The three players in Greenland represent the Tunit (green), Norse (red), and Thule (yellow) tribes inhabiting Greenland from the 11th to the 15th centuries.
As a tribe, you attempt to secure food, resources, and technology to increase the size of your tribe and support children, elders, and livestock while also wiping out competing species or gathering resources to collect victory points. You must work around the weather and the extinction of natural resources as well as negotiate deals to protect your wives while you decide between monotheism or polytheism. In this tableau-building game, you'll send your population out to hunt native species of Greenland — but some might not come back. (Historically, the climate turned frigid and all but the Thule (Inuit) died out.)
In the game, play takes place over six phases; all players complete each phase in turn order, then the next phase starts. Each turn is one generation. In order:
Resolve events: Examples include elder deaths, animal migrations, feuds, or global cooling. If a trade ship arrives, an auction is held for its wares.
Assign hunters: Hunters are assigned to hunting grounds, resource gathering, colonizing the New World, raiding other tribes for wives or animals, or promotion to an elder.
Negotiate: Players can bribe others to peacefully withdraw hunters, including marrying them to their daughters. Players with a War Chief Elder can use hunters to attack others on the same card. The New World turns hostile if there are too many colonists.
Resolve hunting: Roll a die for each hunter and modify it for technologies and marriages. Success can result in gaining new hunters, resources, hand cards, wives, and/or technologies. Beware, as some animals can be confused by the prey-predator relationship and your hunters might not return. Some successes let your take cards from the central play area into your hand if within hand limit.
Maintain livestock: Pay to keep the animals you've already domesticated.
Take elder actions: Examples include invention, domestication, proselytization, and witch-burning. If you have no elders, you can convert to monotheism.
Depending on each player's ending theistic worldview, he has a variable scoring based on successful hunts (polytheism) or resource gathering (monotheism).
Greenland : PART 1
Images
- 50-page rulebook with small text
- simulation style games
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- we have about 780 games in our collection and of those 160 of them is unplayed
- we still have over 100 unplayed games
- the thing is that there all of the games that got into our house of course even more so for people who don't get review copies of games there's a reason you got it
- play them yeah that's just like the one one thing you can do play the games that you haven't played but it's hard
- why do still own them that's like my first question
- I don't know what your question was but I'm I'm intrigued to ask now what kind of games are on your unplayed shelf
- it's like so it's this is not like should we call all the games that we haven't played yet but that's like an interesting question
- some games just blend so perfectly into the other games on the shelves so you kind of you see it every day you don't like see it
- games that you get and you're excited about then everybody says it's bad
- we played half of when we got it at a con and then we never played it again
- it would be amazing that would be like the coolest thing ever
- we have a big board game problem
References (from this video)
- Greenlandic Settlement
- Historical
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Carcassonne: Over Hill and Dale, this is one of those expansions that I just missed.
- This is a big, grandiose game with a lot going on, and it's too slow and too boring for me to enjoy it.
- This is my least favorite Carcassonne game. I hate this game.
- This is one of the biggest, longest games I've ever played.
- It's the bad quality's bad.
- This one is fine. Um this one is not as bad as the other one I played was that you go around and you find stuff. It doesn't look very good though, does it?
- Leaders on the other hand are a great two-player game where you have a bunch of leaders and you're trying to capture your opponent's leader.
- Of all the games I talked about today, I think my favorite is actually Leaders.
- Leaders is a very, very excellent two-player game.
- This is a re-implementation of Survive: Escape from Atlantis.
- A little auction game. There was just some really neat like there wasn't many games like this. Now, there are many, many, many games like it.
References (from this video)
- Solitaire rules are approachable and easy to grasp with a couple of practice runs
- Rich thematic setup with multiple cultures, religious dynamics, and biomes
- Flexible play options across solo and multiplayer modes, including cooperative play
- Strategic depth emerges from resource management, elder abilities, and biome control
- Initial setup can be fiddly due to many small components and tokens
- Component layout can be error-prone; knocking pieces around is common unless care is taken
- Some players may find the multiform setup (especially elder tracking and animal tokens) a bit intimidating at first
- Survival, resource management, and cultural interaction in a challenging Arctic environment
- Ancient Greenland with three cultures (Inuit, Dorset, Norse) exploring and competing across two northern biomes and newly depicted worlds (Markland/Greenland)
- asymmetric culture management with both solitaire and multiplayer variants; religion (monotheism/polytheism) influences actions
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Biomes and exploration — Two rows of biomes (North and South Greenland) form the exploration and resource base; some biomes freeze over or disappear, affecting access
- Colony growth and settlement — Players manage colonists, livestock, and furnishings; different cultures start with distinct resources and upkeep considerations
- Deck of event cards as a timer — In solitaire, 16 event cards drive 16 generations; in multiplayer, events drive game pace and can end the session
- Elder cards with different roles — Each culture starts with six Elders (various roles like Chief, Shaman, Sage, War Chief, Tracker, Mariner) granting special actions; promotion and religious alignment affect available actions
- End conditions and victory tracking — Solitaire aims to survive 16 generations; multiplayer uses victory points tied to biomes, resources, and settlements
- Hunting and dice resolution — Hunters (domestic units) are deployed to biomes and hunting results are resolved with dice; Alpha Hunter has a special ability
- Negotiation and conflict (multiplayer) — In multiplayer, players may raid, scavenge, or trade; negotiation can influence outcomes and victory points
- Resource tokens and upkeep — Tokens represent energy, food, and raw materials (wood); snowflake icons indicate upkeep costs for certain assets and units
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- the solitaire game is actually pretty straightforward
- we're going to demonstrate the solitaire, the one player game
- you can play this cooperatively
- 16 Generations before the game ends
- these event cards ... 16 Generations