Sheep, Wood & Only 9 turns! - Northgreen Board Game Review
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Transcript
Hello everyone, this is Senna.
And this is Johannes.
And you're watching Board Gaming Rambling.
And today we are taking a look at Northgard. This is an upcoming Spiel release Spiel is soon coming along. We're going to be there. If you're going to be there, you can say hi to us. That would be awesome. And the best way to do that is to show us the secret sign. And please say hello as well if you want to. You're not forced to. You can just show the secret sign and then go on your merry way to get some games or play some games or go to the bathroom or whatever you are on your way to doing. If you want to make sure to find us, we will be on the Alliance booth at the Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Saturday afternoon and evening and then Sunday morning. So we hope to see you there. But today is Northgard. In this people on Iceland trying to do research. You're trying to find ways to reintroduce forests to Iceland and also get some some foreign That's not forest, that's a horse. Some horse and sheep and cabbage and and tomatoes and write all about them in your little research papers.
That is what you're going to do. You're going to play nine rounds, which is nine actions. And every time it's your turn, you are going to move your action pawn from one action to another action and do the action that's there and also do the linked action. And also you can interact with some cards either by playing the card if you have managed to do the thing at the top. You can discard a card or you can draw new cards from the decks depending on what the action allows you to do. Also the actions will let you do things that you have seen in many Euro games. You will plant crops. You will put animals out on your landscapes for them to breed and make more animals. And you will also build out your landscape. In this game you are building out outwards, but you're also building upwards. Up and beyond to the universe or to level three, which is the highest one. And that's also going to score you points. You will be doing forest research while moving, not walking in the forest, but moving on this forest research track, getting bonuses. And the first player who gets two specific points will get more points than the other players. After certain rounds, there will be a yield phase. And in the yield phase, you will be getting some bonuses if you're playing blue cards with the yield symbol. If you have at least two animals of the same type in your landscape, you get a new animal.
And then you will count. You have to be able to count to play this game. If you can't count, I don't think you can do this game. You have to count the amount of things you have on your landscape. So now it's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Then I will move this little research the field research note up here seven spaces. Whenever I reach the white one, I will move that one space up and continue moving. And every time I'm I reach that white one, I will trigger all of my research papers again, getting all of the things that are in those research papers that I already activated by doing other actions, placing them in there. And also some rounds there will be delivery where you can use workforce to get some bonuses. And that will also set the new player order. The player who got the worst bonus will be the first player and so on and so forth. After the nine rounds, which is going faster than you want to, everyone will be able to play one more of these tiles except for the building tiles.
And after that, after the final scoring, the player with the most points is the winner.
In this game you're only playing nine rounds. And I'm saying only because I mean only. This is it's such a like it's a game that you feel like you have two little actions to do what you want and it's a very tight game as well. But other than that, it's like a classic Euro where you want to get the most out of the turns you do. Linked to each action, there's like different secondary actions. So, let's say that this player was here. You might say, "Oh, you can just do that action beside that." But that action doesn't give me the card play that I need. So, there's different reasons you want to do the different things. What I really like is that it is a like a joker action here where you can basically imitate that action that the other player has done. However, you don't get the play the card or draw the card that is indicated there. So, being like first and like being having first dibs on the actions, especially in a four-player game, very, very important.
again, if you are fourth and you see that the third player is doing an action, you know that you will be able to do that action next round because it's not a worker placement game where you remove the actions. So, first player is important, but like the player order and playing a like playing towards the player order, knowing what will be available next round is also going to be interesting. The most interesting part of this game and the the most like unique thing is the balance of you wanting to have things to different places at the same time. You want to have stuff out on the board here and that stuff is the same stuff. You will have some stuff here as well. But the stuff that you have here and sometimes here is the stuff that you place into these books. And when you place them into the book, it makes it better to have stuff here, but you you just use the things to place them in here. So, you don't have them here. But if you do have a lot of stuff here and you don't place them here, when you activate this, you won't get anything. You will get some points, but it's not going to be enough. So, the balance of when you want to have the stuff here, like for example in the first round I have found it very good to have exactly five things there when you are the second round that you just doesn't trigger your thing. So, that then you can use the next two rounds to be able to fill this up and almost no matter of few things you have in here, you will be able to trigger all of the things again. And because the game is so tight, you will be getting things that you need every single time you get things.
