Through Ice & Snow
- Selwyn Ward
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 13 minutes ago
The perilous search for a Northwest Passage through the Arctic led many intrepid explorers to disaster. Fernando Eduardo Sánchez' design for Through Ice & Snow faithfully reproduces the peril in a deliciously punishing game of attrition where the 2-4 players are constantly struggling to stay one step ahead of disaster. There's the option included of playing this as a solitaire game but in the solo game you miss out on the added excitement generated by a highly competitive game where all the players are quite literally in the same boat.
Published by 2Tomatoes, Through Ice & Snow is a worker placement game. Players each have three specialists; a carpenter, a scientist and a captain, plus three crewmen, with the option to additionally recruit inuits to serve as additional crew. Most actions are only available to a specific specialist and the large majority also demand additional crewmen. Many of the actions are only available to the first player who chooses that location; so this is a game where players can easily find themselves locked out from the actions they'd ideally like to take. And you can find yourself locked out of an action not so much because others want to take it but because denying you access to it stops you in your tracks. Tho' the premise for this game has players all embarked on the same expedition, sailing in the same ship, Through Ice & Snow is highly competitive and you may well find other players taking, for example, hunting actions ahead of you not so much because they need the extra food but so that you are unable to feed your crew and so have to resort to eating the dogs you'd previously acquired to pull your sled.
There are lots of ways to score in Through Ice & Snow but this is a punishing game with just as many ways to suffer. It's not just food that you need to worry about. If your health dips below a certain level, two of your crewmen go down with scurvy and are unavailable to you for a turn. If you don't have enough coal to pay your contribution to the ship's movement, then again you'll incur penalties. And the player who has control of the ship doesn't just navigate the route through the ice and become first player, they also determine whether or not the ship hugs the coast. This decision will have an impact on the event card that the players take but it also determines whether the turn burns one coal or two. If another player is almost out of coal, the decision to require everyone to contribute two coal may be just enough to force them to have to be towed, which is likely to mean a transfer of points from the victim to the player at the helm.
Be under no illusion then, Through Ice & Snow is most certainly a 'take that' game. Resources are tight and even without the discommodiousness of other players you'll rarely be able to accomplish all that you hope for in a turn because you probably won't have sufficient or the right mix of specialists, crewmen and inuit, the spot you need will have been taken by another player or you'll lack the specific resources required for a particular action.
But even tho' it's an inevitably punishing game of attrition, and just maybe because of it, Through Ice & Snow always delivers a memorable board game experience that you'll be retelling to friends and colleagues long after the game has been packed away.
Publishers 2Tomatoes have done a great job with the production, including painted wooden components and dual-layer boards, with clear iconography and immersive art from Pedro A Alberto and Araceli Martin. And there's no need to kit out in furs in order to play: our most recent play at Board's Eye View was on the hottest day of the year but we were nonetheless all still wrapped up in the theme.
(Review by Selwyn Ward)
