My trajectory as a board gamer has taken an interesting dip lately. When I first got into the hobby, I skyrocketed up the weights, seeking out heavier and heavier games at every opportunity. Nothing was too long, too complex, or too onerous for me. But over the past few years I’ve regressed back into the mid-weight range. Someone inviting me over for a 4.0 or higher on the Board Game Geek complexity scale would give me a lot more pause than it used to. I just don’t want to put in the effort of learning a big, complex game, only to play it once and never again.
Knarr, by Thomas Dupont and published by Bombyx in 2023 is a medium-light engine building game where players are in charge of a viking clan, and are tasked with growing your clan members and sending them out on expeditions. Gameplay wise, it’s smooth as butter. On your turn you can either play a viking from your hand to your crew and collect the benefits on all the cards of the same colour, or, send vikings on an expedition to claim a land card, which usually has some instant benefits, and increases the value of your trade action. After doing one of those two things, you can choose to trade, then your turn is over.
The goods you’re collecting are victory points, reputation points (which move you up a track that gives reoccurring victory points at the start of all your turns), silver bracelets (for trading), and recruit tokens. The game continues turn over turn until someone hits or exceeds 40 points. Then the current round completes and the player with the most points is the winner.
The first thing that I love about Knarr is the compact size. The game is 3 decks of cards, a cardboard player area, and a 6 cardboard tokens per player. It’s simple, elegant, and unobtrusive. The second thing that I love about Knarr is that the card art is quite beautiful. There’s a variety of vikings depicted on the crew cards, both men and women of all ages. Not every card features unique artwork here, the duplicates are on the cards that provide the same reward (so all the blue bracelet cards feature the same artwork). The land cards, on the other hand, are all unique, and gorgeous. And what’s more, each land card forms a panorama, if you can find it’s pair. That’s a lovely detail, considering I played Knarr half a dozen times and never noticed.
The gameplay of Knarr is smooth as butter. Either play a card from your hand, collect the benefits of the suit you played, and pick up a card, or, remove cards from your tableau to claim a land card, then, you may trade bracelets for more goodies. Game ends at 40 points. It’s easy to play, and the growth of the amount of goodies you get is really satisfying. At first, getting a point and a bracelet feels like an accomplishment, but near the end of the game, you might have 6 or 7 cards of a single colour, and each turn ends up being a cavalcade of rewards.
The trick of Knarr comes in learning when exactly is the best time to start dismantling your engine to gather those land cards. Those cards are powerful, they can bestow great rewards immediately (up to 9 points even), and they make your trade action better. Another slot machine to belch goodies upon you.
Knarr, at its heart, is a race. The first to hit or exceed 40 points triggers the end of the game, which concludes at the end of the round (so all players have the same number of turns), and then that’s it. There’s no bonus end of game scoring, just, whomever has the most points in the round when the game end is triggered. I’ve had games where I ended my turn on 39 points, only to have the next player just barely hit 40 to end the game before I get another turn, and I’ve had games where someone triggers the end game with 42 points, only for me to leap ahead of them by claiming a 9 point land card. It’s not over until it’s over, and the final moments of a race are the most exciting!
I feel like there’s multiple paths to victory in Knarr. I’ve won by maximizing my reputation track and earning 5 points at the start of every round, and I’ve won games without taking a single reputation point. I’ve had massive swaths of vikings in my tableau, doling out goods no matter what colour I play, and I’ve been highly specialized with 8 cards of a single colour. I’ve had games where my bracelet economy is strong, and games where bracelets would be a waste of my time. Knarr is flexible, every path feels viable.
I don’t have much in the way of criticisms. There is a lack of diversity, but it’s a game about vikings, of course every character is going to be Scandinavian. There is a lack of player interaction, if someone has built a great engine, there isn’t much you can do other than hate draft the cards away from them. Other players can’t drag you down, they can only beat you to the finish line. There is some amount of luck, in that the person who plays before you could reveal the perfect card for you, but hey, it’s a 30 minute game. Some luck isn’t going to hurt you. I guess my biggest complaint is that I didn’t find the artifacts variants particularly interesting. When you play with artifacts, you deal out a single card which offers a small extra rule. It’s fine, I’m glad it exists, but I wouldn’t hesitate to play without them.
Another thing that I appreciate is that publishers Bombyx have obviously engaged a cultural consultant to flesh out this project. From the foreward by Lucie Malbos, Senior lecturer, specialist of the northern worlds in the Middle Ages, particularly the viking phenomenon, to the glossary at the end, giving details to all the terms you’ll find throughout the rulebook. It feels like the creators of the game appreciate and value the theme, it’s not just something they slapped on because they thought it looked cool.
Knarr is an incredibly fun game, one that has immediately cemented itself as a favourite of mine. It’ll be one that I bring with me when I travel, it’s one that I’m looking forward to introducing to my family and friends. I have no doubt that it’ll appear in my next top 100 games of all time list (whenever I do that again), the only question will be how high it appears. I recommend Knarr without reservation, if you haven’t given this one a try, it’s available on Board Game Arena, although, you’ll need a premium account to start a game there.
