Norsemen impressions

[Rashidos]

I'm opening this thread to hear other opinions about the game, share to see who thinks what.
I like the game, the theme is one of my favorites, and I think that the game succeeds thematically in creating the feeling of Vikings roaming the world. The art and design are nice, it was a bit confusing for me in the first game in BGA, but after 3 played games I was convinced that it has potential and I get it on gamefound. I would be very happy if it gets more popularity and more stretch goals are added. I also hope they fix the bugs here in BGA because they are not few and spoil the fun. So far I've only played two player games, I really want to try it with three and four.

What left me a bit of a bad impression is that the deck building mechanics are pretty weak, in the sense that out of the three games I played none of them used a jarl to buy new cards for the deck. In general, you only have two of these and somehow the game doesn't allow you to use them to buy cards, it just feels like the other options are better, the card purchases themselves have quite a price, which also depends on what your exploration tiles will be. And finally the game ends without using the deck building or taking a maximum of 1 card.

[Natokh]

I've now played Norsemen over 20 times, including the physical prototype, and I really like the game. Even if I have one or two points of criticism. The biggest one is that the leaders have very different strengths and are not balanced.

On the other hand, I have to disagree with Rashidos when it comes to deckbuilding. You don't get many cards in the course of the game, but I always end up with 5-6 (sometimes more) and they are usually very important. The cards from the 2nd and 3rd ages are much better than the starting cards and the fact that you can play them directly after buying them or put them on top of your deck means that they will definitely be used. But even if they end up on the discard pile, I usually get to see them 2-3 more times and can use them. What's more, some of the cards from the 3rd age also score a lot of victory points. The card itself, but also the fact that they usually contain lore symbols, often more then one.