Champions of Midgard vs Lords of Waterdeep: Which Should You Buy?

In Champions of Midgard, you're a Viking jarl placing workers to gather wood, food, and coins, then recruiting warriors who show up as actual dice in three flavors: swordsmen, spearmen, axemen. Then comes the fun part. You march those dice at trolls in the village, hunt draugr for cash, or load up a longboat, feed everyone, and sail off to fight distant monsters for the big glory. The combat is the spark most worker placement games are missing, and it's genuinely tense. You're never just collecting cubes here. You're building an army and picking a fight.

Lords of Waterdeep is quieter, and that's the point. You're a secret ruler of a fantasy city, placing agents on action spots to hire adventurers (little colored cubes, let's be honest) and cashing them in to complete quests for points. That's the whole loop, and it hums. There's no dice roll waiting to wreck your plans, just a tight resource grab that stays interesting from the first round to the last. You can pinch a rival with an Intrigue card or hog a building they wanted, but nobody gets wrecked. It's competitive in a polite, smiling sort of way.

This is where they really split. Lords of Waterdeep teaches in about five minutes, and new players are making real decisions by round two. That's not marketing fluff, it's the game's actual reputation. It earns its spot as the gateway pick for worker placement, and the steady rhythm means almost nobody sits around confused waiting for their turn. If your table includes newer gamers, this is the safer buy by a mile.

Champions of Midgard sits a solid step up. It's not a monster to learn, but it's not your gateway game either. There are multiple scoring paths (trolls, draugr, distant monsters), a feeding requirement before you sail, and dice odds to weigh, so a first game has more moving parts to hold in your head. Setup is a bit fiddly too. It's a great second-step game for people who already like placing workers and want a jolt of chaos on top.

Here's my honest read on staying power. Lords of Waterdeep holds up after dozens of plays. The theme is admittedly a thin coat of paint (you're recruiting cubes, not adventuring), but the game underneath keeps working, and the tug-of-war for the right spaces stays fun for veterans long after the teach. It also stretches to five players, which matters if your group runs big. The main gripes are physical: bendy cards, a box lid that won't stay shut, the occasional warped board.

Champions of Midgard is more exciting in the moment but fades a little faster. The merchant and journey cards repeat every game, so the variety thins after a handful of plays, and dice luck can swing a game in a way that leaves you feeling relieved rather than rewarded. That said, when it's on the table it's the flashier experience. The monster fights give people something to cheer about, it plays well at two, and it gets deliciously mean at four, where blocking a spot someone needed actually stings.