Ultimately, its greatest achievement is in capturing the contrast between wonder and scarcity of the digital Northgard. This is not simply attained with the struggle for fertile land as framed through exploration and conflict, but also through its restriction on army size. You must feed your troops each round, which creates downward pressure on expansive armies and allows for a natural boost to players who have received a beating. This is also how it models the video game’s harsh winter season. Based on the universe of the Northgard video game, Northgard: Uncharted Lands is a game of conquest and exploration set in the age of vikings. Each player controls a Viking clan, looking to achieve victory by reaping glory in various ways or controlling the most prized territories of this new continent. The designers recognized this, however. They seek to alleviate the late-game doldrums with the included Creature expansion. This adds neutral combatants such as wolves, draugr, and fallen valkyries. The cascading effects of stumbling into these beasts is both wonderful and horrific. The benefit is that they enhance the dynamic feel of exploration, and they make for an evolving board over time that remains wild and chaotic until the creatures are defeated.

Despite the cumbersome board state, this is a grand design. With only two or three players it manages to offer elements of the 4X genre in a brief 60-90 minutes. With four or five participants that stretches to two hours or more, but it still feels relatively brisk and snappy due to the rapid turn structure.

The conquest of Northgard also requires clever management of resources to build new buildings, improve your warriors' effectiveness, better your hand of cards, and upgrade your clan's specificities. The winter phase makes this management more difficult as you have to feed your units to keep them healthy and happy. The severe downside is that these add a hefty complication to the process of play. At higher player counts, more tiles are explored and more creatures are encountered. This results in a phase of play where everything halts while you consider the behavior of each beast, how they move, and what effect they trigger. Some push you around, others halt resource production, and the worst swallow up your armies. These creatures are an interesting addition. They almost feel like a necessary component of play. But they’re a burden at times and can lead to really lopsided sessions where one player feels randomly targeted. There is quite a bit you can do to control and herd these neutral entities -- beyond simply fighting and killing them off -- but in my play sessions, the tactical considerations they require were often elusive to less experienced players.