It means you can choose to take a different path to your rivals, or directly compete with them, which gives it the same feeling that Paladins and Viscounts carry through the rest of the series. There is a small draft of building cards, and each player will end up with 3 Building cards to start the game.

I sought this game out after having played The Manhattan Project with friends (fun fact – that was the last pre-corona game I played before a drought of many a month. It may not have a lot of fresh ideas, but the biggest fresh idea it does have is like a welcome waft of cool air flowing through a dusty cave.It is neither the most in-depth nor the most gateway worker placement I’ve ever played, but it sits in a nice spot balancing a 90-120 minute playtime with a large amount of decision making and player interaction.

The North Sea Trilogy is well loved by many with Raiders of the North Sea being highly rated and recently turned into an app. I’ve often pointed out that the big issue in usability for board gaming is the lack of anything resembling a consistent design language. I have gone pretty deep into these games, backing a lot of the most recent releases, looking at the expansions and Collectors edition boxes to keep it all in, with the colourful Folded Space inserts to boot.

I wasn’t sure how well a deck of cards could play a game like this, but it was actually fairly challenging.