I have a complicated relationship with the gods. On the one hand, I appreciate a good mythological framework. Raise a temple here, slay a monster there, deliver some precious cargo to appease Zeus’s divine whims, sure, I’m down. But on the other hand, when my entire fate hinges on the fickle roll of some brightly colored dice, I start wondering whether the Oracle and I are due for a bit of a heart-to-heart.

The Oracle of Delphi is Stefan Feld’s answer to the question: “What if a Feld game wasn’t about points?” That alone made me raise an eyebrow. I mean, his middle name is practically ‘point salad’. But in The Oracle of Delphi, there are no points. Only tasks. 12 tasks, to be specific, and none are more important than the other. The whole game is just ‘first to finish all their chores and get back home to Daddy Zeus, wins!’

If you’ve been around the board game block, you’ve likely played a couple of games by Stephan Feld. And if you’re reading this, I’ll bet you’ve played at least The Castles of Burgundy. So the premise of a Feld game, a master of Euros, that doesn’t feature points at all, should have you intrigued. Perhaps even more so when you learn it’s a pickup and deliver, action efficiency game. And early on, it is exciting! The map is modular and sprawling, dotted with tasks of inequal importance. You’ll set off in a little ship, ready to collect offerings and erect statues, your mind dizzy with the things you want to do quickly, while procrastinating some of those harder tasks. It feels whimsical and exciting when you start playing.

Then, the dice come out.

Every round, you roll three custom dice. These are your “oracle dice,” the divine guidance you’ve been given from on high. The Oracle of Delphi sports an impressive 12 different actions, most of which are affected or dictated by what colour dice you’re using. You want to move to a blue spot? You’ll need a blue dice for that. Want to load or unload a yellow cube? Hope you rolled a yellow. Want to slay a red beast? I think you know where I’m going with this.

Now, to Feld’s credit, this action selection system isn’t a total crapshoot. There are a lot of mitigation factors available here. From divine favours, to various god powers rendering a specific colour as wild, to a deck of dice cards that you can hold in your hand until you’re ready to use the specific colour, there’s a suite of clever ways to wiggle around the fate you rolled for yourself. But the core tension remains: this is a game about action efficiency, but it’s full of randomness. You are never in full control. You are managing chaos, politely negotiating with the gods for efficiency.

The Oracle of Delphi does have its charming moments. The round where you roll the colours you need, fly across the board, complete two tasks, use a god ability to fly to another spot, and use one of the dice cards to complete a third task. When the game flows, it’s awesome. It helps that the objectives are clear and obvious, nothing is obfuscated or difficult to figure out how to get it done. The only question is how do you get it done, quickly?

But when the fates decide to play against you, your game grinds to a halt. You’ll be stuck in a corner without any of the right colours, or you’ve invested 6 fate tokens into monster-slaying and still manage to roll a miss, The Oracle of Delphi can be maddening. This is doubly frustrating because the game is a race. You’ll have a clear lead, but one bad turn can put you several actions behind. It sucks feeling like you’re the clear winner, only to have your turn absolutely stymied by a bad roll, then your opponent managing to roll perfectly and rocket on past you.

It’s also a bit dry. Thematically, it sounds like a mythic journey, from erecting statues and temples to slaying beasts. But the gameplay really is just an optimization puzzle with some thin divine window dressings. The description on the back of the box casts all these actions as heroic acts, but most of the time it feels like you’re just figuring out what set of actions your dice will allow, and figuring out how to spend them most efficiently.

And while I’m being negative, the potential to lose a whole turn exisits in this game. Like, straight-up skip-your-turn punishment. I think this aspect his here to be a push your luck element, do you make a mad dash for your objective, or waste an action clearing these injury cards. If you happen to have 6 cards total, or 3 of a single colour, you spend a whole turn not playing. For a game that’s already built around pacing and tempo, this feels like a brutal punishment.

The Oracle of Delphi is a strange, bold detour in Stephan Feld’s career. It ditches his usual point-based mathematical intricacies for a pickup and deliver race. It has an air of chaos at its heart, and that chaos can be thrilling. Choosing to push your luck while holding 4 injury cards so you can hit the ultra efficient action can make you feel like a genius if you pull it off. But the luck in the game can also leave you utterly stranded and frustrated.

I’ve enjoyed my time with The Oracle of Delphi. The puzzle is compelling, the pace is generally brisk, and the game system rewards clever planning. But every play leaves me wondering if I won because I played well… or because the gods just tilted the scales to my favour.

Then again, maybe that’s the point. After all, no mortal reaches Olympus without a little luck.