A very unique dice action selection system

I really love the action selection in Karvi, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this combination anywhere else: using dice on a time-track to do actions, with the player farthest back taking a turn. It has layers of nuances. If you move too far forward with your die to claim a sought-after action, your opponents could get a bunch of cheap actions - however taking too many actions greedily might deplete your die’s pip value, meaning you have to skip forward anyway to load it up again.

This highly tactical moving of dice and positioning for actions makes this a really tight game, as you can easily miss out on important actions - thus making it quite a cutthroat experience. Even if you don’t try to be intentionally mean, you can screw your opponent over by doing something they wanted. In extreme cases you could block them from getting to refill their dice with beer, causing them to have to go all around on the track without doing anything. The dice track nicely scales with player count, so it should be always tight. I think in 2p everything feels more zero-sum, making it perhaps even tighter.

For this reason Karvi won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s highly competitive and punishing. But otherwise there is a lot to enjoy here: there is some engine-building as you upgrade your ship and slot in trade and plunder tiles to your board, making you more effective. Upgrades and runestones you have at your disposal will be different in each game, influencing the way you approach games.

Resources are something you always need in the game. Coins and fur are needed for trading, upgrades and even to play cards. You have to spend provisions to move your ship. The ‘Viking crew’ tokens are required to plunder and they can get damaged or removed. Gold is a wild resource that can help you out, but it's harder to get of course.

So with both the jostling on the dice action track and scarce resources you will be engaged throughout the game. Everyone wants to do all kinds of actions, but there are only so many spots to choose from, so prioritize and choose wisely.