One Play Review #3 - Explorers of the North Sea

Years ago I started reading a book about vikings on ship exploring unknown lands. I never finished that book, in fact I don't think I got past the second chapter and don't even remember the name of the book - the theme did nothing for me, I was not at all interested in vikings, their adventures and discoveries. Luckily, Explorers of the North Sea, a game all about vikings on a ship exploring unknown lands, appealed to me a lot more than that book.

At it's heart, Explorers of the North sea is a pretty straightforward game and could be summed up as you travelling the map interacting with various points on it and scoring points for that. However, I have found that there is quite a lot of choice involved in those interactions, all of which seem like viable strategies to win the game and it is not unlikely for all players to end up going after almost completely different things. You start the turn by plopping down one of the three tiles you have in your hand, expanding the map and adding something else for the players to go after and then it's time to decide what kind of viking are you going to be this turn.

Will you you go raid a settlement, pillaging, raping and murdering some poor villagers for a couple Victory Points? Or perhaps you will travel to a far off island to pick up a pig or a chicken for some viking BBQ party? You could also decide that it's time to put down roots on some lovely patch of land you discovered and build a nice house there, or maybe instead you will pick a fight with a ship, risking the lives of your vikings for a single Victory Point or perhaps you will just take it easy this turn and salvage a shipwreck for some sort of a bonus. All of these will seem like attractive options to take, but your turn is limited to only 4 actions and between having to also take your vikings out and put them back into the boat (both of which count as a separate action), you will only really be able to do one, maybe two of these per turn, making you weight the advantages of each carefully.

Explorers of the North Sea is also a gorgeous game. I love the vibrant colours of the tiles and how the illustrations on each of them actually represent something instead of just being window dressing for the hex. It's also amazing to watch the map get slowly filled in, revealing a beautiful tapestry of different shaped islands which will also be different every time you play the game. The components don't fall behind in terms of quality either - everything is solid wood, the livestock pieces are all shaped like the animals they are meant to represent and I especially love that your ship actually holds the vikings inside it, instead of asking you to put those meeples somewhere on your player board and just imagine that they are on that ship.

I love thematic games, especially when that theme actually comes through well and does not feel pasted on just for the sake of making the game seem more appealing and, in my opinion, this is where Explorers of the North Sea really shines. We started the game with nothing, everything beyond the shores of our home village was uncharted waters, hiding unknown islands, treasures, opportunities and dangers and, as the game went on, we slowly discovered our own, unique world that is unlikely to ever appear in anyone else's game. The best part is that creating that world really felt like exploring - every tile placed by someone brought with it something of interest to everyone else, every shipwreck had to be explored to find out what's inside it, newly discovered settlements all varied in their combat power and you were never sure if attacking a ship or fortress would cost one of your vikings their lives. As the game went on the board came alive, it as if the places we were exploring have existed long before their tile was actually placed on the table and perhaps that's the highest praise an exploration game can strive to achieve - Explorers of the North Sea gave me perhaps just the smaller sliver of the feeling real life explorers must have felt when they discovered a new land or civilisation.

Any gripes I have with the game are minor. First of all, while it starts of small, the board grows exponentially, so you definitely need a bigger table if you want to play this. Our game also took quite a long time to finish compared to the advertised time on the box and although I am certain this is down to the fact that 3 out 4 players were playing for the first time ever, the number of options available on a turn could slow down the game just as much if you're playing with someone a bit more prone to Analysis Paralysis. Finally, I should mention that there is some randomness involved with the game which might turn certain people off, but in my opinion this went hand in hand with the theme and made perfect sense to be design the way it was.

All in all, I really enjoyed my play of Explorers of the North Sea and would happily play it again. There's definitely different strategies I would love to try out and I'm certain the board would develop completely differently, making exploration just as interesting as it was the first time around.