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I first came across Knarr through a TikTok, and as a lover of history who was on the hunt for a couple of small box games (somewhat ironically, for an upcoming cruise to Norway), this Viking themed game tickled my fancy. And at the £20-25 price bracket, it certainly packs a lot in for its size and price.
Gameplay
Knarr is a 2-4 player game where you take on the role of a Viking Chieftain, sending your band of warriors to explore new destinations. Depending on the destinations you select and the Vikings who explore these destinations, you can increase your reputation, gain wealth and ultimately score more victory points.
Each turn, you can take one of two actions. Option A, you can add a new crew member to your ship via the cards in your hand- which then triggers further effects with other Vikings already on your ship in the same colour, and allows you to pick up the card available under the matching colour on the central board (to be played to your ship on a later turn).
Option B, you can explore new destinations- in essence, trading specific colour Vikings from their ship for destination cards, gaining their big money one-off rewards. These destination cards are placed above your own board and stacked so that just the bottom of the cards showing the three asset slots are on display. And that’s where the action of Trading comes in.
Each player can opt to do the Trade action once per turn, either before or after the above two options. To do so, you spend between 1-3 Bracelet token (gained as bonuses from one of the above actions) to activate between 1 and 3 of the asset slot columns on all of your stacked destination cards, and gain the victory points and/or other rewards from all of those cards. So for example, if you spend 1 bracelet, you gain the rewards in just the far left column. If you spend 2, you gain the rewards in the far left and central columns. And if you spend 3, you gain the rewards of all three columns.
The winner is the player with the most victory points, once a player reaches 40 Victory points or more on the central Score Tracker (and then everyone has one more turn, ending with the player to the right of player 1). Victory points can be gained from the aforementioned actions, but also through the reputation tracker, which provides a healthy dose of repetitive points at the beginning of each turn- with more being dished out each turn as you progress further up this separate tracker.
The gameplay of Knarr is snappy and fast flowing, with points-a-plenty flowing throughout. Turns are quick and simple, and the feeling of building your Viking crew in order to explore far and distant lands in order to claim points and treasure is great. In turn, building an engine to go exploring again in future turns, developing it all to a point that allows for a cataclysmic points crescendo to end the game- it’s a brilliant feeling.
I’ve mainly played Knarr at 2 player, but apart from the game slowing down a little (as would be expected when you add more players), its not majorly impacted with the addition of a third and fourth player. Saying this- I’d probably say this game plays best at 2-3 players.
Look & Feel
In addition to Knarr being a great game, the value unearthed in this small box is significantly enhanced by the production quality of it all. The cards are grouped into different colours, with each colour having their own personalised Viking character, lovingly designed. Even the card they are printed on feels good quality (does anyone else have a thing for good quality card in board game production? If you do, I’d recommend buying Wingspan just for the paper quality in the instruction manuals!) There are also some nice touches around accessibility, e.g. utilising symbols alongside colours for those who are colour blind. I know this is becoming more commonplace, but its still not 100% industry standard so its good to give it a shout out when details like this are incorporated.
The board also incorporates some good design choices which makes the tactility pleasing- for example, there are slots in each player board to house your bracelet tokens and recruit tokens (another currency within the game which essentially functions as a substitute for trading in cards when exploring). They slot neatly into notches within the board, meaning that you don’t have tokens floating loose around your playing area. It’s a nice touch.
Final Thoughts
There are a couple of very minor negatives/areas of improvement to this game that did come to mind as we were playing this game.
Firstly, there are a few bits to remember each turn, such as checking the reputation tracker and moving on the score tracker, deciding whether you are going to trade or not, placing cards (and triggering their actions) or exploring territory. With this in mind, I think this game would benefit from a small player aid as a reminder of all of these, just as you are getting to learn/relearn the game.
Secondly, when you think of Vikings, many people think of fighting, warring and chopping off heads with axes. For a theme which has such a history, this is surprisingly absent from the gameplay, with it being largely asymmetric between players. I’d have love to have seen some more interaction between players- for example the ability to fight another player and loot from them or kill their Vikings. Maybe there could have been a territory control element incorporated within the board? I realise that this would change the game somewhat- but it slightly feels like they’ve missed a trick here.
Thirdly, whilst they have used box space well, reducing wastage and keeping it within a nice and neat small box, the central board and associated pieces could probably have done with being twice the size. Its fine at 2 player, but once you introduce the player pieces of a third and fourth player it begins to get a bit crowded, which can lead you to stacking cubes (the player pieces) 3 or 4 high when you are on the same space.
All of this being said, Knarr is a great game, relying on engine building and card laying to score points. But what really takes it to the next level is the production value, with some outstanding design choices throughout. It’s not going to compete with some of the bigger box games in terms of crunchy-ness and strategy, but at a price point of £20-25 (at time of writing), it’s a no brainer for a game which can come out from time to time to fill an hour or so,