Looot

Prior to attending the UK Games Expo this year, I’d seen a few posts about Looot on social media and immediately loved the theme, as well as the mechanics of the game – I love a good worker placement game, and this one also has tile placement!

I didn’t have a chance to play it at the convention itself – it seemed incredibly popular among others attending – but I did have a chance to have my copy signed by Charles Chevallier, one of the designers of the game.

Having now had a chance to get hands on and play a couple of games, I’m incredibly pleased with what Loot has to offer.

Look at all this Looot

I love popping board game components out of their manufactured pieces, and Looot satisfyingly provides several that are filled with location tiles, landscape boards, resource tiles, and more – there’s even an extra blank tile included.

Looot not only has each player have their own personal board (called fjord boards), but also, depending on the number of players, you’ll be using an amount of landscape boards as well. These boards are connected to form the main play areas where you’ll be placing “workers”, which in this game are your own set of Vikings which come in one of four colours.

Nicely provided are several small bags for you to sort these pieces back into later for easier setup, as well as a separate larger bag for the blind draw tiles.

To the longships!

Looot begins with you each receiving one of each type of construction tile, which you place in the relevant space on your fjord board. These begin flipped over, with the requirements for their construction showing. In order to construct them and earn their relevant point bonuses, you must provide the resources shown on the tile in the adjacent hexes of your fjord board. For example, one may require two houses, two watchtowers, and a castle to complete.

The starting values per resource, building, and construction site (used to calculate score at the end of the game) are listed in the bottom right corner of each fjord board for reference. These can be increased by obtaining bonuses from longships – another type of placeable resource which can be obtained once each turn from the ocean board attached to the landscape boards. Each time one is taken, it is refreshed from the blind bag.

Each longship also has specific requirements for adjacent resources and will provide a bonus to a specific type of resource or building depicted on said tile. The extent of that bonus is not known until flipped – however if the longship is black, it will be worth more than those just made of wood.

If the player does not provide the relevant resources for completion of the longship, they will lose 5 victory points at the end of the game. It is therefore vital that players manage their taking of longships carefully to maximise points for what they have, as well as being able to ensure they’re completed.

Here come the invaders

Each turn, the current player places one of their Vikings on the connected landscape boards, according to the placement rules:

· You cannot place your Viking on a Resource space that is already occupied by another Viking

· Your Viking must be adjacent to either another Viking (of any colour) or a Longship.

Therefore, the first Viking must be placed adjacent to the ocean board where the Longships lie. Afterwards, they can slowly begin to move across the land as they begin to capture resources and buildings – just like true Vikings.

When you place a Viking on a resource (wood, sheep, gold, and axes) you collect a tile of the same type to place on your fjord board, anywhere you like. Then, you may have conditionally captured a building or completed a construction site depending on the placement of your Viking or the placement of your resource.

Each building (house, watchtower, and castle) has different capture requirements. E.g. Houses simply require adjacency and provide one house, whereas watchtowers require a chain of your Vikings between them to capture both watchtowers, providing two tiles.

If you have provided the appropriate adjacent resources to complete one of your three construction sites, you may flip it over to earn that many victory points at the end of the game.

After checking these two conditionals, you can then perform any of the optional actions as well.

Once each player has run out of Vikings to place, the game ends and scores are calculated based on the number of resources, buildings, and construction sites you’ve completed multiplied by the points each is worth.

Considering your options

Looot provides some strategy in the way that you can perform optional actions at the end of your turn. These include:

· Selecting a Longship

· Using a Shield

· Claiming a Trophy

As mentioned previously, you can choose from one of the longships available on the ocean board and place it onto your fjord board. The current selection of longships may have a benefit you could make good use of already or might change how you plan your next moves to facilitate benefitting for something else. E.g. if you have several sheep resources on your board already you may want to take a longship that would benefit the scoring for sheep at the end of the game, etc.

The second option available is using a shield. Each fjord board has space for three shields of your colour that you place during setup. Each can be flipped, but not in the same turn, once to gain an immediate power to use in that turn. One of these lets you place a second Viking after your first for that turn; another lets you place a Viking in an already occupied space, and the last provides double the resources you would usually gain from the tile you place your Viking on.

Lastly, you can also claim a trophy. Like longships, the trophy tiles are placed along a separate board attached to the landscape board. These, unlike longships, however, do not replenish. There are five in total, each requiring a certain number of axes to acquire, with the more expensive ones rewarding more points. You can only take one each, so it’s important to try and get the best ones as early as you can as well, but of course you’ll need to ensure you have room to place your axes as well as the other resources you require.

By effectively using these three options at the right times, you can easily gain the advantage over your rivals!

Final Thoughts

Looot is an incredibly easy game to set up and to play, with games lasting around 20-35 minutes depending on player count. There are very few actions you can perform, and those that you can do are simple enough to understand and complete without difficulty or constant checking of the rules.

There are a few different ways to try and strategize, which leads to some variety in play, however most games will perhaps seem repetitive due to the limited placements of the boards – though by positioning the ocean board differently each game you can create different starting hexes. Beyond this though the setup doesn’t provide much in the way of variety – besides the initial longship options – each board has an equal number of identical starting buildings for example.

However, the theme meshes nicely with the mechanics and, because it’s a quick game, I found myself enjoying it a lot, even despite the lack of variety. I’d perhaps describe it more as a good entry level title for those looking to try out some simple worker placement games.

If you enjoy Looot, I’d also recommend trying out Akropolis. It too has tile placement, as you work to build up your own city by placing certain tiles in strategic places to earn points. The tiles you place are selected from an ever-changing set of available tiles each turn though, so you need to be careful when selecting which ones to add to your city.