North Wind Review

North Wind was published by KOSMOS in Germany a few months ago (as Norderwind), and is being released here by Z-Man Games soon. It is the latest game from famed designer, Klaus Tueber. You might recognize that name - Mr. Teuber designed what is arguably the most popular hobby board game ever, The Settlers of Catan.

North Wind is a light/medium weight game where players are trade captains sailing from port to port, delivering goods and dealing with encounters like pirate attacks and merchant ships. Similar to Catan, the game is a race to 10 points (8 in a 4 player game). The main mechanisms in the game involve upgrading a "player board" (more on that later) and a small dose of push-your-luck as players draw tiles from a deck, usually choosing to either use an one of two actions per turn to perform the action of the tile, or continue drawing.

The "player boards" I mentioned earlier are amazing. They are 3D cardboard ships that help players track upgraded abilities and to store resources. The mast, for instance, indicates how many tiles a player is allowed to draw from a deck on her turn. Players begin with the ability to draw 4 tiles before their turn ends, but this can be upgraded to draw as many as 6 tiles per turn.

There are 3 decks of tiles in the game, 1 each for the ports - Norderkap, Trutzhavn, and Olesand. During set up, each deck is seeded with its corresponding port tile, then 6 more random tiles are added, and the deck is shuffled. One of the more interesting parts of the game is that although the deck is shuffled whenever a player chooses to go there, the composition of the decks doesn't change during a game, so once players get to know what is in each deck, the decision of which deck of sea tiles to explore each turn becomes more and more informed.

The action tiles in the game allow players to purchase or sell goods, upgrade their ship, or search a shipwreck (gain 2 gold). The most interesting part of the game is how each player decides to upgrade her ship. Players can put a crew member in the crow's nest and gain the ability to check the first tile in a deck after deciding to go there, and then either put it back or move it to the bottom of the deck. Players can hire an accountant so that whenever they sell goods, they gain +1 gold. There are 3 other crew members players can add, but each player can only choose 4 of them to have in any given game, and once a crew member is added, she cannot be changed.

The upgrade tiles also give players the opportunity to raise their masts (thus allowing them to draw more tiles each turn) or to add cannons to their ships (allowing more die rolls when combating pirates).

That's right! Pirate attaaaaack! There are four fog tiles in the game. If a player draws one, she rolls the white die, and will most likely have to fight off a pirate ship - though there is a 1 in 6 chance she will discover treasure in the fog, and not have to fight anyone. If she rolls at least 1 skull on the die, she has to either pay 1 gold to continue her turn, or choose to battle. For every cannon on a player's ship, she gets to roll her cannon die 1 time. She can also hire a cannoneer when using the action of an upgrade tile to increase the odds of hitting the pirate ship. If a player wins the battle, she gets a pirate captain to throw in her ship's brig. Losing a battle with a pirate ship can be painful - the player's turn ends immediately (so she loses either 1 or 2 actions depending on if she had taken one yet or not). But since one of the ports (Trutzhavn) is basically a prison, it is likely that at some point during the game, players will choose a sea tile deck wanting to find a fog tile.

Speaking of delivering to ports, on the main board, each port has a column of contracts. If players have these resources when they draw the port tile for the corresponding city, they can deliver them to earn a victory point. Once a player puts her cube on a contract, it is fulfilled, and none of the other players can fulfill that same contract.

The game proceeds like this, with players taking turns drawing tiles from one of the sea decks, and using their two actions, until 1 player has place all of her victory point tokens out onto the board that player is the winner!

North Wind is a great family strategy game with excellent components, a fun theme, and plenty (but not too many) decisions to be made. There is a good combination of short-term and long-term considerations to be made, which is good to keep more dedicated "gamers" interested, and to keep those less initiate in the hobby from feeling overwhelmed.

The mix of short-term and long-term decisions is really brought out in the way players upgrade their ships. Do you want to get a Treasurer, which will be a big help in the beginning of the game? Or a Lookout, which will always be pretty valuable, but will let you see all 7 of the tiles on a turn if need be? These decisions are very engaging, and being able to make your actions stronger (especially in ways that you choose) is something I think everyone inherently enjoys.

