Red North
- Board's Eye View
- 54 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Designed by James Dickinson and published by Mighty Boards, Red North is a Viking-themed card game where the 2-4 players are competing over three rounds for control of outposts. The game is a reworking of Saer, which was La Mame Games' offering at Spiel Essen 2024. Art is by Giocomo Vichi.
Outposts each award a bonus power or effect but they are also what score you points: 1 point per outpost in round 1, 2 points in round 2 and 3 points in the third and final round. This incremental scoring keeps players in contention even after they've got off to a shaky start.
Gameplay is straightforward, tho' there are slight variations between the three rounds. Players play their raiding party of three cards from their hand face-down. In the first round these will just be Raider cards (strength 2 in their colour) or Jahl cards which don't have a colour of their own but which add 1 strength to cards to which they are adjacent. To Reinforce, you flip one of your face-down cards face up and can then add a card from your hand. Doing this can obviously increase your prospects of winning an outpost but at the cost of giving away information on the cards you have in your raiding party. Withdraw lets you take a face-down card out of your raiding party and back into your hand. You start off with one Glory token and may earn more Glory tokens at the start of subsequent rounds, and a Glory token can be played on a face-up coloured card to Inspire it (add 1 to its strength). When you Pass you get to choose one of the sets of cards in the market display. These become part of your hand inthe next round. The cards you pick up in this way for round 2 will include a Hero card with strength 4, and the cards you pick up for use in round 3 ('Ragnarok') will include a god card with a game-changing power.
With its mix of bluff, deduction, misdirection and second-guessing, Red North is a fun hand-management card game. It incorporates a valuable catch-up mechanic - awarding a compensatory Glory token for any colour where you have a card in your raiding party but where you didn't win the outpost. Because the outposts are all worth more in the final round, it's that round that will usually determine the winner, but having control of an outpost from an earlier round gives you the extra power token that goes with that outpost and that can prove decisive. For example, the token for the green outpost lets you win ties... Red North plays in a filler-length 20-25 minutes and we've enjoyed it at all player counts.