Mimir's Challenge
- Board's Eye View
- 5 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Designed by Jorgen Brunborg-Naess and published by Mistzone Games in a distinctive hexagonal box, Mimir's Challenge is a Viking-themed game that was released at Spiel Essen 2025. It's played over three rounds where the 2-4 players are competing for area control to acquire treasures. The treasures are worth victory points in their own right but they also represent specific resources which are needed to satisfy the requirements on artefact cards to earn additional bonus points.
Tho' the board looks at first glance like the petals of a flower, it actually represents the realms over which players are fighting: the number of realms is varied according to the number of players. Mimir's Challenge is a bluffing and deduction game as players place out their Viking tokens face down so you never know until the reveal what the actual strength is of other players' forces in each realm. Players' artefact cards are likely to incentivise them to go for particular resource treasures but the artefact cards that you start off with won't be known by other players because cards are hidden behind a screen.
Players have elite units that, when activated, have special effects: the Raven can switch to any other realm and take one of the treasures from the realm from which it departs; the Valkyrie can move to an adjacent realm and take two Vikings with her; and the Wyrm can similarly move to an adjacent realm but with the effect of chasing away two enemy Viking tokens who were previously placed in that realm.
It's only after all these effects have been resolved that you determine who gets what treasure in each of the six realms, with the area control win going to the highest unique value. This is a similar system to that used in the dice game Las Vegas (Ravensburger/Alea) and it's a sure-fire way of adding tension to players' placements and, in particular, their creative use of their elite units.
With two players, Mimir's Challenge feels a bit like a cat and mouse tussle. From our plays at Board's Eye View, we much preferred the game with three or four players, both for the bluffing and misdirection over token placements and for the dramatic impact of the elite unit activations. And even at four players, you can expect most plays to take no more than around 40 minutes.
