Yggdrasil - Tips & Strategies

The enemies’ powers are far from equal. Some don’t scale with advancement (e.g. both of the serpents) and some are just minor/medium inconveniences even with three lightning bolts (Hel/Surtr). The powers of Loki and especially Fenrir are devastating if you let them get too close to Asgard. Fenrir can wipe out several turns through a sequence of unlucky rolls.

Make sure that you keep Fenrir and Loki as far back as possible – prioritize battling them even if it means you let some of the less dangerous enemies pass. Note that it is also easier to win battles against Loki/Fenrir if you keep them at the beginning – scoring a 5 in combat is not a tall order.

A good strategy early in the game is to empty one of the first two bags in Midgard, white or blue, of fire giants. Since these are the closest bags to the rainbow bridge where the Valkyries start when they are reset, they are the easiest and quickest to get to. Visit the Kingdom of Fire during your first couple of turns to try and remove all of the fire giants from either the white or blue bag. If possible, also try to visit the World of the Dead to add vikings to the same bag. I say if possible, because you might not be able to add a full 5 vikings to the bag, but try and maximize how many vikings you can add. This way, you can usually keep a bag stocked with vikings that should have little to no fire giants in it, ensuring lots of help when it comes to fighting the villains in the game

The abilities of the various deities in Yggdrasil vary quite noticeably in power. This can change the difficulty quite a bit in small games, and may encourage one or two players to hog the spotlight in others. I’m trying the following changes:

I take Tyr as my benchmark. He’s in the middle of the pack, and has a versatile ability that can be used often.

Frey: You may take one extra action per turn, but one of your actions must always be in Vanaheim.
Frey is clearly the strongest. Forcing him to take his extra action in a world with low action-efficiency blunts his advantage, and possibly provides a reason to use some Vanir actions that come up rarely.

Thor: You receive a +1 bonus in combat against enemies (but not frost giants).
Thor’s a bit ahead of Tyr on low difficulty, and a LOT ahead on high difficulties when you almost have to kill all the frost giants.

Odin: Draw 3 enemy cards on your turn instead of 1. Choose one to play. Put each of the others on the top or bottom of the enemy deck, in either order.
Odin’s pretty good in solo play (if you carefully count cards), but less useful in large games. Drawing 3 instead of 2 is very little help when the power applies every turn, but a significant upgrade when it’s intermittent.

Freyja: You may take two or three of your actions in the same world, if you choose. If you fight frost giants multiple times, or fight the same enemy multiple times, you receive a +1 bonus to your second combat, and a +2 bonus to your third.
Freyja’s not bad in large games, but a lot weaker in small ones. Creating a safe window to attack a single enemy many times is easier in small games. (+2 may sound like a lot, but keep in mind the average for that turn is +1 like Thor, and most turns will average worse than that.)

Heimdall: When you visit Midgard, you may move the Valkyries up to 2 spaces, and you may take one viking directly from the World of the Dead (in addition to pulling 3 tokens from the appropriate bag).
This is a huge upgrade, but a free viking from the world of the dead is just +1 to one combat (compare Thor), and you typically visit Midgard noticeably less often than you fight.

Keep more if you have fewer players, otherwise, leave enough for all to have one.

In battles, I recommend using enough dwarves such that with your other bonuses you are 1 away from winning a fight. If you fail to win, then use your elf, and ASAP take another action to get that elf back. Elves are great for this because dwarves you have to use before you roll, and since you can use elves after you roll, they can guarantee your success if you don’t roll lucky and keep most of your dwarves in tact.

In most cases, the most efficient way to conduct combats is to spend enough vikings that you will succeed on a die roll of 1, and keep an elf in reserve so that you can still win if you happen to roll a 0.

However, because Tyr gets to roll a combat die twice, the probability distribution is different for him. For Tyr, it’s usually most efficient to have two elves in reserve (and spend one less viking per combat). This allows him to benefit from his increased probability of a lucky roll while still guaranteeing a win.

For those who like to see the math:

In the ideal case, you have a bag with no fire giants, so you can reliably spend 3 actions to put in 15 vikings and 5 actions to claim them all, for an average cost of 8/15 = 0.53 actions per viking.

Claiming an elf always costs 1 action.

The die has 1 side with 3 hammers, 1 side with 2 hammers, 2 sides with 1 hammer, and 2 sides with 0 hammers.

If you spend enough vikings to win on a roll of 1 and use an elf when you roll a 0, there’s a 1/3 chance you’ll spend the elf, so you’re spending an average of 0.33 actions to replenish your tokens versus at least 0.53 with vikings.

If you spend one less viking and risk a second elf, the second elf will be used up if you roll either a 0 or a 1, so it has a 2/3 chance of being used up and will often (though not always) be less efficient than the viking you could have spent instead.

But Tyr rolls twice and selects the better result, so he has a 1/9 chance of his best roll being a 0, and a 3/9 chance of his best roll being a 1. Therefore, his first elf only needs to be spent 1/9 of the time, and his second elf 4/9 of the time, which is still lower than the best-case viking cost.

For solo play, taking advantage of Frey’s extra action each turn can make all the difference in the world. I struggled in solo play, always feeling that I had too many things to do each turn and just not enough actions to do them. With Frey as your character, you can consistently utilize the Valkyrie, gain an elf, fight an enemy, and still have an extra action to visit the forge, the land of the dead, etc. He works very well as the character to choose for solo.

You can allow some enemies to advance farther than others without losing, and with the standard deck (no angry enemies or ragnaroks), you can choose two enemies to only fight once each (as long as Nidhogg doesn’t pull them). If you’re only fighting them once each, then forging their weapon isn’t efficient; it’s better to just spend extra vikings, or push them back indirectly with the Vanir or the runes.

The best enemies to choose are usually Nidhogg and Jormungand, since their powers don’t become stronger as they advance.

Any enemy in Odin’s Residence at the end of the turn will cause you to lose, but enemies that move into Odin’s Residence don’t get to use their ability that turn. Deliberately letting Nidhogg into the last space will prevent him from pulling another enemy on that turn, meaning one less battle you need to fight to win the game.

Of course, you’d better have a plan for how to deal with Nidhogg when he finally gets there. Leaving the Vanir ready on the “automatically push one enemy” option, leaving a revealed frost giant with the last piece of the Mann or Tiwaz rune, or simply stockpiling lots of vikings can all get the job done.

This is an advanced strategy for experienced players, but it can make a difference, especially on higher difficulties.

If there are two ways to accomplish something, and one of them involves using the Vanir, that is generally the wrong way. The Vanir are flexible, but expensive.

It’s tempting to say that the Vanaheim track is “for emergencies”, but the problem is that you need to invest in it before the emergency occurs if you want to use it like that, and in most cases I think you could have spent those actions to prevent the same emergency you are using it to solve, with actions leftover. There are some specialized tactics where it is actually more efficient than other options, but basically it’s just something to use when you have a spare action and nothing else productive you can do with it.

Let’s go over the options and their costs:

2 Actions to Move Valkyries: The standard action in Midgard lets you do that and more for 1 action, so this isn’t even worth considering unless you’re bumping up against the once-per-turn limit. Even then, it’s very expensive; I don’t think this can ever be more efficient in the long-run, so it would have to be some sort of emergency.

3 Actions to Take 2 Vikings from the World of the Dead: That’s an average of 0.67 vikings per action. With good bag management, you should easily average twice that using standard actions. It’s even less efficient than substituting an elf for a viking (they’re strictly better and cost 1 action each), or forging a weapon that you’re only ever going to use once (as long as you don’t block another player by doing so), or even (in most cases) spending an action to trade with another player for whatever you currently need. So you need several different things to all go wrong at once before this has any possible utility.

4 Actions to Rearrange Top 6 Enemy Cards: This is kind of like trading Frey’s ability (extra actions) for Odin’s (rearrange cards). But Frey’s ability is far stronger than Odin’s, and this actually isn’t nearly as good as Odin’s ability, because you can’t put cards on the bottom of the deck. I have difficulty even imagining a situation where this would be worth it.

5 Actions to Move an Enemy Back Once: If you’re playing well, pushing an enemy backwards should typically take about half that, though there are some rare situations where it will take more than 5 even with good bag management (mostly if you’re using my “Baiting the Snake” strategy). There are also situations where the once-per-turn limit will prevent you from fighting enemies as often as you want, in which case you can use this to (expensively) get around that limit (investing only the actions you can’t usefully spend on anything else, as previously noted). It’s tempting to keep this “charged up” for emergencies, but again, unless there’s a strategic reason to deliberately create that emergency (e.g. “Baiting the Snake”), you’re probably better off spending those 5 actions to prevent the emergency in the first place.

6 Actions to Kill Any Face-Down Frost Giant: I think this one is actually useful, but only in very limited circumstances. This is significantly more expensive than killing a frost giant normally, but it lets you pick whichever one you want, so if you have 3 out of 4 pieces of a rune, this will let you complete that specific rune more efficiently than searching randomly for the last piece. But if you have to use it twice for a single rune, you’re spending more actions than the rune is worth, and if you opt for a strategy of killing ALL frost giants and completing ALL runes, then you’re better off doing it through regular combat.

For your first game, you may be better off simply removing Vanaheim so you’re not tempted to overspend on it.