Let's go on an Expedition

Expedition: Northwest Passage is not really your typical game. It was created by Yves Tourigny, who actually live in my current hometown so it is nice to have the opportunity to review a game that is not really know as of yet (also considering it is not for sale yet). Also, the creator signed my box (the owners of Multizone got that done for me).

Like I said it is not your typical game - which usually has some sort of battle, or calculating and so on. Now there is a level of difficulty to this game that it takes a few rounds before you get the hang of this game

The point of this game is to get from Greenland to the Northwest Passage and back again before 10 days have gone by. You also have to do this without getting your ship stuck in ice and losing your crew on a sled.

Along your expedition you will come across expedition interests which if you use your action points (crewman) you can pick them up for more victory points and in the end possibly give you more points if you have one of each point of interest. You can also try and complete islands and the bigger the area, the more points you get.

This game as a really cool (forgive my pun) gameplay mechanic.
You start on with 7 crewmen on your ship and these crewmen are your action points and you can perform one of 8 possible actions and each action requires one or more action points (some require one, like taking a tile, or 3 for picking up a special expedition). Now on your turn, you can spend the required number of crewmen to perform an action and if you wish to to do another action, you must spend the amount of crewmen needed and one extra crewman as well. At the beginning of the game you may not want to spend those extra crewman and just wait until your next turn to play again. If you pass or have no more crewmen to use, and you are the first person to pass, you become the first player on the next round... once everyone has passed, the round ends and sun moves to the next spot...

Talking about the sun... there is a blue part and a yellow part and the sun must never be rotated; why you ask, well simply put, when the sun is placed on the board, the blue side is up and the yellow side is down to indicate what part of the board is frozen and what part of the board is as is. If a section of the board is frozen, you cannot move with your ship only the sled. Now in order to send crewmen to your sled, you have to use an action as normal and then you can transfer as many crewmen you need to your seld.

Playing this game with more players than few is actually a little better because you have more people placing tiles in order to move ahead in the game, but do use your friends to place that perfect tile and take advantage to cut them off to score the greater points of the Nortwest Passage and hopefully get back to Greenland before the 10 days are done.

If you fail to get back, you lose 2 points per crewman that was lost and 2 points if you lost your ship.

The game is well designed and illustrated, I did find that the tokens were a bit flimsy when taking them out of the cutout boards but once that was done, they are pretty tough. The tiles are nice and you do need to read the rules quite closely. Gameplay changes almost every game you play because there are so many tiles to use and each player can play differently each time. Some linger back and pick up all the points of interest and wait for the path to be completed and then just use their crewmen to move.

So I will say that I really enjoyed this game and so did my fellow board gamers. In fact they want to play it again soon. It is not a game for those who like action and boasting, but it is a good game about history and not a bad game for a family to play.

I give this game 4.5 dice out of 5 and recommend it to all.

The game is now available at Multizone.