Raiders of the North Sea Review

That was a roundabout way of explaining a sample turn on Raiders.  You place a worker, taking that action, then retrieve a worker, also taking that action.  The exception to this is if you choose to raid a settlement. If you choose to raid, it will be the only action you take on that turn and will provide loot and potentially points, as well as a replacement worker for you to start your next turn with. Raiding occurs on four different types of settlements, from weakest to strongest: Harbour, Outpost, Monastery, Fortress.  Each settlement has a requirement in order to raid, this includes the worker type, number of crew members you must have, number of provisions you must spend, and, for the more advanced settlements, an amount of gold you must spend.  Once there is only one Fortress settlement remaining, each player gets one last turn before the game ends.

The basic buildup of Raiders revolves around needing to recruit crew members and provisions, as these are the two essential requirements for all raids.  Output settlements require at least two crew members and somewhere between one and three provisions, for example. You recruit crew members by acquiring cards and then visiting the Barracks where you can use silver to recruit people from your hand into your crew, silver being available via a separate action space.  Most crew member provides some strength to your raiding attack, although some will provide a zero here.

As you progress further north on the map, the settlements start requiring a certain amount of attack strength in order to get VP from them.  They have multiple thresholds of strength values, if you can accumulate the highest amount of strength, larger VP rewards await.  

There are a few other odds and ends in the available actions, but there are only eight total which keeps the game fairly straightforward.  You can trade various resources for strength points or for VP at different action spots, or trade cards for silver or gold. The last major mechanic in the game is Valhalla and the Valkyrie track.  Certain raids, when completed, will force you to sacrifice one or more of your crew members to Valhalla along with the various resources you receive as loot. This isn’t all bad, however, as your sacrifices will earn you points, all the way up to 15 if you send seven crew members to the Valkyrie track.  There is a crew member who will provide bonus strength for every two pieces you have on the Valkyrie track. Combine that with the points and it becomes a potentially high powered strategy to send as many crew to Valhalla as possible.

The draw of Raiders comes from the very clever basic design.  The worker placement twists are a lot of fun on their own and would make for a very good game if there wasn’t a whole lot else going on.  Where Raiders really shines, however, is in the strategy provided by the crew member cards. Each crew costs a certain amount to recruit and also has a tempting secondary action, but that only activates if you are willing to discard the card before they enter your crew.  All crew members have abilities once they enter your crew, and some of these are quite powerful. They can provide extra attack bonuses on certain settlement types, make recruiting new crew members cheaper, or even get sent back to your hand instead of being discarded when they are sacrificed in battle.  The crux of Raiders is what cards you get and how you choose to use them. I’ve found myself with a full crew (you can only have five at once) and a very weak strength total because I was focusing too much on abilities and not overall strength. Likewise, you can recruit a bunch of strong crew but miss out on some very useful abilities.

I really like this game, if you couldn’t tell.  The twist on worker placement it provides is so simple it makes you wonder why you hadn’t seen it before.  The three different types of worker adds to the basic mechanics in a big way, making individual decisions a bit tougher, especially later in the game where you are balancing the desire to do things in the action area and the need to raid Fortresses.  Any worker placement fans who haven’t tried Raiders (or one of the other releases in the series) should definitely check this one out.

Barrier to Entry

Raiders is taught through two tutorials which the games prompts you to begin when you launch the app for the first time. The first tutorial is fairly quick and basic, explaining some of the fundamentals of worker placement games and holding your hand through a few turns. The second tutorial is much more in depth, requiring you to raid three different levels before finishing. The tutorial will pop up explaining new locations/abilities/whatever as they become available, but it is fairly open-ended as to how you go about achieving the goals. This lack of hand holding will be good for some people and a bit tough to follow for others, I suspect. While playing non-tutorial games, as you encounter certain things for the first time, some helpful hints will show explaining a new rule.

The game also features text rules which are good for use as a reference guide. One nitpick is that some aspects simply aren’t covered by either. I can’t, for example, find anywhere in the app that shows me the scoring scale for the Valkyrie track. It is mentioned a few times, from the tutorial to the text rules, that you score points based on your position in the Valkyrie track, and it is even pointed out that 15 is the maximum points you can score there, but the actual score is nowhere that I can find. This is a small detail, but it is a situation where you will be forced to look outside of the app to find basic information about the game, which is always unfortunate.

Look and Feel 

Raiders of the North Sea provides some of the best visuals we’ve seen in the digital tabletop world.  The game begins with some cutscene action, the graphics aren’t groundbreaking, but it looks great and sets the tone well for the rest of the game.  The in-game graphics, again, aren’t revolutionary, but every piece is given life by adding small bits of polish. When you raid, a boat sails in and fires upon the target settlement, with the defeated location falling to rubble as you collect your plunder.  As you play, ships sail around the harbor.  It's the small touches that really stand out.  The physical game’s bright colors and unique art style really land well in digital format.  

Functionally, the layout is well thought out.  You can scroll around the map from the action area up to the various settlements.  There is also a button to see the entire map on one screen which is an easier way to see the overall board state.  The only thing I was initially confused about was the Valkyrie track which I couldn’t find. It can be found by clicking on your ship icon in your resource tray.  

​The game features an option to speed up opponent animations, and this is highly recommended once you understand the game.  It will significantly speed up the playtime of your games.

Control wise, you perform actions via drag and drop by moving your worker token onto an action space, then doing the same for returning a separate worker to your hand.  There are some secondary options which are made via click-and-confirm, such as recruiting a crew member or using a special action from a crew card. ​The only complaint here is that there is no undo button which is unfortunate because THERE SHOULD ALWAYS BE AN UNDO BUTTON. I will note that certain actions which require a choice do allow you to back out of taking that action, however. this is not the same as allowing you to undo an action. ​

In the audio department, the game has some light background music, but the emphasis is on the sound effects as each action has its own sounds which play much louder than the music.  These effects are nice enough, but tend to get somewhat repetitive after enough plays.

Multiplayer

The game can be played online cross-platform and games can be real-time or asynchronous.  “Casual” games are async while “Live” games are real-time. Games are created and joined via a lobby system.  When creating a game you can select the number of players, casual or live, optionally add AI opponents, and password protect a game.  Casual games do have a timeout which appears to be about two or three days.  You can directly invite friends into a game, up to three in a game, using the friends list.  You cannot choose Casual or Live, nor can you add AI players when starting games this way.    

Online play works really well.  When you load up the game, you are prompted to play your casual games when it is your turn.  The game sets up well for asynchronous play and the implementation delivers a great experience playing that way.  I can see Raiders becoming an online staple for a long time.

The game ​also features a local pass-and-play mode, ​with a confirm screen between turns so no hidden card information is leaked.  There is an online leaderboard system where you can compare your progress in the game as scored by an overall number which includes online and offline game results.  You can compare your scores to the entire online world or just to friends.  This score ties into Renegade Games' other online leaderboard systems.

​Single Player

Offline games can be played against one to three AI opponents or in a series of ten campaign challenges. ​  The AI has been reworked since our original review, we wiped this section clean after playing for a while against the new AI.  

The AI comes in three different levels: Normal, Heroic, and Ragnarok.  All three of these have the same underlying AI, but Heroic gives the AI six armor and four points to star the game.  Ragnarok adds an addition two silver and one gold to the AI player's starting supply.  The AI isn't great, but it will punish you if you play poorly.  I've still been winning most of my games on Normal, but I no long waltz to victories even when playing an obviously poor strategy.  Heroic and Ragnarok are more difficult simply by virtue of making you start in a hole, but you are playing the same, average AI.  Ideally, the AI would have three separate levels that would scale to provide an appropriate challenge for all players.  That's not the case here, but this is case of making the best of the situation as the Heroic and Ragnarok levels are, practically, more difficult to win.  And, yes, Ragnarok is very difficult to ​defeate, the hole you start in is huge and you'll have to do very well to pull off a victory.

​The campaign mode is ten scenarios long, each one providing some twist on the standard rules to make you consider different strategies throughout.  ​As you progress further in the campaign, the AI players will gain some starting bonuses in order to scale up the difficultly.  Again, this isn't the same as providing improved AI, but it does help achieve the goal of making the game more difficult.  

​The game offers a challenge system which allows you to level up be completing tasks at your current level. You are given three at a time and they are things like “raid five Harbours” or “collect 10 provisions.” This is a nice touch, having some external goals to go after is fun for completionists.

What Else?

There are two well regarded expansions for Raiders, Hall of Heroes and Fields of Fame, they are not currently available in the digital version. There is no word on whether these will hit the app at any point in the future.

​The Wrap Up

This app has a ridiculously packed feature list, it looks fantastic, and the underlying game is a great medium weight worker placement game in a digital world where there is room for competition in this space.  Online play is phenomenal, the game features pass-and-play, and AI games have been improved to not be a total pushover.

The only real nitpick, AI aside, is that there isn't an undo button on actions where it would be really nice to have one.  As the only really implementation complaint left, this certainly isn't a big one.  

As it stands, this is one of the best all around apps out there.  The only thing holding it back from five stars is that the AI, ​after the first round of updates, simply isn't that good.  Playing against a strong AI is not the same as playing against an average AI which has been given significant starting bonuses.  They are both difficult to win against, but for very different reasons.  We commend the quick work Dire Wolf has done to improve the AI and come up with a quick way to make the game tougher, but the simple fact is that the AI only plays at one level and that level is most akin to what I would expect to see in a "Medium" AI in other games.  

Raiders is a really fun game that has been given a great digital port.  If you want to play a fun, medium weight worker placement game online, this is the one you want.  If you primarily play offline against AI, you will have a bit more to think about before diving in.