Trading and pillaging - Vikings' favorite pastime

Karvi was among the new releases at SPIEL23 last year. I haven’t heard much about it, as I feel it stayed somewhat under the radar, so I have been interested in it for a while. Now, having played it a few times I can share some details about the game! 😉
You play as a Jarl, sailing ⛵ around in your ship, upgrading it and gathering a crew as you collect renown to be the most glorious one - by plundering and trading of course, as vikings tend to do.

It’s a 2-4 player euro with some cool ideas. The central mechanic of the game is a dice action selection system on a time track. That may not explain much, so let’s unpack it! 😀

There is a track depicting all kinds of actions with varying costs. Whoever’s die is farthest left on the track gets to act, moving that die any number of places to land on an action, then paying for it by lowering the die’s pip value. You can only land on a space if you can pay for it. It can happen that after an action you are still the farthest left, meaning you might act multiple times in a row, which is powerful. 💪 (In 2-3 player games everyone has 2 dice, so it can happen more often).

Whenever you arrive back in the “stop-zone” where you began, your die stays there until all the dice return, which signals the end of a round. After 3-4 rounds (depending on player count) the game ends and you count up points. 🏆 Games are thus relatively fast, but there is space for analysis paralysis.

Before or after moving your die you can do free actions too like moving your ship on the map, or playing cards that all have interesting effects, so your turns will often be much more than just a simple action. Of course everything cost resources, so you have to be sparing with what you do.

As you sail around you get to place trading posts or towers which raise your income, and gather trade and plunder tiles that you can later place on your player board by completing them to unlock bonuses. Upgrading your ship also grants you ongoing abilities and end-game scoring conditions.

For now I wanted to concentrate on the unique mechanics, but we’ll share more general thoughts too very soon. 🙃