Shipwrights of the North Sea: Redux

Garphill Games has a pretty solid reputation for producing excellent games. Everything from Raiders of the North Sea through to the most recent releases of Scholars of the South Tigris and the announcements of the upcoming Skara Brae and The Anarchy have had the gamers buzzing. But it wasn’t always the case. The very first game released worldwide by Garphill, Shipwrights of the North Sea, was successful by the standards of the day, but as the later games have been released, Shipwrights slowly started to wane and become the ugly duckling of the bunch. Earlier this year though, to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the original release, Shipwrights had a Redux version released. A second edition, if you will. By their own admission, Garphill wanted to bring the design up to the standards the other games they have released, so let’s see if they achieved this.

What’s stayed the same?

As with most games in the Garphill line, the artwork is by Mihajlo Dimitrievski and the theme is set in the early days of the Viking exploration, building ships and recruiting villager. Both games also have card drafting, resource management, and tableau building… Buuuut that’s where the comparisons end. So let’s see what’s new in the newer version.

What’s changed?

Player count is the first thing that strikes me as a change. The Redux is now a 1-5 player game, as opposed to 2-5, and BGG has the preferred player count as 1, instead of 3 or 4. The game length has also changed, with the original game being open ended until a player had built their fourth ship, whereas Redux plays over five rounds. The original had a lot of player interaction, but not in a positive way. It was mostly through take-that, and hate-drafting, two mechanisms I really hate. The drafting was also an issue. You could often end up with a handful of cards you couldn’t use at all, meaning it was a very tight, and unforgiving game.

Redux has no take-that anymore and players now have far more control and agency around how they use their cards each round, by having the option to discard a card to gain a benefit. There is also much more engine building, and combos in the new game. There is also an update for the campaign expansion – the Runesaga – by adding six new Runestones to make the game compatible with the campaign.

So how does this game play?

Shuffle up the various card decks and put them onto their respective spaces on the game board, and place one of the player markers on each track at the zero spot.

Each player is given a player board, Eikja card and Labourer card of their chosen colour and are randomly dealt a Hut card, which is placed below the player board. An icon on the Hut card indicates a track you should bump your piece up by one space. Give the players 3 Workers, 1 Oak, 1 Wool, 1 Iron, 1 Gold and 2 Silver from the supply and you’re good to go.

Each of the cards you will be dealt has a different type:

Longship – played onto the player board before being constructed with the skills and paying the costs indicated. These give victory points, movement along tracks and some kind of benefit, either in- or end-game. Once constructed, these ships go above the player board.

Building – built below the player board, using workers and resources, and give some combination of points and track movements. These then provide a new action space for you to use each round.

Craftspeople – these can be either placed under a building at the cost of a Gold for infinite uses, or get a single use when played on the player board. These give a Minor and a Major Skill, which are used when building a longship.

Townsfolk – similar to Craftspeople, these can be either placed under a building at the cost of a Gold, or get a single use when played on the player board. If they’re added to a building, they will strengthen the action there.

Jarls – also are placed under a building for a Gold, but provide progress on the tracks and victory points, but can also be discarded for Gold.

As the game plays out, it follows a pretty simple pattern. First reveal the next Round Card, then players draft 6 cards, with some variation depending on player count. Once the draft is complete, all players take their actions simultaneously, and must use all cards they’ve drafted. Next, you gain income based on the constructed Longships and tucked Trade Cards. All workers return to the players supply and any raid cards are reset. Finally, the Hero cards are distributed to the leaders of each progress track. After the 5th round, total up the victory points and the most points wins.

Final Thoughts

The original Shipwrights was very underwhelming when I played it a year or two ago. It stood up to its reputation for the weakest in the original trilogy and perhaps the weakest released to date. I think then it’s fair to say that the Redux didn’t exactly have the highest bar to clear in order to be an improvement. I can absolutely see the DNA of the games that have come since that back up the original drafting mechanism. The tucking of cards is fresh from Wayfarers and Scholars of the South Tigris, and there’s definitely some inspiration from It’s a Wonderful World as a drafting game that produces engine building. Overall, the game is fairly lightweight in comparison to the later games, but that’s fine. We don’t need the heavy game brain burn with every game we play.

For me personally, I can see that if you like a drafting game like It’s a Wonderful World, you will really enjoy this. There’s a puzzle to be solved, and a lot of different combos you can build to fit the cards that come out. But… I just didn’t feel that same magic I often do with a Garphill Game. It could be a number of things – a hang up from the previous experience, the complete lack of player interaction beyond “here’s your next card,” and that I didn’t really like It’s a Wonderful World. I do like that there is no truly useless hand any more, because even if you can’t build a card, you can get some kind of benefit to maybe help next round, but it’s a very reactive game. You can gather all the resources needed to build a ship that will score for certain icons and then… you never see that icon again. I can’t see myself with a group that would enjoy this level of randomness that might just ruin your day because the cards didn’t come up, so I’d much rather play this game solo.

Speaking of, the solo mode is utterly brutal. The neutral markers move up tracks according to the Round Cards and score a number of points as stated on that card, which may be way more than you can manage. It’s a weird one though. Most games, we question why a solo mode was included in the box. For this one, I’m questioning why there’s a multiplayer mode.

Don’t get me wrong, if you like drafting engine builders, you will probably enjoy this one. But unlike something like Furnace, which I do enjoy, the possibility of hate drafting still lingers. And maybe it’s just a “me” thing. Plenty of people enjoy It’s A Wonderful World and I really don’t for some reason. I also didn’t really enjoy Wayfarers of the South Tigris, so what do I know? I can appreciate that this is a massive step up from the original, and there is a good game in there. It’s just not really one for me, I don’t think.