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

My whole family likes this game. Its a fun worker placement game. I like the mechanics of placing and taking a work piece every time you play. Love the theme. I plan on buying more games in this saga.

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.

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?

Me and my boyfriend saw a game play video from game night of this game and loved it and said we had to get it. Finally was able to get it and we LOVE it and their other game Shipwrights. We play both of these all the time. Love the feel of the metal coins--its a nice touch to the game. You pick up on how the game works after about 2 turns. Its a good game. You start out building up your resources and crew(s), so that you can go raiding to build up your supplies. Its a good worker placement type of game. You also need to plan out your moves a head of time too and have a back up plan in case the other players steal your next move. Highly recommend this game--you will not regret it!

A really solid worker-placement game with a really solid ruleset. For the price point, I cant recommend many other games that can do as much as it does. Each turn is taken by first placing your one worker, gaining the effect of the location you placed them (earning provisions/silver/crew/etc) and then finishing your turn by removing a worker on the board, also gaining its effect. You can choose to raid instead at the beginning of your turn if you have the requirements (crew size/provisions/gold), and youll gain VP and resources as a reward. Theres so much more beneath that and competing against the other raiders for the same locations under constraints like that is super fun.

We enjoy playing it

We are pretty avid gamers and this one hits the spot. Wanted a worker placement game and debated between this and Lords of Waterdeep for a while. This game plays really well with only 2p and I would imagine it translates seamlessly to 4p. Watch a 15 min YouTube video on how to play it and it’s not hard at all to learn, but still a little complex. I’d say it’s more so for people who play games pretty regularly. Overall, very happy with this purchase. Really looking forward to the 2 expansions that get great reviews. OH! And the solid metal coins. Every game should have these. Amazing.

This game is so fun! It is a worker placement game, but random enough to make it fun to play over and over. There are expansions too for when you want to change it up.

Very strategic and fun to play.

Great Game!!! The first time I played it was probably about a 30-40 min. long explanation of the rules and terms of play, though it was rather distracted explanation and I would guess that if you less of a board game novice as my friends and I you would be able to explain it rather quickly. After 1.5 rounds of play or so the game just took off and the rules were barely glanced at after. The second time I played was with someone who had never played before. This time I explained the game in its entirety in about 15, though the player did have some previous knowledge with games of a similar sort. We were able to make it through the game with minimal mistakes and improper actions. The game is super well balanced with many different ways to gain the victory points (the games main scoring value). As you raid there can be a lot of thought an strategy that goes into your decisions. There a few low armor level towns people are that could be great to have in the beginning of the game, but by the end you’d probably want to sacrifice them to a Valkyrie if you get the chance. Both times I’ve played have been pretty relaxed I’d say, but we still had multiple times where a player would sit for 10min. trying to figure whether they should work or raid, or whether they should drop a worker at the Town Hall first or at the Gate House. This game has a very simple design which makes it enjoyable to a wide age range, but if intense strategy and mind melting planning is your cup of tea this game could be for you as well. One thing that I believe the game could use more player verses player involvement. As is there is only a small hint of sabotage that can be passed around. But I’m a big fan of setbacks and backstabbing I’m board games. (It lets you know who your real friends are). I’m primarily of something similar to the Thief in Catan some that sets multiple people back but is not in use all that often. I don’t know for sure. Anyway great game lots of fun would recommend for everyone.