Shipwrights of the North Sea Redux: you build your ships, I'll build mine

I am a big fan of Shem Phillips' series of medieval worker placement games. Raiders of the North Sea was the first one I played, and is still my favorite, but I like all of them well enough...except for what I thought was the one weak link in the series: Shipwrights of the North Sea. Compared to the other North Sea games, it had a lot of mean spirited "take-that" style game play which I didn't enjoy -- it was an engine-building game where too much of the strategy involved tearing down your opponent's engine rather than building your own.

It came as a bit of a surprise that the designer felt the same way:

"The original had a lot of take-that, and hate-drafting. It had no rounds (which meant it could really drag on with 4-5 players). The drafting was also flawed in a lot of ways. You could often end up with a handful of cards you couldn't use. It was a very tight, and unforgiving game."

-- Shem Phillips, on the Shipwrights of the North Sea Redux Kickstarter campaign page

I was delighted to hear that a redesign was on the way, although the designer contends that this isn't a redesign or "second edition," but an entirely new game that shares some thematic elements with the original. For the most part I agree, but since it was designed to address and eliminate the shortcomings of the original game, it will be impossible to review it without comparing the two.

The core of the game is the same as in the original: players start each round by drafting cards which represent ships, buildings and craftspeople. For those who might be unfamiliar, card drafting is a game mechanism designed to add tactical depth to what otherwise would be a random selection of cards. Each player starts with a hand of cards, chooses one to keep, and then passes the rest to the player on their left or right. They then choose a card from the new ones they've been given and pass the rest on. This continues until all the cards have been distributed. Players should now have a more tactically chosen hand of cards, and especially sharp-minded players will also have a sense of what cards their opponents are holding.

Once drafting is complete, players can play their cards for a variety of temporary or permanent effects. One of the most negative play experiences you can have in any game is feeling like you can't do anything on your turn. Shipwrights Redux alleviates this problem by giving each card multiple uses, so it's easier to mitigate your circumstances if you don't have what you need in your hand.

Building cards are played to the table and make up the game's worker placement element. Each player begins the game with 3 worker meeples and can gain more through card plays. Some cards require the player to discard a worker in order to gain specific resources, but the other main use for them is in conjunction with the building cards, which provide a repeatable way to gain resources over multiple rounds. However, unlike most worker placement games, workers are discarded at the end of each round so you'll need to watch for cards that allow you to gain more workers.

The main thing you are trying to do is to build ships, which happens by first playing the ship card to your player board, and then accumulating and spending the resources needed, which include particular types of craftspeople as well as the usual wood, cloth, iron, gold and money. Another major new element that Redux adds to the game is a progress track. In addition to scoring victory points, building ships allows you to move forward on one or more of three tracks that represent military strength, trade, and renown. Passing certain milestones on these tracks will give you advantages such as more resources from raiding or extra income at the end of each round. It's a clever way to reward players during the game rather than just at the end.

Once players have finished their actions for the turn there is an income phase where players gain resources depending on what permanent cards they've played. In addition, the player who is farthest along on each progress track gains a hero card that gives them an advantage in the following turn. A new round then begins, with players drafting five new cards. The game ends after five rounds.

It is a more engaging and entertaining game that the original Shipwrights, and it feels more in line with the other two North Sea games, and with the rest of Phillips' medieval series (which also includes the West Kingdom and South Tigris series). However, in attempting to mitigate the original game's issues with being too confrontational, it is possible that Redux has gone too far in the opposite direction. Other than the card drafting phase, there is no direct interaction with the other players and very little you can do to affect what they are doing. The game is primarily a race to see who can get the most ships built within the five-round time frame. The main action phase is even meant to be played simultaneously, meaning that players just make all their plays rather than taking turns, which exacerbates the feeling of it being multiple solitaire -- there isn't any reason to pay attention to what your opponents are doing.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Overall, Shipwrights Redux is a big improvement on the original, but it seems to have gone from having too much confrontation to not having enough. It's still the weakest of the North Sea game series.

• Shipwrights of the North Sea Redux official website
• Shipwrights of the North Sea Redux on BoardGameGeek

Buy low and sell high with Vikings on the Volga

Vikings on the Volga is a very simple game from the designer of Leaving Earth. This comes as a bit of a surprise, as Leaving Earth is by far one of the most complex games in our collection. The themes are broadly similar; both games are about planning a voyage in the most efficient way possible. But where Leaving Earth is a very complicated yet oddly compelling game about weight-to-thrust ratios, fuel consumption, and making certain you have enough food for the return voyage, Vikings on the Volga is a much simpler game about delivering the right commodities to the right city at the right time, and avoiding the dreaded Golden Horde.

The board is pieced together randomly out of very nice wooden tiles representing the Volga river and the cities that sit on it, as well as empty overland spaces that ships can travel over if they're willing to take extra time to do it. Each city has a corresponding pass that players can invest in; be the first to buy the pass for a particular city and all the other players have to pay you each time they want to enter or pass through it.

The game revolves around three different trade goods (amber, fish, and furs), each of which can be purchased in one city. There will be a number of public contract cards in play that determine which cities will buy which goods, and the price they sell for is determined by the number of cities that have been burned down by the Golden Horde (more on that in a moment). The bulk of the game is spent buying goods in one place and then selling them in another, hopefully along the shortest route possible.

While all this buying, moving, and selling is going on, there are two non-player pieces that move around the board: the aforementioned Golden Horde, and the Price of Kiev. Any player can give up their turn to move either the Horde or the Prince. If the Horde moves into a city, they burn it down, which will prevent buying or selling there. Also, when there are 5 burned cities in play, the game ends. If the Prince moves into a city, he puts the fire out, so moving the Horde and the Prince to help yourself and slow down your opponent is a key tactical move in the game.

It's a pretty basic pick up and deliver game, but the variable tile setup and the way the Horde and the Prince affect the game makes it a little more interesting. The graphic design is unusual but excellent, with understated colors, bold text that's easy to read, and lovely wooden tiles and player pieces that are much nicer than the punched cardboard you would normally expect from a game like this.

Rating: 3 out of 5. Gameplay alone is fairly mediocre, but the surprising production value is enough to make this game a little more noteworthy.

• Vikings on the Volga official website*
• Vikings on the Volga on BoardGameGeek

*Note: this game is made by a very small publisher who appear to print to order and do all the manufacturing in-house, so orders can take several months to be filled. I can't recommend ordering direct from the publisher unless you are extremely patient.

Viking roundup, part 5: Shipwrights of the North Sea

Shipwrights of the North Sea is easily the most cutthroat entry in the North Sea series of games, which is strange because you would think a game about building ships would be less confrontational than one about claiming territory (Explorers) or raiding settlements (Raiders).

It's a card drafting game like 7 Wonders, a format that has a bit of a "screw your neighbor" element built into it. The goal of the game is to build ships, for which you need resources and specific workers. You get those by drafting - starting with a hand of cards, keeping one, and passing the rest to the next player.

The artisan cards are particularly difficult to get in the right combinations, and it's easy for your opponents to see what you need and try not to let you have it. That's only somewhat effective in a card drafting game, but there are also several plays available in the game that let you steal or discard other players' workers, preventing them from building the ships they need to win the game.

Once you start building a ship (you can have two in play at a time) you're stuck with it until you get the resources needed to build it, and there's only one card that you can play to abandon a ship if you're just not getting the cards you need to build it. This leads to frequent turns where a player can't do anything significant, which is frustrating and (to me, anyway) a sign of a poor game design.

It's disappointing because the other games in the series are very enjoyable, and this one looks just as good, with great artwork and components.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) The weakest entry in the otherwise excellent North Sea series.

• Shipwrights of the North Sea official website
• Shipwrights of the North Sea on BoardGameGeek

Viking roundup, part 4: Explorers of the North Sea

Setting a series of games in the same world is a great marketing tool for games publishers. If done well, it allows them to present a consistently branded series and encourages gamers to at least take a look all the games in the series, when normally they might not notice three separate games with little or nothing in common.

A more cynical view would be that this marketing strategy is at best a way to re-use artwork across multiple games, and at worst, trick consumers into buying games they might not normally be interested in. I'm happy to say that this was not the case with Explorers of the North Sea, part of designer Shem Phillips' North Sea trilogy of games.

Obviously the look of the game is very similar to Raiders of the North Sea, but that's not a problem at all - both games feature superb graphic design and illustration. The games are thematically linked, but feature different stages in the life-cycle of the viking culture. Where Raiders is about preparing and executing raids on settlements, Explorers covers setting off into the unknown, establishing outposts, and bringing back livestock, with raiding being a relatively small part of the game and only one of may paths to victory.

