Shipwrights of the North Sea is the latest board game by the New Zealand designer Shem Phillips. Shem ran an fantastic Kickstarter campaign and after some understandable delays Shipwrights is now arriving to backers in large quantities.
In Shipwrights players are Viking tribes vying to build the most imposing fleet of Ships in the North Sea. You will be not only competing to have the most efficient ship building engine but directly attacking your opponents.
Shipwrights is for 2-5 Players and plays in 50-70 minutes.
COMPONENTS
Shipwrights comes in a box a bit smaller than your standard Ticket to Ride box, made with a card that seems to be slightly thicker and rounder than your average board game box material.
The only other game I have seen with this box construction is Shems previous game Plethora. I wouldn't mention this at all except for the fact that the box is slightly harder to open compared with your average board game box but this is a minor quibble.
Components wise Shipwrights comes with a large deck of cards, two booklets, an assortment of wooden resources and viking meeples, five player boards and reference boards, a start player marker and a some victory point chits.
All components are of good quality. The boards are a nice thick cardstock and the actual cards themselves are decent if not exceptional. The resources and viking meeples are quite small but functional and well made.
Some of my resources were stuck together but popped apart easily without leaving a mark indicating they may have not been completely dried before being packed.
The rules are simple and easy to read and the art booklet has a fun guide to pronunciation that our group found ourselves using on our first game.
Artwork is exceptional across all components and really takes this game up a notch.
GAMEPLAY
The main mechanisms of Shipwrights revolves around three card drafts every round and then playing those cards to improve your ship building engine.
The different types of cards are:
-Ships to build.
-Craftsmen whose specific skills are required to build certain ships
-Villagers who provide a short term benefit for you or "take that" for your opponents
-Tools that will make building a ship easier.
-Buildings that usually provide a victory point bonus.
This is where the majority of the interesting decisions are. Sometimes you will immediately recognize a card that fits your strategy but often you will agonize over multiple cards, especially when you know that if you don't choose an attacking villager it may be used against you by your opponent.
Players then can choose to play the three cards they have drafted, buy goods with workers and gold they already have or finish building ships using the resources, tools and craftsmen then have acquired. Certain types of cards are limited, you can only have one tool for example so this is a factor that must be taken into account.
Timing is important to these decisions too because at the end of the round your unused workers will produce gold and the workers themselves will slowly replenish. So if you exhaust your workers on a big purchase too quickly you can be stuck for multiple rounds slowly building back your workers and gold.
The ships you choose to build also provide you with interesting choices, some ships will provide little or no victory points but boost your engine. Other ships will be worth many victory points but actually reduce your ability to store resources or recruit workers.
THOUGHTS
If it isn't already apparent I want to say right now that I love this game. I have followed Shems design career from Linwood to Plethora and now to Shipwrights and I can say without reservation that Shem Phillips is a designer that has consistently stepped up his game and in my opinions is now on par with any of the "big boys" you hear about these days.
Shipwrights really takes it to the next level. Plethora is a fine game but suffers from more downtime and AP than it really should for a game of its type and felt somewhat unpolished. Shipwrights is a deeper game that feels faster and more polished. Having 3 drafts going on at the table at once reduces the downtime and once cards have been drafted the turns go very quickly.
There is a level of engine building in Shipwrights that isn't readily apparent from the outside but adds immensely to the game. It isn't about building the most ships, its about building the right ships and the right buildings at the right time.
Rating: 8 out of 10
If you didn't get this game from the Kickstarter campaign, I highly recommend you go to Garphill Games and order it. It is very reasonably priced.
