Orc-Lympics is a card drafting, and hand management game.

Use creatures from Fantasy races to win several weird and wonderful events.

Poison brewing? Stubborn donkey pushing? Table flipping? Let the Orc-lympics begin!

Orc-Lympics Review

This is my first impressions of the game followed by my final summary.

Review

So does this count as an auction game? BGG says so. You’re playing cards, increasing the value of a resource in order to win a card.

If that ‘value’ was ‘money’ I would say yes, yes it is. But as the resource is effectively people it doesn’t feel like an auction.

Weird huh?

I’m not a huge fan of auctions but as I said this doesn’t feel like one. I also don’t like auctions where you lose the money you bid. This killed Bruxelles 1893 for me.

Here you lose your bid. Those athletes go into the resting pile. However, if you don’t win a trophy you get one back to use that round. This works for me, everyone gets something. Of course, I’d rather have the points than 1 card but hopefully that 1 card gets me points next time.

While it is a fairly abstract game I do like the theme. It’s a sports theme… It’s a loose one, but I’m counting it 🙂

The events are fun and funny if you can work them out. Table flipping is an obvious one but there are some that are not. Like the one that looks like Potion Boiling is a speed event? So I guess first to the boil wins? 🙂 No idea. Don’t care.

Having the different races with their different abilities is great too. It makes drafting tricky and you don’t really get long to work out what you should take. By the time you’ve seen a few hands and know which cards are either not in the game or have been taken, it’s nearly over.

But, it’s a good fun game.

Jesta ThaRogue

Note: The copy I played was a review copy generously provided by Brain Games, big thanks to them for this game.