Mhm. And different rounds will have different like yield or deliver phases. When you're done making the actions, you will have either a yield or a delivery phase and that changes your priorities pretty much because you like see, okay, when the next delivery phase is, I really like to get these four workforce. I can move up on the forestry track, but in the meantime, I might need to use that workforce on something. Or I really want to write these these things on my field into my book, but we're going into yield phase now and that's when these will net me the most writing up on this track.
Yeah, words, but but you get it. And also you you will have cards that you want to play.
Mhm.
And both getting to actually do the things that let you play the cards, that's the thing, but also choosing an action that is both good, not occupied, and also lets you play a card before you potentially need the thing that you play the cards to get. Yeah, it's a it's a hurdle.
I've been very bad at at at at playing cards in this game. I have you have been playing in the two-player games. I have I have I I won when we have played more than two, but with two players you have crushed me every time. I don't know why, but you have been playing five, six cards, and almost all the time you'll be able to play like one card a round. There is like a bonus here that lets you play a card. There might There is a bonus up here that lets you play a card. I don't know. I haven't seen all of these. There might be a way to play a card here.
Here is you can play a card.
you can play a card without doing the other things.
action because the other actions are better.
I won the game by doing this action one time. So, it's not that bad action.
No, no, you won't I don't
It's better than doing some other stuff than
think you're going to do this. Like this is not going to be a a good game for you.
know.
There is a lot of cards in the game. There is a lot of cards. There's a huge pile of uh these blue cards which are permanent abilities. And then there is a huge pile of these yellow cards which are instant abilities. All of them have things you need to do. I have a tendency to get cards and get too hung up in trying to do the things the card says, and then end up as I said not being able to play them. The cards have a good variety. These have a good variety of different scoring things. And the way it works is that you at the beginning of the game, you might enter as the first game, you will get like a just a set hand of cards. I think it's really good. I think that's the way to play. Often when we play games, I feel like, "Ah, I'm not going to do a beginner version. That's for beginners, and I'm a cool dude." And I Usually I'm not. Usually it's very good to do the beginning. There's a reason it's there.
And then you can choose two different versions, and we played them both. One is where you just draw the cards. You will draw four of these and two of these. And the other is where you draft them. The draft is a bit weird, and it takes a bit of time. Let's say we are four players, then the first player or the last player in turn order for the first time will draw nine cards. Look at all the nine cards, choose one card, and send it along. And then you will do that around two times. So everybody takes two cards. Then the first player gets nine cards, look at them. So there's a lot like then the first player needs to learn nine cards. Then next need to learn eight cards. And it takes a bit of time. You're doing that three times, but when you draw cards, it's more randomness.
Yeah, because you can choose just like to deal cards.
Yes, as I already said that. Uh but thank you for for re-implementing it.
There you go.
But then where you can then get cards that might not work well together. You might get that in the draft as well, but then you also will be able to choose cards because you will want to choose some cards to throw away. So maybe you get a bonus down here that will be really helpful. It's just like, "Okay, I want to play that card, but at least I can discard it for the bonus if I'm not being able to do it." So I think for me, even though it takes a bit time, it took like eight to nine minutes, and it wasn't like a very interesting eight to nine minutes. I still think it will be the best way to play if you don't if you want to take away as much of the randomness as possible basically.
Yeah, I like that they have included multiple ways to do that so you can choose whatever way you think will fit your group the best. But I will say that um choosing all the cards in the draft and being like, "I'm going to play all of these."
I did that.
Yeah, you're just going to have your dreams get crushed because
um yeah. Because there is only so many actions that actually lets you play a card. And also when you get play your last card, you're probably already in round eight. And let's face it, you're almost just doing it for the points at that point. And that's not a lot of points. And you probably should have someone to throw away on these other actions here as well. The variability in this game, I wouldn't say it's very high. Uh you have some variability in the cards and also in these that it gets changed out also actually halfway through the game but other than that this this puzzle and this puzzle and yeah this will be the same basically.
