Northgard Review

“Heil og sæl” sailors! Welcome to the Northgard Uncharted lands you and your clan of fearless Vikings have discovered after sailing through the great sea. Would you first build a settlement and secure the resources you need to survive or would you explore and conquer the region?

In “Northgard: Uncharted Lands”, you lead a clan of Vikings and your goal is to survive for 7 rounds or seasons. In each of them, players can take different actions including exploring the land, build a variety of structures and engage in combat that would allow them to secure the resources they need to survive the winter. Your aim as the leader of your clan will be to amass as much fame as possible in order to beat all your opponents. At the end, you are a Viking and there is nothing better than live with honour and die in battle.

Wisdom Is Welcome Wherever It Comes From

Northgard, the Uncharted lands comes within a box packed with great and well though content. In particular, I love that the retail version of the game includes a very nice insert to properly organize all the components in it that can store all the tokens, the creature miniatures and the cards. I only added a couple of small game trays to quickly manage the resource tokens but otherwise a couple of zip-lock bags would have worked nicely anyway.

The other aspect I really love about this game is the illustrations on the cards and the aesthetics on the components. The colours are very bright and the exaggerated cartoony designs makes the cards really enjoyable. All cards also have cleverly designed icons and additional explanatory text boxes to support the game play. The design on both map tiles and tokens is neat and fits the purpose perfectly. I would have probably liked a bit more variety on the map tiles but they are overall quite functional and of a size that allow to clearly see all map elements even when a lot of units are on them.

The quality of all the component is also quite high. The cardboard tokens and the tiles are very thick and sturdy although I would have appreciated the resource tokens to be slightly bigger. Cards are of a very generous size and they look quite resistant. On top of that, the miniatures are probably the best components in the box. The clan units come in 5 different colours and, although their detail is low, they still look very nice on the board. Interestingly, the miniatures include both male and female warriors that I think is a very nice touch. The miniature of the creature expansion, on the other end, are highly detailed and amazingly sculpted. Some of them also come in two or three different colour nuances to help identify each of them clearly. I should also mention that the darker the colour, the stronger the creature is as I think this is a very clever idea.

Even In The Sheath, The Sword Must Be Sharp

In Northgard each player controls one Viking clan with asymmetric powers. All the clans have some sort of advantage and they feel quite balanced therefore I personally like to randomize them among the players as it makes the games more interesting than picking them.

During the setup all players will pick a clan, some materials, units and a starting action deck. At the beginning, each deck contains the same action cards but at the end of each season the players will be able to pick an additional card among those available for that round. All these new cards are usually more powerful or flexible than the basic one in the deck and their effects are increasingly better as the game progress. Picking new cards is a key deck-building step as players can tailor their strategy by choosing the new cards carefully.

During a season, players will take turns in playing one card from their hand. The deck will be usually bigger than a player hand but can be re-shuffled every time it runs out. The order in which player takes action is as important as reminding which actions may be left for the next season. Once a player uses all their action cards from their hand, their turn is completed and the first one to do so would be the one to first pick the new card to add to their deck. Players can also choose to pass the turn in order to be the first to pick the new card and this mechanism forces players to choose among taking more actions or picking the card they really need to strengthen their strategy. Cards can also be swapped and their effect delayed allowing for deeper strategy and unpredictability.

The other interesting aspect of the game is the tile laying process at the basis of territory exploration and development. Once a player plays an “explore” action card, they are entitled to turn a map tile and place it close to the territory containing the unit that is performing the action. Each map tile may contain some resources that the clan will need to control in order to survive and/or the lair of a creature. The creatures are used only if you are playing the expansion included in the base game but I strongly recommend to do so as it adds a lot to the game. In addition, each tile contains some borders that can be aligned freely to created closed territories. Orienting the newly discovered land is another key strategic aspect of the game as players can only explore from non-completed territories but they gain fame for completing a territory. A larger territory can be easier to defend and may provide a lot of resources but can also be attacked by multiple directions. Closing a smaller territory may quickly grant fame to the clan but may not provide any valuable resource.

The overall feeling is that building the map is a pure tile laying mini-game where fame is the final reward for completing the territories. In contrast, the area control aspect of this game is connected to the “recruiting” action that allows a player to expand its clan and to gain more units to deploy. The game promotes a strong balance as players can only obtain resources from the territories where they have units. Moreover, all buildings in a territory can only benefit the players with units in them disregarding who built them in the first place. However, the bigger your army, the more resources you will need in order to survive each winter.

Better To Die With Honour Than To Live With Shame

Being a big fan of the video game, I had very high expectation for Northgard – Uncharted lands and I am very glad to say the game has not disappointed me. In particular, I think the boardgame adaptation has captured the strategic and fun aspects of its digital counterpart by developing nice and streamlined mechanics. I love how the game is not just a pure explore-collect-fight type of game but combines aspects of deck building/management and tile layering. The overall experience is great and very accessible making this a very good game for any fan of the genre.

My only real recommendation to enjoy Northgard in full is to always add the creature expansion. Creatures are not only represented by great miniatures but they also force the players to constantly face a potential treat to their plans. With this expansion, exploring a new territory is not a trivial task as there is always a chance revealing a tile may also bring a new creature to the field. Once the creature is in play, they always move to an occupied territory in a way or another damaging the player strategy or removing key units from the game.

In fact, the creatures provide a good way to amass additional fame in order to win the game. They also make more difficult for players to try to just win by building three large buildings (that is one of the instant win conditions).

Overall, Northgard is a great game and I would love to see more expansion for this game to include more units, building type and clans. What is missed from the video game are the trade and pillage mechanics together with the possibility to have neutral clans that can become ally. It would be great to see them coming in the future to add more depth to this great game.

That concludes our thoughts on Northgard – Uncharted lands. Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames. To buy Nortgard – Uncharted Lands today click here!