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Review of Odyssey: Wrath of Poseidon
Blurb from the publisher: 'The Trojan War is over, and the Greek ships are trying to sail back to their homeland after a long absence. To do so, they must beg forgiveness of the wrathful sea god, Poseidon, who sided with Troy during the war. They need to reach the Sacred Island to make offerings and prayers to the gods... but the irascible Poseidon will use all his powers to prevent them from getting there!
As one of up to four Navigator players, command the Greek ships, sail through endless storms and dangerous sea monsters, blind to all around you, trying to gather clues to your whereabouts to stay on course. As Poseidon, set obstacles on the course of the Navigators and throw powerful storms against their ships, driving them off-course and confounding them, so they cannot reach the Sacred Island in time.
Odyssey: Wrath of Poseidon uses two boards, hidden from each other. The Poseidon player uses his storms to secretly move one or all of the ships, then gives information to the Navigators about what they see around them. The Navigator players have to guess where they are, using the information they get from Poseidon, to trace their course to the Sacred Island.
Multiple game boards change replayability; and multiple variants, including Sea Monsters, Maelstroms, Lighthouses, and more, are included to make the game easier or harder, according to the players' preferences.'
What you get: Your EUR 40 or equivalent will buy you Odyssey: Wrath of Poseidon, an asymmetrical, deductive area movement game that can accommodate from two to five players in around half an hour.
In addition to the 8-page English rulebook that one can also download from the publisher's website free of charge, the game includes the following: 4 double-sided boards, 8 plastic ships, 11 Storm tiles, 14 Special tiles, 16 Reminder tokens, and 2 Compass Rose tiles.
Gameplay: The players are divided into two teams. One player will incarnate Poseidon, the Greek god of the seas. The other player(s) will control the ships that need to reach the Sacred Island in order to win the game. The players collectively choose the board out of the four on offer, and place its two identical copies in front of them. They then estrict their field of vision with the box. Thus, Poseidon cannot see the Navigators' boards, and vice versa. Each board depicts the sea, the deep sea, different types of islands, as well as the ultimate goal, the Sacred Island itself. The Navigator(s) win by having either three or all four of their ships reach the Sacred Island before the end of the 11th round. Poseidon wins if only one or two ships reach the Sacred Island. The Navigators always use four ships irrespective of the number of players on their side.
Each round is divided in Poseidon's and the Navigators' turn.
Poseidon first plays one of his Storm tiles (five different colours), so that it is visible to the Navigators. If the storm tile matches the colour of a ship on the board, and four out of five colours do, Poseidon moves it to an adjacent square, be it orthogonally or diagonally. If he plays a black Storm, the only colour that does not correspond to a ship colour, Poseidon moves all ships to an adjacent square from the one they initially found themselves in. All such movement takes place on Poseidon's board only; not on the board of the players. Once a Storm is used, it is discarded. Seeing how there are eleven Storm tiles and eleven rounds, Storms are effectively the game's internal clock.
The Navigator(s) then play each ship separately. First it moves, and then it surveys. The ships execute their turn in any order, yet when a ship starts its turn it must conclude it before another ship begins. When moving, the Navigator tells Poseidon which direction the ship is sailing, as per the eight points of the compass. Were the ship to fall outside the board, Poseidon informs the Navigator, and the ship stays where it is. If it reaches the Sacred Island, it stays there until the end of the game. It can no longer be moved by anybody. Once the move is completed, Poseidon informs the Navigator about the ship's whereabouts. First, he tells the Navigator what lies on the square where the ship is currently at (e.g. sea, an island and what type of island, other ships etc). Then he informs the player about the eight squares around the ship, without however providing details. Poseidon has to say how many islands the ship can see, but not where they are nor what their type is, whether there are any ships around, but not their colour etc. Navigators can use the Reminder tokens in order to remind themselves of alternative positions on the board where their ships might find themselves. Again, only Poseidon's board is factual; the one of the players is a speculative one.
The game includes many variants. Examples include not showing the colour of the Storm tile (thus the players have no idea which ship was actually moved), providing more details about the sighting area in order to make the game easier, prohibiting the use of the Reminder tokens, etc. Sea Monsters give an advantage to Navigators. They are used as Storm tiles, instead however of moving a ship they stop it on its tracks. Yet, the ship can still survey during the Navigator's turn, allowing it a better chance to pinpoint its location. If the Sea Monsters are used, the game ends after 13 rounds. Lighthouses also help the Navigators. The Navigators collectively decide where to place them at the beginning of the game. They are unique, thus by being placed on the board they provide a point of reference to the ships that find themselves on them or near them. Maelstroms help Poseidon. Poseidon places them as he wishes on the board with some limitations, without informing the Navigators. When a ship falls inside a Maelstrom, it gets moved one tile by Poseidon as it if had been targeted by a Storm. Fog Banks also help Poseidon. They are placed by Poseidon in the same vein as Maelstroms. The fog hides the information of that square, i.e. Poseidon does not have to reveal whether another ship, or even another island, is inside it.
The game can also be played in a fully competitive way as a series on a PvP basis, with point scoring for each ship that makes it, or doesn't make it to the Sacred Island. Following a predetermined number of games, the player with the most points is the winner of the series.
The strong points: Ah, that's intriguing! The game is easy and light, this does not mean however that it is bereft of thought processes. It is most likely to remind your players of extremely different games; Battleship, because of the divider between you, even though there is no actual shooting; any game in the Sonar family, for the same reason, as well as the partial information on movement; any detection-oriented game like Whitehall Mystery, the more grandiose Fury of Dracula or what have you. Ultimately however, Odyssey is its own game.