The game board is composed of tiles that are placed one by one over the course of the game, forming waterways and islands of various sizes. Each tile features elements in support of one of the game's various ways to earn points: livestock to be brought back to the starting tile, non-player ships to be attacked, settlements to raid, and empty space to build outposts on. Placing tiles involves a fair amount of strategy all on its own: you can create small islands that are easy to control and navigate around, or large ones with space for multiple outposts that earn a lot of points at the end of the game.

Direct player interaction is fairly minimal, which might frustrate players who like a lot of interaction but is great for those who prefer less confrontational games. Each player starts the game with a leader character with a unique way to get extra points, which helps guide your strategy and makes the game a race to see who can best take advantage of their leader's ability by the time the game ends.

Explorers isn't quite as interesting as Raiders, but it's still pretty fun and quite a bit simpler. That, combined with its less competitive nature makes it a great game for new gamers, while still having enough going on to keep more experienced players interested.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A great addition to the North Sea series and a good gateway game to get new people interested in board games.

• Explorers of the North Sea official website
• Explorers of the North Sea on BoardGameGeek

Viking roundup, part 3: Hnefatafl

We picked up Hnefatafl (the Viking Game) at the British Museum in London, and as such it's more of a souvenir of our trip than a game we plan to play regularly. That said, it is actually a pretty engaging game, sort of an asymmetrical version of chess with fewer rules and (in my opinion) slightly more interesting strategy.

The defending player gets 12 pieces plus a king. These pieces start in the center of the board, and the goal is for the king to reach one of the corner squares. Meanwhile, the attacking player gets 24 pieces that start along the 4 edges of the board. Any piece other than the king can be captured by sandwiching it between two opposing pieces, or between a piece and a corner space; the king can only be taken if he's closed in on all 4 sides.

Our experience playing the game is that it's substantially weighted in favor of the attacker, but still pretty challenging for both sides. It's possible for the attacker to effectively block the corner squares, but it's also pretty difficult for him to keep his blockers in place, since he also needs to use his pieces to chase the king around the board and (hopefully) capture him.

The attack and defense game play isn't particularly viking themed, but Hnefatafl is purported to be a game that was actually played in Scandinavia during the viking era. If nothing else, it can clearly be seen being played on the History Channel's excellent Vikings TV show.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) We don't spend that much time playing abstract strategy games, but this one is more interesting than a lot of them.

• Hnefatafl on BoardGameGeek

Viking roundup, part 2: Champions of Midgard

Continuing our look at the weirdly large number of viking games we've acquired recently.

Champions of Midgard is a viking themed worker placement game, which means we can't help but compare it to Raiders of the North Sea, especially since we picked up both games within a few months of each other. Apart from the obvious similarities, however, the two games couldn't be more different.

For the most part, Champions is a more traditional worker placement game. Each player gets a set number of workers, which they use to compete over common spaces on the board. Spaces are a mixture of resource gathering and opportunities to fight monsters such as trolls, giants, draughr, and dragons, which is the primary way to score victory points. Players use their workers to recruit warriors (represented by dice) and supplies which are needed to travel to far off monster-infested lands.

An interesting wrinkle on the "use resources to fulfill quests" theme is blame, a currency in the game that subtracts from a player's score. One of the spaces on the board is the Troll, and the player who successfully fights the Troll each round gets to give a blame token to another player, and get rid of one of his own if he has one. If no one fights the Troll, every player gets a blame token. Blame tokens are worth negative points at the end of the game in a somewhat exponential manner: one blame is -1 point, 2 is -3 points, 3 is -6, 4 is -10, and so on, so managing blame becomes a critical part of the game's strategy.

Warriors are represented by dice which are rolled to combat monsters. The different types of warriors are not necessarily better or worse than each other; sword- and spearmen provide some defense, allowing you to play it safe, while axemen tend to do more damage but provide no defense, meaning that more of your warriors will be killed in combat.

There's a fair amount of variety as far as what you can choose to focus on in the game, and this is guided to some extend by Destiny cards, which grant extra points at the end of the game for accomplishing goals such as having killed the most of a particular type of monster, or having the most gold or food left over at the end of the game.

It's a little more involved than Raiders of the North Sea, and a lot more fantastical, to the point that I think it has more in common with Lords of Waterdeep than any of the more historical viking games like the North Sea series. It is definitely sufficiently different that we play both games fairly often, sometimes even in the same weekend.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) A good mix of worker placement and dice rolling, with a fun theme and some neat twists you won't find in other games of this type.

