Game: Noctiluca

Beer: Surf Wax by Burial Brewing

Release: 2015

Designer: Shem Phillips

Artist: Mihajlo Dimitrievski

Publisher: Garphill Games

Raiders of the North Sea is the second in a trilogy of games from Shem Phillips. It’s a worker placement game where you have to build up your crew before going out on raids. The pictures depict the game along with expansions Hall of Heroes and Fields of Fame, plus the neoprene playmat which incorporates the new boards from the expansions in a more streamlined manner, as well as looking absolutely gorgeous.

Overview

In Riders of the North Sea, you will start off by collecting resources such as silver and provisions which will enable you to hire crew from the cards in your hands and go on raids. The raids are the main way to score points, but they also get you plunder that can be spent on upbraids, raids, or given away as an offering for more points.

The bottom half of the board is where the main worker placement element of the game takes place, with an interesting mechanic for how turns take place. You start each turn with only one worker that has to go in an empty space. Once you take the action from that turn, you then pick up a worker from a different space and perform that action, meaning you get to do two actions on one turn.

The actions are quite simple: draw cards, play cards for their ability, hire a crew onto your chip, gain resources, increase your armour, gain resources or make an offering for points. The actions taken can change slightly depending in the colour of the worker, with only black workers on the board at the start of the game.

Crew are an important part of Raiders of the North Sea. You can go to the Town Hall to discard them to use their one-use power (depicted by a play icon), or – more importantly – go to the Barracks and pay their cost to place them into your crew. Here, their passive power comes into play which can boost certain actions, gain victory points in the right circumstances or improve raids. The top corner also depicts their military strength, which comes into play when taking raids.

Instead of taking your standard two actions, you can instead go on a raid, as long as you have enough resources. For the starting harbour raids, you simply gain your rewards and a single point (picking up the worker from the raid space to go to our supply as your one worker). Your plunder consists of gold, iron and livestock, but there are also skull tokens, called Valkyrie tokens. If you raid one of these sections, you will need to kill off a crew member for each token. It’s not all bad, as you’ll also move up on the Valkyrie track, which can be a good source of points.

For the more complicated raids, military strength comes into play in order to score points. These raids will have a number of targets in order to score an increasing number of points. The total strength of your crew is combined with the armour track and any additional bonuses (usually crew abilities), along with the roll of one or two dice (depending on the spot you are raiding). As the lowest number on each one is two, it can be handy.

There’s a really nice flow to Raiders of the North Sea, as it builds up throughout the game yet you occasionally need to dip back into resource collection-mode. The end of the game – usually triggered by all but one fortress being taken out – can go from feeling like it’s quite a way away to being close really quickly, and the different tracks and ways of scoring makes it difficult to tell if there is a clear winner mid-game. There’s a really nice flow to the game that makes me coming back for more.

Hall of Heroes

The Hall of Heroes expansion adds a new section to the map alongside a couple of new mechanics. The Mead Hall lets you choose to add one of three face-up cards to your hand, alongside the resources on them (which encourages the cards to be cycled). One of these resources is a new one: mead. Mead can be spent to increase your military strength, although only before you see the result of the dice roll.

After a raid is performed, a quest now comes out. To complete a quest, you go to the Mead Hall and discard cards from your hand matching or exceeding the military strength of the quest. These get you resources and provide more points the more your collect. This provides another use for the cards in the game, and multi-use cards is one board game mechanic that I really love.

The player boards are also really handy to have, with a place for your crew, a reminder of resource limits and a spot for your worker so you know you need to have one at the end of each turn.

Field of Fame

Field of Fame adds a new danger to the plunder mix: Jarl tokens. If any of these are in the spot you are raiding, then you must face a Jarl after your raid. You draw a Jarl card and must choose to kill, subdue or flee.

To kill the jarl, you need to dish out wound tokens amongst your crew. These don’t kill your crew, but reduce their military strength and makes them less effective. Your reward is fame, as you move up the new track (which provides victory points). Subduing a Jarl requires taking fewer wounds, but you must also pay the cost to recruit them into your crew. Fleeing will result in losing fame or victory points.

The Jarls have powerful abilities, often end-game scoring, so while you take a lot of damage, it can be well worth pursuing. The expansion also adds a few new raids and optional dice which adds a Valkyrie mark for some unexpected deaths.

Overview

One great thing about this package is that it feels like a complete game and not something with extras bolted on. The expansions compliment the current systems and add a few more angles you can take for scoring points, while also not complicating the game too much. It’s one of the few game where I would easily play all the expansions with new players.

Raiders of the North Sea is not just a brilliant game, but also looks beautiful, from the lovely artwork to all the nice wooden pieces. It’s one of my favourites from my collection.

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