There is limited interaction between the players, but what interaction is there (completing contracts) is a nice addition. Since most of the columns of contracts build upon each other as they ascend, having the contract you were collecting resources for taken by another player is unfortunate, but not too punishing. I really like the fact that the overall goal of the game is a race, and the way that the contracts are taken off the board as they are completed contributes to that sense of urgency.

North Wind is not an especially deep game, but there is a good amount of game here, especially for groups just getting into the hobby, or for those "mixed" groups that are made up of "gamers" and their "non-gamer" friends (thoughts of playing this with my parents come to mind). I had a good time playing North Wind, and though I probably wouldn't bring it to any of my monthly gaming meetups, it would certainly be on my list of games to bring when playing with people whose only definition of "Euro" is the EU's currency. A solid family game - I'd give it a 7.5.

Jambo Review

When looking for two-player games to play, one title comes up fairly regularly - Jambo.

In Jambo, the players take on the role of competing merchants attempting to gain money by buying and selling wares.  Each turn, the active player has five actions.  For an action, you may draw a card.  After drawing, you may either keep this card or discard it and draw another one (as another action).  You can do thus up to five times, but you can only keep one card - and it must always be the last one you drew.  After drawing (or choosing not to), you may play cards from your hand and use utility cards that are in play.  Cards from your hand can attack your opponent, buy or sell wares, build an extra market, and several other things.  Similarly, utility cards go into play in front of you (you can have three in play at any given time), and they do similar things, but at a cost - pay a gold to draw a card, take a ware from your opponent but then give them one of yours, discard cards from your hand to collect gold, etc.  If you end your turn with two or more actions remaining, then you earn an extra gold.  Play continues back and forth until one player has more than 60 gold.  At that point, the other player has one final turn to try to out-earn them, with the player having more gold winning!  (Or, if they're tied, then the second player - the one not triggering the end of game wins.  This is odd to me.)

The crux of the game is buying and selling wares

The first pro that I have for Jambo is that the game is deeper than it initially seems.  When you first start playing the game, you are basically just attempting to buy goods and immediately sell them (which, when this does happen, is very nice).  However, there are a lot of cards that will allow you to acquire the combinations you need more quickly.  The interesting balance is when to use these, and when the cost is too great.  One of the utility cards allows you to collect any ware that you want for 2 gold.  This can be very good to fill in a missing good, but costs more per ware than using ware cards.  So, it is less effective for filling in all of the goods for a given ware card.  Yet, it is still more valuable than not completing a ware card (unless you could have drawn a ware card that you were closer to completing).  There are also cards that let you sell wares without completing ware cards; but when you do this you only get 2 gold per ware, instead of the 3-4 that you get when you complete a ware card.

The next pro for Jambo is that everything in the game has a price.  In fact, doing well at Jambo requires a player to carefully balance these prices.  But, this pricing is balanced well enough to allow for neat combinations (and tough choices).  For example, one utility card allows you to spend 1 gold to draw a card; another lets you discard a card from your hand for 2 gold.  If you start doing this every turn, you will start making 1 gold per turn.  Yet, you gain 1 gold per turn whenever you end your turn with 2 or more actions - and this combination costs 2 actions!  So, there are many costs that you must balance in the game, including opportunity costs.  Another example of an opportunity cost is in the draw - you can draw up to five times in the hopes of getting a card that you need; but every extra draw prevents you from being able to play as many cards in the next phase.

An example utility card

One quick point of note about Jambo before moving on to the cons.  The game has a direct conflict feel, to me, because of the animal cards.  The animal cards are essentially attacks - the Hyena lets you steal a card from your opponent's hand (but then return one from your hand), the Crocodile lets you discard one of your opponent's utility cards, and so on.  Some people love direct conflict in games, and some prefer to avoid it entirely.  So, whereas a game like Jaipur allows you to affect your opponent by performing actions before they can, in Jambo you affect your opponent by attacking them.  There are also "Guard" cards that can cancel an animal attack, but there are not enough of these to cancel all of the attacks, if you find yourself in a very conflict-intensive game.