• Champions of Midgard official website
• Champions of Midgard on BoardGameGeek

Viking roundup, part 1: Raiders of the North Sea

I'm not really sure why Vikings are so popular lately. Likely it has something to do with the success of the Lord of the Rings films and the Game of Thrones television series: swords and armor are at the front of the public consciousness, and the historical Viking era provides a ready-made setting without any accompanying copyright issues. Let's take a look at the inordinately large number of Viking games that have made their way into our game library over the past year.

Raiders of the North Sea is an entertaining and great-looking worker-placement game. It's part of New Zealand designer Shem Phillips' North Sea series, which also includes Shipwrights of the North Sea and Explorers of the North Sea. I'm not sure what order the series was originally published in, but Raiders looked like the most interesting of the three so that's the one we picked up first.

Most worker-placement games give players a set number of workers, which are then placed on various spaces on the board in order to gather the resources needed to accomplish the game's goals. Raiders does something a little different: each player starts with one worker, and a normal turn consists of placing that worker on an available space (activating it to gain whatever resource it provides), and then picking up a worker from an occupied space, activating that space as well. So rather than just competing with the other players for available spaces, your second move is limited to spaces that other players have played on. It's a unique twist on the worker-placement game mechanic that I don't think I've seen in any other game.

The second part of the game involves raiding settlements. Part of the board is divided up into areas of varying difficulty, each containing a random assortment of plunder such as gold, iron and livestock. Raiding the more distant settlements requires more resources and larger crews, but they also give more victory points. Raiding also continues the "place one worker, then pick one up" game mechanic -- you still have to place a worker in order to raid, but part of your reward is a more advanced worker (in a different color) that gives you access to different resources and allows you to raid the more distant and lucrative settlements.

It's a relatively simple but quite ingenious game. It gives players a fair amount to think about, but the rules are quite simple. Additionally, the game play is fairly non-confrontational and so should appeal to less competitive players.

The engaging game play is helped along by some truly spectacular artwork by Mihajlo Dimitrievski, as well as top-notch graphic design by the game's designer, Shem Phillips.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) a game that's easy to play but still challenging, with stunning graphics and high-quality components.

• Raiders of the North Sea Official Website
• Raiders of the North Sea on BoardGameGeek

Jarl: a tile by any other name

Jarl: the Vikings Tile-Laying Game is a re-skin of The Duke, a tile based combat game with an abstract medieval theme. You could be forgiven for assuming that the Vikings theme has been tacked on in order to make an easy piece of tie-in merchandise; in spite of the photo of Travis Fimmel as Ragnar Lothbrok on the box cover, the game has very little connection to the History Channel television show. Or does it?

Theme aside, it's a very ingenious game system which can perhaps best be described as "chess with more variables." It is played on a grid, and the object is to protect your Jarl (king) from being captured by your opponent.

The playing pieces are tiles etched with a simple diagram describing what moves that tile can make relative to its current position. Some pieces can jump over others, some can attack from afar without moving, some can move other pieces or prevent them from being captured. But here's the catch: after a piece moves, it must be flipped over to its opposite side, which has a different set of possible moves.

So a huge part of the strategy is keeping track of how a piece's new position on the board, combined with its new set of moves, will affect the game.

Unlike chess, where you start with all of your pieces and watch them gradually get whittled away, here you start the game with just three pieces on the board and the rest in a bag. On any turn you can forego moving a piece to instead place a new one, randomly drawn from the bag, which must be placed adjacent to your Jarl. Each turn is a decision whether to use what you have on the board, or call for reinforcements.

The Jarl is no slouch when it comes to defending itself and capturing opposing pieces, and it can't be cornered as easily as the king in chess. This, combined with the fact that the pieces have such dynamic and varied movements, makes for an energetic and vital game that really reminds me of the battle scenes on the Vikings television show. As a fan of the show who probably wouldn't have given the game a second look otherwise, it's a smart bit of licensing.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) a deceptively simple game that is very compelling and gives players a lot to think and strategize about, and the fact that it reminds me of a favorite television show is a nice bonus.

• Jarl: the Vikings Tile-Laying Game official website
• Jarl: the Vikings Tile-Laying Game on BoardGameGeek