Therion

We played with friends today in 011. It's the 11th year of the 19th century, Turin. The heroes of the game – members of the Therion band – suddenly learn that Ragnarok will happen in just 11 hours, and that it can be postponed for a century if they find a certain mystical Organ and play a special Song on it. And this song must be played not by just anyone, but by the Chosen One – one of eight characters. Only they can prevent Ragnarok. No one knows who the Chosen One is, so one of the tasks – along with finding the Organ and composing the Song – is to find that one person. The heroes conduct investigations, find clues, narrow down the search for the Organ and the Chosen One, and time is running out. They need to do everything in 11 hours. But here's the catch: on the fifth hour of the search, one of the characters becomes possessed by the spirit of Fenrir – the wolf that will swallow the supreme god Odin during Ragnarok – and this character secretly begins to hunt the Chosen One, in order to prevent them from postponing the end of the world. Turin, the 11th year of an alternate 19th century, the age of steam engines, airships, and gear mechanisms. Steampunk, Norse mythology, and Therion. The first striking impression is: "Damn, there really are gears! And they turn, they mesh with each other!" Three gears with different gameplay attributes are attached to the corner of the map. Each gear has a different number of teeth, so the combinations of effects will always be different. In the other corner, an arrow is attached to a dial, counting down the remaining time until the end of the world. The game board, all the cards, and the maps are made very well and beautifully. The design is gorgeous, the artwork is superb. Here and there you can find excerpts from the band's lyrics or other references to Therion. The steampunk atmosphere is well conveyed. Five out of five for the visual appearance. At the beginning of the game, each player receives one of eight character cards (it should be noted that the game is designed for 3-6 players), and another card is placed face down in a separate place – this character is the Chosen One. Players do not show each other their character cards. A very unusual phenomenon: the first golden rule states that the character whose card is dealt at the beginning of the game does not represent the player; each player controls all eight characters in the game. And the card is dealt so that each player knows at least one character who is definitely not the Chosen One at the beginning of the game. During the investigations, you can look at unused character cards and cards in other players' hands in order to ultimately determine the Chosen One. At the beginning of each round (one game hour out of eleven), clues are placed on the board, which players collect in their personal stash by moving the characters around the map. Steam transport and airships can be used for faster movement from one point on the map to another. Clues are used to enhance the effect of the action assigned to one of the gears, which the player turns one, two, or three teeth at the beginning of their turn, spending the corresponding amount of time points. Time points are also spent on moving characters. Initially, each player has 45 such points, and it is quite difficult to get them during the game, much easier to spend them. The player who runs out of time points is eliminated from the game. One of the other two gears shows the type of transport that can be used on this turn, and the other shows the maximum number of steps the player is allowed to move the character. Before the clues are placed on the game board, one of eleven event cards is randomly determined, introducing some effect that lasts throughout the turn (for example: the player who goes third receives a clue and one time point, or: the player who chooses a certain character takes a research card), and then there is a bidding for the turn order, in which players take turns expressing their desire to go in a certain order, using their time points as payment. Research cards are very important in the game, as they allow you to find out who the Chosen One is, write the Song of Being, and determine the location of the Organ. The location of the organ is determined as follows. At the end of the turn, one of the players (the one who goes last) can play a special card indicating a specific building on the map, and place it north, south, west, or east of the Organ miniature in a designated area on the game board. Thus, when four location cards have been placed, the Organ will be locked in a specific (rather small) area on the map, after which the player who played the last location places the Organ on one of the cells in that area. A player can declare victory if they have fifteen pages of the Song and if the Organ miniature is already on the game board. Then they name the Chosen One and look at the set-aside card. If they guess incorrectly (or have not investigated correctly), they are immediately eliminated from the game; otherwise, they must reach the Organ in one turn, using only the Chosen One. If they fail to do so, they lose. On the fifth hour, one of the players, chosen at random, begins to play as Fenrir. In this case, they only need to have twelve pages of music and two research cards with the Fenrir icon. They also name the Chosen One. If they name it correctly, the player must move the character that they had in their hand at the beginning of the game to the cell with the Chosen One in one turn; otherwise, they lose. Unfortunately, we only played with three people. And although the rules state that when playing with three people, the spirit of Fenrir does not possess any character, we decided to play with the wolf anyway, just for fun. And the wolf turned out to be a clown, who quickly screwed everyone over :D Because at the beginning of the game, he didn't think about the pages of music or the organ, but about the Chosen One, and he quickly found out who that character was. And when the Fenrir card was dealt to me, I simply put all my efforts into writing the remaining twelve pages, and then the possessed Professor Christopher Jonsson killed Detective Lord Coleberg, the only person capable of stopping Ragnarok. We liked the game, it's interesting. We want to play again. But we need more people – it's more fun that way. At first, we were confused and played a little incorrectly, but that's normal for the first time. Tomorrow I'll figure out everything that remains unclear from the rules.