Calm down, it’s not a new Indiana Jones adventure. New Zealand-based Garphill Games has followed up the 2014 success of its viking-themed Kickstarter with… an almost identically-named viking-themed Kickstarter!
While Shipwrights of the North Sea had you drafting cards to build the best fleet, however, Raiders of the North Sea is more focused on, well, raiding, tasking you with knocking together a warband and plundering nearby harbours and settlements for booty and renown. Looks like classic worker placement at first, with the twist that each player controls just a single worker which can be popped down on different locations in the Viking village to bring in food, warriors, armour or different resources and currency. You then pick up a worker already in place on the village, using that location’s power and freeing it for another person to inhabit. Simple!
Raiding, pillaging and building up the village’s defences all help you accrue victory points in at attempt to win the game. Amazingly, you even get some from sending your ruddy-cheeked warriors on suicide missions to impress the valkyries. Crumbs. The game, which allows for two to four players, is part of a planned trilogy of “North Sea” titles culminating in Explorers of the North Sea. Imagine if it was just an empty box which you had to glue to the first two and sail off in. Imagine.
Raiders has already easily beaten its NZ$30,000 target, which works out at about $20,000. To find this out I used a website called X-rates, which you have to be VERY careful to type in correctly. Another 29 days to get on the longship – Garphill reckon they’ll have the box in your hands by the end of the year.
Obligatory Kickstarter video here:
