LogFAQs > #933962352

46. Raiders of the North Sea (2015)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Worker placement, tableau-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 45-75 minutes
Experience: 4-6 games over 4-6 sessions (2018-2019) with 3-4 players
Previous ranks: NR/100 (2016), NR/80 (2018)

Summary - Each player attempts to gain the most VP by mostly raiding villages with high strength. On your turn, you play the one worker you have in hand onto an available action space and take the action on that space, then pull another worker off of its action space and take that space's action. Generally these actions give you a tableau of cards and a set of resources you must pay, preparing you for the raids... which you embark on by placing your worker, then taking the loot, then rolling a die for VP. There are also three tiers of workers that you pass through during the game.

Design - Raiders of the North Sea might be one of the most straightforward eurogames in the top section of my list. It's not incredibly elegant, nor is it super-fiddly. It's not super-complex, nor is it extremely lightweight. It's not an immense intellectual puzzle, nor is it mindlessly pleasant. What it is, is a solid experience that has some cool mechanics, some typical pieces, and some satisfaction when you count up the score.

The best part of Raiders is, without question, its central mechanism. Unlike so many other worker placement games, Raiders of the North Sea does not really offer you chances to hate-draft your opponent's actions. Placing a worker on a spot leaves that spot available as an action; the next player will just be pulling from instead of placing on that spot. I also really like the natural arc of the game as more and more people upgrade from black to grey to white, as you keep raiding - at first there will be a single higher-tier that gets fought over, but soon everyone will have that color.

The game also plays with action economy: certain actions are stronger (or only available) with later-game workers; other actions (specifically the one to get money) are actually stronger with the early-game workers. The way the payoffs change is really interesting.

While the interactivity via action-blocking is almost nil, there is a racing element to Raiders, which is essentially "achievement-drafting." While it can be tempting to sit back and just relentlessly build your engine by getting money and buffing your strength, the best loot comes from actually completing raids, even if you aren't strong enough to get the VP from your raid. It's nearly impossible to get certain resources without raiding, and there are limited raiding spots in the game - so you're heavily incentivized to go forward, pushing the game toward its conclusion.

Other than its worker placement system, there's nothing specifically notable about Raiders. It's just a snappy, fast-playing euro where the interactivity primarily comes from this racing element, which constantly lets you feel pretty good by snatching up the cool workers others place, and which gives you the occasional adrenaline burst when you roll your combat strength dice to see if you're scoring big on VP. And in that, it works great.

Experience - Due to its rather standard design, Raiders primarily makes it up here on the back of having some great plays with a fast speed. There was a copy in my group for a while because a visiting friend left it here, and it saw several plays over those months as a euro that's clearly long enough to be beyond filler and is a "complete" experience, while being much shorter and brian-burn-y than an Agricola type.

Future - Alas, that copy is back to the out-of-town friend. I don't know that Raiders is quite notable enough to buy (unlike, say, Agricola, which I think about a lot). But - especially if it works well at two, which admittedly I've never tried - it could fill a niche at a weight I'm very interested in...
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness