Knarr - First Play!

3rd September 2023

​It's a Sunday and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming diversions.

Knarr: A type of Norse wooden ship which was used for trading and exploration.

Knarr the game, can you guess what it's about?

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Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

​What's in a game?
Board: This is a rectangular, landscape orientated board which depicts what I would imagine is a Viking coastal settlement - which fits with the game's theme.

• Destination spaces: Along the top edge of the board are marked out 'slots' or spaces to place destination cards.
• Reputation track: Sort of in the middle of the board is the reputation track which is a curiously shaped track marked with some symbols.
  During the course of the game, as players progress along this track, it will add reputation points to a players victory points (VPs).
• Viking spaces: Along the bottom edge are slots for 5 Viking cards. Each slot is also colour coded, being; red, yellow, green, blue & purple.
• Score tracker: Running along perimeter of the board is VP tracker that goes from 1-40.

Game board.

Player board: Each player board (Ship sheet.) comes in a player-colour and is double-sided, displaying a 'normal' and 'advanced' side.
They are unusually shaped (looking a bit like sails) with 3 circular indentations on both the left and right sides which are used to slot tokens. The left side is for recruit or 'crew' tokens and the right for silver bracelet or 'trade' tokens.
Along the top are 3 vertical tracks or columns which will display 1 or more of the game's resources.
Along the bottom, it displays the each player's starting resources.

A player's personal 'ship sheet'.

Cards: Broadly speaking, Knarr uses 2 types of cards, destination cards (which are landscape) and Viking cards.

• Destination cards: The illustrations on these cards depict places or locations, which makes sense given their landscape orientation. Each card also displays its purchasing cost in the top left corner, rewards (if available) in the top right corner while along the bottom edge are 3 columns that match the 3 columns on player boards. These columns may contain resource icons.
  Destination cards are further broken down into 2 types:
  Trading lands: Also known as type A.

Type A cards.

• Lands of influence: Known as type B.

And type B.

• Viking cards: The other main type of card are Viking cards. These depict various individuals from the game's Viking setting.
  Each card has an icon along the top which depicts one of the game's resources. Each card also has one of the game's five colours. These colours are not related to icons.

Viking cards looks great with their clear detail and bright colour.

Tokens: Knarr makes use of several types of token.

• ​Recruit tokens: These round tokens display Viking helmets and are generally used to recruit Viking cards.
• Silver bracelet tokens: These round tokens depict the aforementioned bracelets and are used for trading.
• Victory point and reputation tokens: There is one each of these in every player colour and they are used to track VPs and reputation on the main board.
• Destiny tokens: This is a fancy name for tokens used to determine a starting player. There is one in every player colour.

Knarr features 2 types of artwork, that which appears on the Viking cards and that which appears on the destination cards.
The Viking cards use a kind of line-art illustration style with high quality illustrations that is clear and colourful with detailed and interesting looking characters.
In slight contrast, an excellent painted art style is used for destination cards. Depicting a variety of vistas and landscapes with evocative artwork using moody, distinct palettes.
All-in-all, Knarr has top notch presentation.

There are a few icons used throughout the game and the optional rules introduce some more but they are mostly self-explanatory or easily understood, I imagine they will be quickly learned.
The game also uses colour-coded icons on the bottom of Viking cards to increase accessibility. It's good to this done and shows that care and thought has been put into the game.

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Destination cards feature excellent, evocative artwork.

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Note: The 'normal' version without variant cards was played.
How's it play?
Setup
Cards: Sort the cards into their 3 types (decks A, B and Viking deck) and shuffle each into face-down stacks.

• Deck A & deck B: Deal 3 cards from each of these decks face-up into 2 rows along their allotted slots at the top of the board.
• Viking deck: Remove cards out of play from the Viking deck per player count as dictated by the rules.
  Then deal 5 cards face-up into the 5 allotted spaced along the bottom of the board.

​Players: Give each player a player board and tracking tokens in their chosen player colour. Also give each player 3 recruit and 3 silver bracelet tokens.

• Player boards: Players should collectively choose which side of their board to use.
• Tracking tokens: Each player should place the score and reputation tokens at the start of their respective tracks.
• Recruit & silver bracelet tokens: Each player should place these tokens on top of their player board. Then 1 of each token should be placed into one of it's respective slots along the side of the player board. Thus they have 1 of each they can use.
• Viking cards: Each player should draw a starting hand of 2 cards from the Viking deck, these must be of different colour. If they match colours, one should be discarded and another drawn until all players have cards with 2 different colours.

First player: Determine a starting player using the destiny tokens as per the rules.

On to play
Players will be playing Viking cards in order to then spend the resources on those cards, this can have a number of results. Viking cards can then be spent to acquire destination cards which will in turn, give them further resources and Reputation/VPs.
Knarr follows a typical turn with the active player acting before play progresses to the player on their left.
A player's turn consists of 2 phases.
Reputation: The active player increases their VP score according to their position on the reputation tracker. This will be 0-5 points.
Action: This is where the bulk of the game takes place and the active player must perform one of the following 2 actions plus they may choose to also perform the bonus trading​ action.

• Recruit: The active player plays a Viking card from their hand into their personal playing area. This will have a number of steps.
  • Columns: When played, all Viking cards must be placed into columns which match their colour. Thus a player may have up to 5 columns.
  • Gain resources: When a Viking card has been placed into a column, all cards in that column are activated. The first card played into a column will obviously only activate itself, but subsequent cards played into a column will activate all cards in that column. The player then gains the resources from the activated cards. This may include:
    Points: An increase to VPs or Reputation.
    Tokens: Gaining recruit or treading tokens, although a player can only have a maximum of 3 of each slotted alongside their player board.
    Cards: Drawing a card blindly from the Viking deck and adding it to their personal area, this does not active the column it is placed into though.
  • Draft Viking card: The active player now drafts 1 of the 5 Viking cards under the main board into their hand. It is drafted from the slot that matches the colour of the card they played. The colour of the card under that slot is not relevant.
    Spend recruit token: Before taking a card from the relevant slot, the active player may spend a recruit token to draft any of the 5 cards.
    Any Viking card taken is immediately replaced.
• Explore: This is the other action the active player can take and involves the following steps.
  • Purchase destination card: The active player may purchase any of the 6 available destination cards by paying its cost. This is done by spending Viking cards of the specified colours as shown in the cost.
    Gain reward: The player gains the resources shown in the top right of the destination card. These are identical to resources gained by activating Viking cards.
    Place destination card: The active player then places the destination card into their personal area and on top of their player board so that the 3 vertical columns line up and extend upwards.

A destination card is placed 'above' the ship sheet to extent its 3 columns upwards and add resources to each.

• Trade: The active player may perform this action once per round before or after they take their main action. This is done by spending 1-3 silver bracelet trading tokens and allows them to gain the resources shown on the 3 columns on their personal board.
  Resources gained this way function identically to resources gained from playing Viking cards or acquiring destination cards.
  Spend 1 token: Spending 1 silver bracelet token allows the active player to acquire all the resources shown in the leftmost column on their personal board.
  Spend 2 tokens: This allows the active player to take all the resources shown in leftmost and middle columns.
  Spend 3 tokens: This allows the active player to take the resources from all 3 columns!

Next player: Once the active player has taken their action, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Once any player reaches 40 VPs on the score tracker, the game end is triggered and play proceeds until the end of the round and all player have had equal turns.

Points are tallied and the highest score wins.

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Overall
While Knarr is something of an abstract game but it's also fairly strong thematically.
Players will be recruiting Vikings with specific skills to utilise and then sending to faraway lands to either explore or settle and create trade routes. The game play matches that well.

Gameplay-wise, Knarr sits in a sweet spot of having easily learned mechanics (At its core there are only 2 types of action in Knarr.) while also providing players will some nuanced decisions to make.

Recruiting is likely the most common action a player will take and there will be several considerations to make even though they will only have a choice of 2 cards in their hand at any one time.
Obviously the resources Viking cards provide the player is vital, increasing reputation for example will create a consistent way to generate VPs, gaining tokens will provide flexibility etc but colour is also important.
Creating a large column of a single colour can generate a lot when it's activated provided it is activated. Sometimes however, a player might want to hedge their bets instead though. Building up a column in a single colour will also probably limit a player's choices when it comes to gaining destination cards.
The other area where colour becomes important is when drafting Viking cards. A player may decide to play a card of a certain colour just to draft a card in that colour's slot on the board - although a recruit token may be spent to mitigate this.

Exploration is the other action that a player may select and it comes with it's own choices.
Firstly, the player must spend Viking cards in order to acquire a destination card. This alone can be a bit of a tricky decision as it will probably entail losing cards that have proven to be useful.
Next the player will need to consider what the rewards will be. The instant rewards are pretty straightforward in what they provide but the 3 trading columns are a different kettle of fish.
Similarly to the columns of Viking cards, the columns on the player board and destination cards can be activated to gain their respective resources. However, the resources on the rightmost column are expensive (in that they cost 3 silver bracelet tokens to activate), so theoretically, loading up the leftmost column is the most efficient way to trade for goods but it's likely that the cards won't be so obliging. Once again players will decide how build up the columns and this will be affected by which destination cards are available to draft.

Ultimately, players will need to balance the efficiency of concentrating on a smaller number of columns with need to diversify for the purposes of flexibility. This will require a mix of planning and exploiting opportunities as they arise.

There's not much to fault here, at times I did find it somewhat frustrating that I couldn't draft the Viking cards I wanted but I think sometimes that it's par for the course for a drafting game.
I also feel that perhaps the reputation track and its mechanics are a bit over strong.

Otherwise, Knarr is an accessible, fairly quick to play drafting and engine-building game that presents players will tricky, meaningful decisions.
It also has a strong Viking theme and equally strong style and presentation.
If this appeals to you, then Knarr is worth giving a try.