Yep.
But I would say that what gives you like replay value is the interaction with the tightness of the board and the the trying to exploit different action combinations together with the card bonuses and also trying to maneuver around the other players.
And also one of the best parts about this game is the other reason why this game will get played is because it's pretty short. We played four players everybody had played it before and it took 90 minutes. And that is short. It's even shorter than the box says. I think the box is like 30 minutes per player and so maybe it's like 45 to 90 minutes. I don't remember. I I don't know why I took it up then because that's what I do. Don't remember what it says. I think you might have the box lid but I don't know where it is.
Yeah, 30 minutes per player.
It did say it? Yeah, I was correct for once but it takes shorter. 90 minutes and with the draw thing it took 100 minutes which means it's a pretty short game. It's not like I almost now said it's not like half an hour long because I just said it was 90 minutes long but it's a lot of crunch for a short time and spoiler alert that is one of my favorite parts about the game. Without spoiling more of my final thoughts do you want to do your final thoughts?
Let's do it.
Great transition there. Go ahead.
I really like this game. It is not a very very heavy game or very complicated game but it's a game that makes me go oh I really need to get this done. How do I do it? And that's both in terms of actually building up your player like this thing right here. Trying to make that as efficient as possible. Also, because you're scoring a lot of points for it potentially at the end of the game, which it is really cool. You're trying to do that. You're also trying to get the resources in here that you need. So, when you get to the yield phase, you will actually get points and get resources that will help you move along. And also, the timing you do stuff in is pretty important. For example, I've been so close because you want these pins Shout out to like the coolest components ever. It's so simple, but it looks like just like a tack or a tick What do you call it? Pin. Yes, like that one. And you get these from like advancing to the top of the track here.
I can't count how many times I've been like two or one off and I spend like all of my resources. I'm just like, I was so close. Why can't I? And like trying to do that and also nearing like half the game and you feel like, oh, this is going so quickly. I still have all these cards left that I need to play. I really need to get up on this popularity What do you call it? Community track. As fast as possible so I get more pins, I can get more points or bonuses or whatever I need. And I feel like I always choose the wrong bonus because there's I want all of them. Uh so, I just like it was surprising to me how much this game made me get involved in what I was trying to do even though what I'm doing and how I'm doing it pretty simple, I'm still, because it's so tight, trying to just like squeeze how out how as much as I possibly can and being super annoyed because you took my action space again
and again. And yes, and when you only have nine actions, you want to make that one action count. So, so I I really really like this game. I think this for me is an eight. I think it's a great game.
I really like North Green. I think it is for me in the same category as White Castle, where it's being a I think White Castle is nine rounds. Nine rounds, pretty short, but a lot of crunch. A lot of cool stuff going on. It's pure fun. And it is you said like it is not that complicated. It isn't that complicated rules-wise, but it is super tight. So, it is a medium plus game where you need to go into it. I think if you're just like doing something, you're going to be in a bad position, but then you can learn to get better at the game.
like a medium plus game? Like towards heavy?
Oh, yes, absolutely.
Ah, I Yeah.
It's It's more than medium because of the tightness. Like if you look at the medium games that we like, Rajas of the Ganges, River Boat, uh all of those games are absolutely medium.
Right? Yeah, but but
make any sense to me, but that's okay. Going to my final thoughts saying stuff that doesn't make sense. I don't know where I was, but I like this game. I think that the game does a lot of cool things. It's not revolutionary. I think the coolest part is as I already said, the balance of getting stuff in here and getting stuff in here. I agree with you. I'm going to end up on an eight. A really great game that you can check out at Spiel if you are interested. And if you are coming to Spiel, give us the secret sign. We hope to see you there. And that's going to be the end. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Johannes.
I'm Zannah.
And you've been watching Board Gaming Ramblings, and bye-bye.