which he keeps one card, and gives the rest to other players. This lasts as long as everyone has taken possession of 8 cards. The catch - players build sports teams because after the draft you will only be allowed to keep 3 races out of eight cards, so if you have a stack of Orcs, Elves, Humans and Goblins, you will have to give up one race, meaning you will start the games with fewer cards. Also, the number of cards of the strongest races in the deck is smaller than the number of nominally weaker races. This nuance makes the draft very interesting, and there is never any absolute certainty that one card will really be better than the others.

The second phase is the seven sports disciplines, where the basic mechanic is the auction. There are three types of athletic competition—speed, strength, and cunning. Each requires different skills that are represented on the racial cards. Orcs, for example, are strong but not too cunning. The auction takes place by placing the team cards at the specified discipline, the player who obtained the highest numerical value has won the specified competition, and the second place gets the silver cup. However, there is also a nuance here - the used athletes are placed hidden and are not available for the next rounds, but the players who did not win can take one of the athletes back into their hands. Consequently, players have the ability to circulate their cards and lose one race to win another. Card circulation is the mechanism that makes you gradually think when and how much to play cards.

Multiplayer

As for a short game, the mechanics are clear, fast and there is not much depth, but the choices you make during the process are quite interesting, so I think the multiplayer is enough. I'd definitely like to play it multiple times in one session, so it's a bit of a shame that the core rules don't have mechanics built into the best of three games, but it's encouraging that it can be done. Otherwise, I think the choices are meaningful enough, which also creates multiplayer.

Rating

In the first game, my wife and I played the game in 7 minutes, and we were both like, "And that's it?". But as we played through it again, we got more into the tactics, which also made it clear that the choices in the game are more important than they first appear. They are even more important in 4 and 5 player competitions. This is a good short game that can also be used to teach some very common mechanics to new game enthusiasts. Fast, fun, thoughtful - I recommend it.

You can buy the game in Brain Games stores on the 1st floor of Rīga Plaza or K. Barona Street 55, or in the online store*: Orc-lympics

Board Game Geek rating: 7.2

Author: Kristaps Auzāns

Images courtesy of Brain Games and Brain Games Publishing

* Free delivery throughout Latvia. When shopping in the online store, take part in the draw "Shop and win!"