Hellas No – Lords of Ragnarok in Review

This is a tough moment. Like when a parent takes a knee to tell their child a disappointing revelation. Usually, it’s about facts and reality not aligning with magic and brilliance. Sometimes you’re both left grieved. This is one of those times.

I’m being a little unfair. It’s not that bad. It’s just frustrating and devoid of purpose.

So, how did we get here?

Lords of Ragnarok is Adam Kwapiński iterating on his previous stunner, Lords of Hellas. That original game blew wind up my trousers right from the first turn. It hasn’t really let up either. I still hold the opinion that it’s one of the most inventive and exciting area control games of the current age.

Lords of Ragnarok is more. It has all of the lovely bits of Hellas, such as multiple paths to victory, interesting sub-systems such as fighting mythical beasts, ruthless player interaction, and a very solid core action mechanism wrapped around the rhythm of alternating between powerful special actions and building 3D monuments.

It even smooths many of those previous elements to offer a refined angle. The usurp action, a mechanism allowing you to take control of a territory by utilizing just your hero and not an army, is more useful and less tangential to play. Monster hunting is more even keeled, as you can’t swoop in and deliver the final blow to a Cerberus or Draugr and steal the achievement. The blessing draft is more straightforward, although less interesting as a consequence. Ragnarok boasts a much stronger solo mode. The map is less restrictive with fewer bottlenecks, as you can move across half the map in the blink of an eye with the new ship units. It feels less the traditional area control style with established fronts and borders, and instead more of a wild twist of connected interstates where you can always take the carpool lane.

This unbridled movement is the first signs of a leak. It’s the transitional element between old and new, the Drakkar ship units being a fresh layer set atop the game to mimic the ports found in the Hellas expansion material.

The problem is that everything new is a flop.

This free-wheeling movement undermines the core tenets of area control. Nearly everywhere can be reached and nothing is safe. Thus, almost nothing is worth investing in or trying to hold. Even worse, it’s more difficult to defend territory due to less actual units on the board. Instead of individual plastic soldiers representing your armies, we now have larger figures with strength dials in their base, almost as if Awaken Realms sold their souls to Wizkids and in return were gifted the Clix system. Not all Faustian deals are winners.

So, while your total strength may be relatively similar in terms of board state, you will have fewer armies on the board and thus less area you can cover. This is odd, because in combination with the convenience of sea movement, it’s terribly difficult to secure the objective of controlling three larger territories. This is not an exaggeration. With even a modest amount of table awareness, the group can so easily thwart this advance that you shouldn’t be overly concerned with controlling large amounts of area in this area control game.

Those banging Clix minis also bridge to a couple of other issues. Firstly, it’s difficult to see the actual number on the base. This means you will sometimes need to pick up a figure or stand and lean over the table to get a closer look. Agamemnon never would have fooled Priam if he had to lean over the walls and squint.

But even more frustrating, the game is a visual morass of pea soup. All of the miniatures are the same color and size, so monsters blend in with heroes which blend in with armies. If you opt for the extra add-on for 3D buildings, you will be even worse off. At this point, the board is just a blob of undulating features.

It’s quite the visual metaphor for Lords of Ragnarok, a design which unsuccessfully peddles the notion that more is more.

The most offensive of the more are runes. These are a new resource you can collect with heroes. They do offer a reason for your characters to move about the board, replacing Hellas’ quests which I admittedly kind of miss. Runes are accumulated in three types and spent for little power ups such as increasing stats, improving army strength, or taking control of monsters. Yeah, we’ll come back to that last bit in a second.

Runes get to the heart of Ragnarok’s problems in that they are an additional layer of system that don’t fundamentally improve the game. As I was gathering these things and spending them, I wasn’t having more fun than when I engage the antiquated systems of Hellas. They’re just there, another thing to do and fiddle with and take up time.

Time is a funny thing. It feels distorted in Ragnarok and not following the same laws of physics adhered to in Greece. This is a much longer experience than that of its progenitor. It’s also more sluggish, making it doubly worse. Part of that is how procedural each turn has become. By injecting this resource of runes, a new phase is added to each players’ turn. Even after multiple plays I can’t recall all of the effects you can trigger. This is coupled with additional options in the troop and hero phases – such as moving those new boats – and the outcome is a more laborious turn with a constant referencing of player aid. It’s no longer crisp. It’s as if Hermes took an arrow to the leg and it never really healed right. Send prayers.

The whole thing is just slow. The identity was completely overhauled and we’re all worse for it.

Another layer that doesn’t help are the realms you can ally with for bonuses. They’re scattered about the map and you will constantly be referencing them for your first few plays. They add a bit of texture to the action system, now shifted to a central hub instead of taking place on individual player boards. And guess what, it’s slower with no real measurable benefit.

But let’s get back to controlling monsters which I teased earlier. I’m not sure exactly what this represents thematically, but you can now take control of monsters. They’re not really fighting for you or actively your agent, you’re just able to protect yourself from the creature’s attacks. Again, rules and systems that don’t earn the additional complexity added to teaching and internalizing the game.

The tempo and agency therein have also been renovated. Lords of Hellas is partially defined by the ability of players to short-circuit the ending and push the climax. This could be done by repeatedly building a monument and triggering that particular finale condition. Ragnarok seeks to rectify this perceived problem by removing the option. Kwapiński seems to have lost trust in his players. It’s a drastic mistake.

Instead of a monument end game condition we have Ragnarok. It sounds thematic and exciting, but it’s simply a triggered final round based upon an independent set of conditions. These include markers such as a player maxing out an army, controlling a certain number of temples, or reaching a heightened stat with their hero. They are conditions which naturally happen over the course of play. It feels much less like participants are consciously driving the final act, instead the game seems to be lumbering towards this conclusion regardless of your attempts to engage the main objectives. Don’t forget to check these triggers which are scattered on several cards and set near the board. Spoiler: you will forget to check them.

It’s unfortunate that this default end state of Ragnarok seems to occur in the vast majority of plays. Controlling three lands is nearly impossible. The hunt mechanism was majorly altered to require defeating a boss monster as the final goal. While conceptually alluring, the boss is so challenging that I’m not sure it’s even feasible. No one in the wider Ragnarok community has reportedly witnessed it yet. It is possible to control three temples, but it’s also not terribly difficult to thwart this due to the boats and ability for players to pull down the leader.

When you somehow meet one of these victory conditions, almost assuredly temples, it feels unfulfilling as it’s likely a shock to the table. Every time I’ve seen it happen it’s because the group overlooked a detail – perhaps due to the visual component jungle. There’s no gusto there, no honor. It’s a ho-hum victory that doesn’t leave the table buzzing as we work quietly to put all of the miniatures and tokens away. It’s the opposite of a huge battle occurring at a completed monument where everything is on the line and every set of eyes is focused on the outcome.

Perhaps most damning, it’s missing much of the spirit that carried the original. Everything is so mundane and dull. The setting is less intriguing, being a rehash of the original rather unique mythic punk vibe. None of the monsters stick with me and even the characters and blessings are tame. It feels a contractual obligation. A sequel rushed to market due to the success of the original. No one is still pursuing analysis or insight on True Detective Season Two. But we’re still thinking about Russ Cole and Marty Hart.

I really do enjoy much of what Awaken Realms is slinging. Nemesis, Tainted Grail, and Lords of Hellas are all among my favorite games. But I’ve found that just as often I’m disappointed with their iterative development. The stretch goal and expansion content for Hellas bloats the game unfavorably. Nemesis: Lockdown is enjoyable but not quite as coherent or visceral as its predecessor. And Lords of Ragnarok is a dream that needed to be forgotten.

 

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