To start with, most of these comparisons partially miss the point in that movement is not hidden. Both sides know where the ships are going. What is not known is where a ship starts from, and that makes all the difference in the world. The Navigators put most of the brainpower on the table in order to sort out what is going on. Depending on the number of variants one uses, this can be more or less easy. That having been said, and taking into account Poseidon's limitations (e.g. he cannot play Storms that affect all ships one after another), his part is not a walk in the park. Admittedly, certain moves from his side (like always moving the ships the farthest away possible from the Sacred Island) appear tempting. They might not however be the optimal ones, if the Navigators can easily discern where their ships ended up. In fact, Poseidon wants to keep the Navigators' ships in areas where multiple positions will give the same results when surveying in their turn, so that they are confused and uncertain about how to proceed. Take the 11-round timer into account, and there's suddenly a challenge to beat. At first sight I was unsure about why Poseidon is not allowed to watch the Navigators' board. During the game however it becomes evident that, if he understands where players believe they are due to them talking amongst themselves, he can gain an advantage by sending them to even more demanding waters. Thus, the deductive aspect works both ways; Navigators have to talk amongst themselves in order to get some fresh ideas about where their ship might be, yet they don't want to make Poseidon aware of where they believe they are, lest he makes their life even harder. Clever!
The game does not lie when it talks about replayability. The four different boards are already a good starting point, what really adds a lot however are the many different variants. Hardcore gamers will find the basic game fall on the easy side when playing as Navigators. ELiminate however the knowledge of what Storm was just played, and we are talking about a less obvious game. The Navigators will have a harder time, and must plan their routes in advance, in order to expect different survey results from one round to the next so that they have a better understanding of how Poseidon can screw them. That's where the additional elements like the Sea Monsters, the Lighthouses and what have you come in handy. They all provide additional layers, and can make the game more engrossing. Bonus points in that they can all be used concurrently, for even more complexity. Easy example: a nasty Poseidon can place Maelstroms and fogs in the potential routes of the less experienced Navigators, so that he increases his chances of victory.
Odyssey plays well for all numbers of players. In a full table, expect a lot of codified chitchat amongst the Navigators. The dynamics are very different when Poseidon faces a single Navigator, since he has no gauge over what that player thinks of his ships' positions. In the end, and even though the experience is slightly different, the game always comes out as enjoyable.
The production values are high for such a type of game. Everything will last forever, and to top that, the game has no cards so you don't need to sleeve anything. I am positively impressed by the practicality of the plastic insert. It is exactly what it should be, and hosts the game's components perfectly in dedicated compartments. You can store this game in any position, and nothing will move around.
The weak points: The game is entertaining for both sides, yet I have questions about its balance. The starting point for all ships is six squares away from the Sacred Island. The most obvious tactic for Poseidon is to always, always move a ship farther away from its target goal. If he does, and seeing how each ship can be affected five times in a standard game without variants, the game's eleven turns are barely adequate in order for the ship to reach its target. In case that wasn't clear, it will be physically impossible for a ship to reach its final destination on any other turn but the 11th, and if that is missed, the ship simply fails. I am not suggesting that such a tactic will always deliver victory to Poseidon, yet it is a path that is first, too obvious, and second, relatively trustworthy when it comes to the results it produces, at least against inexperienced players.
In that sense, I remember how intrigued I was when I found out that both Score-4 and Mastermind are finite games that can always be won by the same side, if that side knows how to optimally play them. Theme-wise the present game seems detached from those two. Is it possible however that in a Navigators' perfect game Poseidon can never win? My statistically insignificant number of playtests cannot answer this question, if however the answer is positive, and if the algorithm for it were to be made known, the game would lose something in my eyes.
Poseidon's effort at deducing what the players are thinking of is less pronounced when compared to what the players have to do to win the game. It is part of the asymmetry, yet clearly Poseidon has less things to do than the Navigators, especially if he is experienced with the game's different boards.
For this kind of an experience, maybe EUR 40 is a bit more than what one would want to spend. Shop around; at EUR 35 this is a purchase that can pay its money back, if one is into puzzle-like, deduction-oriented games. It must also be said that even though the components are of a good quality, they are rather unoriginal. Don't expect to have your socks knocked off.
In a full table, the game requires an RPG-like configuration, where four players must be able to see their own board clearly, while on the other hand not being able to see Poseidon's board, and vice versa. For some tables using both parts of the box will suffice. For others, you might need to use a GM screen.
I am nitpicking here, yet why oh why is it necessary to butcher Greek mythology in order to make the theme fit? Poseidon aided the Greeks during the Trojan war, not the Trojans. He wasn't angry at them at all; he got pissed off at Ulysses after he blinded his Cyclop son Polyphemus, during his return journey to Ithaca. There's a million ways this theme could have worked without this disrespectful crap, and even more so if more effort was put into it. Easy example: there was a sacred island in ancient times, and that's Delos, an island in UNESCO's World Heritage List today due to its numerous and important archaeological sites. Yet, the game's Sacred Island is not even named. Pffft.
Conclusion: I am very happy with Odyssey: Wrath of Poseidon. It is easy to understand, accessible to all types of gamers and age groups, and for a game with such a simple premise, it definitely punches above its weight, even as a filler or a warm up.
For more info on Odyssey: Wrath of Poseidon and Ares Games visit its website at https://www.aresgames.eu.
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