Raiders of the North Sea

Raiders of the North Sea, published by Renegade Game Studios and Garphill Games, is a worker placement game set in the middle period of the Viking Age. Players will be trying to impress the Chieftain by raiding unwary nearby settlements.

During the game you will need to amass a crew and gather provisions before crossing the sea to raid settlements that include harbours, outposts, monasteries and fortresses in the search for gold, iron and livestock. Some of your crew may perish at the hands of the Valkyries, but that’s okay because a glorious death will send a Viking to Valhalla (and will also score you points!)

The game, designed by Shem Phillips, uses a unique place-and-pickup worker mechanism in which on your turn you will take two actions by placing a worker and resolving its action, then picking up a different worker and resolving its action.

Before the game starts you will need to randomly draw plunder from the black bag and place the specified amount onto each raiding space, and also place an appropriately coloured worker next to each raiding space. Each player is given a single black coloured worker and two pieces of silver.

Before you can perform any raids you will need to assemble your crew and collect supplies – this is all done in the village at the bottom of the board. There are eight different buildings, with various actions such as gathering silver, provisions, Townsfolk cards or hiring crew. You must first place their worker in an available building before picking up a different worker from a different building.

When you have hired enough crew and collected enough provisions, you can choose to raid on your turn. To raid a settlement you need to meet three requirements. You must have a large enough crew, enough provisions (and gold if you intend to raid a monastery/fortresses), and the required worker colour - grey and white workers enter the game when they are taken after raiding. They are needed for performing certain village actions and to perform raids on stronger settlements.

The game ends when is only a single set of plunder left in one of the fortresses, the offering draw pile has been exhausted or there are no Valkyrie tokens left on the board. Points are scored based on the Valkyrie track (for dead crew), Armoury track (for military force accrued during the game), offerings to the Chieftain, hired crew (some of whom earn victory points) and collected plunder.

Two expansions are available the add new ways of scoring and introduce new exciting characters and mechanisms to the game – Hall of Heroes and Fields of Fame.

Raiders of the North Sea is the second game in the North Sea Trilogy – if you fancy playing all three back-to-back as a campaign you can get North Sea Runesaga, which links Raiders with Shipwrights of the North Sea and Explorers of the North Sea.