My first con for Jambo is that, like with many card driven games, luck of the draw can play a major factor.  One example of this is the small market.  There is a rule that if you fill your large market (your starting card, which can hold six wares), then you must spend 2 gold (heavily cutting into future profits).  The small market card can allow you to hold 3 additional goods - which is helpful in itself, because you have extra room to hold combinations of goods.  But, the small market also allows you to avoid paying the two extra gold for filling your large market.  If one player draws a small market in his opening hand and the other player never sees one, the player with the extra market seems to have an advantage.  Yet, other good drawing can defeat this advantage.  There are multiple copies of any given ware card in the deck (I think that there are two of each).  One example of a "lucky draw" is a player that draws both copies of a certain ware card into their hand - poof, use one card to buy the wares and immediately sell them with the other card and make around 7 gold at the cost of 2 actions!  There is not a more effective play in the game!!

My other con for Jambo is that sometimes you feel like you're doing as well by skipping actions as you are by the actions you actually perform.  Remember the rule that you earn an extra gold if you end your turn with 2 or more actions?  Some of the games that I have played I have felt like half of the money I earned was by ending my turns with actions left!  Now, I realize that as you play the game, you will get better, but I think that this feeling can still persist even after your first couple of games.  If you're simply not drawing cards that work well together, a large percentage of your profits can be earned simply by passing. 

Overall, I give Jambo an 8.0/10.  It is one of the better two player games that I have played, but because of the direct conflict, I probably won't play it repeatedly (direct conflict games don't work well between me and my wife - and if you're married, that's probably who you're intending to play most (non-war) two-player games with).

If you are looking for good two player games, you might also check out Hive, Jaipur, and Babel.

Elk Fest Review

One of the more unique dexterity games that I've played recently is Elk Fest.

In Elk Fest, each player is trying to help his moose get across the river (the table - and yes, it is called "Elk Fest", and you are using moose; there are certain things in life that you just have to live with, and this is one of them).  In order to move your moose, you must position the "stones" (discs) so that your moose is able to advance across the river without falling in.  Both players do this by taking turns flicking the stones and moving their moose if they can (and want to).  If you knock a moose into the river, or knock a stone out of the river, then your opponent will get to take extra turns.  The first player to successfully move his moose to the opposite platform is the winner!

The first thing that I like about Elk Fest is that it is a precision flicking game.  I love PitchCar and Crokinole, but in both of them, you can generally just flick your disc as hard as you can (obviously not when you're trying to score in the middle in Crokinole).  As long as you aim well in those games, you are generally rewarded for shooting harder.  However, with Elk Fest, you must be incredibly precise.  Since your moose is only about 1-2 inches wide, you do not have much leeway with getting the stones close together.  And, if you get them too close, then your moose isn't advancing very far.  So, again - it's all about precision.

This easily fits in my pocket.

The next pro for Elk Fest is that this is the only dexterity game that I can think of that can very easily be setup and transported.  If you decide not to carry the box (which really isn't even all that big - just a lot bigger than the components), then you're carrying around a game with 10 pieces in a bag.  This fits easily into my pockets.  And, once you arrive at your destination, all you need is a table - place your eight pieces and poof! you're ready to play.

Since this really isn't a complex game and there's not much more to say (I could try to write an entire paragraph out of "it's fun" if you'd like), I'll go ahead and give you the answer to why "Elk Fest" uses moose before I move onto my con.  (The instructions give me this reason, I did not come up with it all on my own.)  It's because games are made in Europe.  And, in Europe, many people speak a different language than I do - specifically, many of them (that play and design board games) speak German.  And, thus, the original name of the game is Elchfest - which, you know, sounds like "Elk Fest."  However, in German, it means "Moose Fest."  So, when playing, if it makes you feel better, you can pretend that you know German, and that you are pronouncing it Elchfest, which logically is a game about moose.

Playing on a Crokinole board is an option

There is only one real con that I can think of for Elk Fest.  Since you play it on any given table, your disks slide differently based on what table you play on - how smooth it's surface is, how much friction there is, and obviously how clean it is.  This is the downside to the ease of setup and transportation - since you don't provide the playing surface, your game may play quite differently based on what playing surface you use.  I'm also not 100% convinced that all of the discs slide exactly the same, either, but that part might just be in my head.  However, if you're like me and have things like a Crokinole board lying around, then you could always just play Elk Fest on that so that you know the surface you're playing on is smooth and even (though there is a hole in the middle to avoid).

Overall, I give Elk Fest an 8.5/10.  I really enjoy this little dexterity game, and I intend to continue playing it - especially when I don't want to carry around a more cumbersome game.

If you like dexterity games, you might also check out Caveman Curling and the games I mentioned previously - PitchCar and Crokinole.