Renegade Game Studios 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle - Raiders of The North Sea - Conquest, 26 x 19 inches, Features Art from The Critically Acclaimed Board Game, Raiders of The North Sea, Age 10 & Up

Great game! Cant wait to get it to the table again.

Raiders of the North Sea is a worker placement with clever mechanics that is all about looking at what needs to be accomplished in order to win. To win players need to gather victory points by conquering locations, trading in loot for victory points, and sacrificing their Vikings to Valkyrie for a glorious death. The game works by having players place their Viking worker on a space in order to do an action, but then follows this up with the player needing to remove a worker from the board and obtaining another action. This works phenomenally as players are always able to do something on their turn with the only issue being the order of play. Some players may want to gather income first before recruiting, except the income area already has a worker placed by a previous player. The game plays rather quickly as a four player game can end in an hour. The different ways players can obtain victory points can help them turn the tide in their favor. Great game that is fast with pieces that make a person think it is a kickstarter release as money are metal coins, and a lot of wooden bits for gold, Valkyries, livestock, and ore.

My friends and I love this game. There’s a lot of strategy and is simple for new players to learn. I can’t wait to try the expansions!

OVERVIEW: Raiders of the North Sea is a worker placement game with a simple rule set, strategic depth, and good variation from game to game. The basic concept of RotNS is that on their turn players will place a worker onto a space on the board, taking the associated action for that space; then pull up a worker from a different space on the board, taking a second action for that space. You may either take actions in town to replenish your supplies and recruit raiders, or you may go out raiding the countryside to plunder resources and gain valor (victory points). AUDIENCE: Among my friends, RotNS has been well received by tabletop hobbyists and casual board gamers alike. This game is very comparable to Stone Age in length, basic mechanics, weight, and especially audience. GAMEPLAY PROS: This game shines in the way the board opens up to new choices as the game goes on. As you raid more powerful settlements, you gain more powerful workers, who will in turn allow you to raid even more powerful settlements. The game is also very well balanced; there are multiple ways to score victory points (or valor points), and though you must almost certainly score points multiple ways to win, those who push on to raid the daunting fortress settlements will usually have an edge if the other players do not keep up. Variation from game to game keeps each session fresh. The way resources are distributed randomly on the board during setup gives each game its own twist, and makes some settlements more desirable than others to raid. Players will acquire raiders from a deck of cards throughout the game, and each raider has unique abilities which heavily impact strategy. There are enough different raiders that the cards each player acquires from game to game will vary. GAMEPLAY CONS: Game sessions can drag on to well beyond the box time if players take too long to make decisions. This will probably be an issue the first couple times you play as everyone figures out the game, but once all players have a thorough knowledge of the rules and a good grasp of the strategy, this isnt as much of an issue, especially because... ...Some reviewers have complained that RotNS does not offer enough choices. It does seem to dictate your actions somewhat at the beginning of the game, but the board opens up very quickly to more choices. You should not expect a buffet of choices at any point in the game, but this is not a problem for three reasons: 1. It keeps the game moving at a fast pace with little down time, 2. Limited options drives up tension and player interaction with multiple players trying to get the same thing, and 3. Though RotNS is a worker placement game, many do not realize just how much the raider abilities (cards) impact the game. Players may recruit raiders for their passive ability, or discard them for an instant benefit. These cards add another layer to the game that is easy to miss at first. But once you realize their impact, deck-digging becomes its own effective strategy, and you may even start to think youre playing a game of Imperial Settlers. It should be said that this just isnt that complicated of a game, and it never claimed to be. Where people seem to get hung up the most is when the two cons Ive listed here affect the same session: I spent two hours playing that? Keep your games moving, and it wont be an issue. Let them drag on, and youll probably get bored. COMPONENTS: These are some great components. The coins are metal, the cards are nicely finished, and there is a bag full of little wooden pieces unique to the game series, (never mind that the Valkyrie skulls look like snowmen heads when you turn them upside down). Best of all the artwork is amazing. Youll find yourself studying the picture on a card before you read the cards text. SUMMARY: Raiders of the North Sea is a solid worker placement game with layers of strategy hidden behind simple gameplay. It can drag on a bit if players are unengaged, but with this artwork and these components you wont be looking anywhere else. The element of cards lifts gameplay from good to great, and the board provides plenty of tension without making you sweat. Those expecting a complicated worker placement game with endless choices will be disappointed, but that is not the game it claims to be. Raiders of the North Sea is good fun for casual gamers and hobbyists alike!

Raiders of the North Sea is a great game. Its fairly easy to learn and teach, looks great, and it is a whole lot of fun to play. Raiders is a worker placement game ala Lords of Waterdeep, but with a few changes to the mechanics that really make for an interesting game. Build your crew, get your supplies ready, then go a raidin!! Ive played this game both with 4 players (the maximum) and with 2 players (the minimum) and enjoyed it both times. I look forward to Raiding the North Sea again and again!

Overall not as fun as we had hoped. It is a different take on a worker placement style game. In the end we find that it is not one of our favorites, but still decent enough to keep for game nights when the family comes over.

Whether a game is easy or difficult to learn is relative to how much game boarding you do. I would say this was medium difficult to learn—about the equivalent of learning Wingspan, maybe slightly more complex. And similar set up time for the game. For new players, it was quite slow moving at the beginning, and lots of confusion—even after we all watched a Youtube video explaining it. A few players were ready to abandon it after 45 minutes or so. But the game did speed up, and as players caught on, it became more interesting. I’m sure subsequent plays would move much faster. There were a lot of actions/potential actions on the cards that never came into play for any players, and it was hard for me to see that they would ever be significant, even for experienced players. So I would say the game seems unbalanced. The game might be improved by streamlining the options. The version I played had really nice quality coins/meeples/objects, but I think it might have been a Kickstarter version. One really bad decision the game designers made was to make the “workers” black, gray, and white, with the “black workers” doing most of the menial tasks, and the “white workers” necessary for doing the high level raiding. Too many times in the game players uttered things like “I can’t do that, I only have a black worker,” or “I really need a white worker.” Really, they couldn’t have anticipated this and made the workers magenta, teal and orange, or some other color scheme?

With 2 players, it took 90 minutes; at 70 minutes, I wanted it to be over. Only played one game and it was a massive blowout, I think I lapped her. Big map taking up space and many pieces to make a lengthy set up and take down time. For the first time, I prefer the app.

Pretty great game

Very strategic and fun to play.