Podcast #3907

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of The Tabletop Tactician. I am so glad you have tuned in today because we are about to set sail on some very cold, very dangerous, and apparently very well-stocked waters. Today, we are diving deep into a board game that has been sitting on my table for the past week, occupying both my physical space and my mental bandwidth. We are talking about Karvi.

Now, if you have been in the board gaming hobby for more than about five minutes, you know that the Viking theme is not exactly rare. In fact, if I had a nickel for every time I placed a wooden meeple shaped like a bearded warrior onto a cardboard longship, I could probably afford a real boat by now. We have Raiders of the North Sea, A Feast for Odin, Blood Rage, Champions of Midgard, and the list just goes on and on. So, when I first heard about Karvi, which is designed by Tenta and published by the legends over at Hans im Glück, I admit I was skeptical. I thought, do we really need another game about raiding settlements and trading furs? But then I remembered who the publisher was. Hans im Glück gave us Carcassonne, Stone Age, and The Voyages of Marco Polo. They rarely miss. So I picked up the box, rattled the components around, and dove in. And let me tell you, Karvi is doing something different enough to warrant a serious look.

Let us start with the name itself. A Karvi is a type of small Viking longship. It was versatile, used for both war and transport, capable of navigating shallow waters and open seas. And that is appropriate because versatility is the name of the game here. In this game, you are a Jarl trying to make a name for yourself by sailing around the northern seas, trading goods, raiding foreign lands, and upgrading your ship to hold more warriors and supplies. It sounds standard, but the way it handles these actions is where the magic lies.

The first thing you will notice when you set up the game is the player boards. I love a good player board, and these are fantastic. Your player board is literally your ship. It is where you store your resources, your crew, and your upgrades. And the upgrading aspect is one of the most satisfying parts of the experience. Throughout the game, you will be acquiring ship parts to improve your hull, your sails, and your storage capacity. It is tactile and visual. You start with a dinky little boat that can barely hold a barrel of ale, and by the end, you hopefully have a formidable vessel that strikes fear into the hearts of the coastal villagers. Watching your ship evolve physically on the board in front of you gives a great sense of progression.

But let us talk about the engine that drives this ship, which is the dice placement mechanic. This is a worker placement game at its heart, but your workers are dice. However, unlike many dice placement games where rolling a six is amazing and rolling a one is terrible, Karvi uses a system where the value of the die dictates how far you can move on the action track, but also how much flexibility you have. It is an interesting trade-off.

The main action selection mechanism is really the star of the show here. Imagine a track running along the top of the board. You move your dice along this track to select actions. You can jump over other players to get to the action you really want, but doing so costs you. And what does it cost? This brings me to my absolute favorite part of the game, mechanically and thematically. It costs beer. Yes, beer. In the economy of Karvi, beer is not just a beverage to be enjoyed after a hard day of pillaging. It is literally the fuel for your actions. It represents the stamina and morale of your crew. If you want to move your die further down the track to grab that prime raiding spot before your opponent, you need to pay beer. If you want to modify a die roll to make your attack stronger, you might need beer. If your warriors are feeling sluggish, give them a beer.

There is something inherently funny about looking at your resource supply, realizing you are completely out of bread and silver, but saying, well, at least we have twelve barrels of ale, so we can basically do whatever we want this turn. It creates a resource management puzzle that is tight but forgiving if you plan ahead. You constantly have to balance your need for hard currency, which is silver, against your need for action efficiency, which is beer. You will find yourself planning turns solely around where the next tavern is on the map so you can restock your supply.

Let us zoom out to the main board. The map depicts the northern seas with various routes connecting settlements, cities, and outposts. You will physically move your ship meeple along these routes. Movement is point-to-point, and different spaces offer different opportunities. Some are trading posts where you can swap goods for silver or upgrades. Others are raid locations. Raiding is handled with a combat value system. You compare your military strength against the defense of the location. Your strength comes from the warriors you have recruited and the upgrades on your ship. If you match or beat the defense, you get the loot. If you do not, you can sometimes burn resources to push for a victory, but it is costly.

What I appreciate about the map movement is that it forces player interaction without direct conflict. You are not attacking other players ships directly. You are not sinking your friends boat. But, you are absolutely getting in their way. If I sail my ship to a specific port to trade, I might be blocking you or taking the last available trade contract. If I raid a monastery, that loot is gone, and you have to sail elsewhere. It is that classic Euro-style passive-aggressive interaction that I love. You are playing your own game, but you have to watch everyone else like a hawk.

The game is played over a series of rounds, and there is a very clever timing mechanism involving the dice. When you use a die for an action, it eventually becomes exhausted or inactive. You have to take specific actions or reach certain milestones to refresh your dice. This creates an ebb and flow to the game. Sometimes you are bursting with potential actions, and other times you are limping along, trying to scrape together enough resources to wake your crew up. It prevents the game from feeling monotonous. You have big turns and quiet turns.

Another layer of strategy comes from the tower tiles. As you sail around, you can build towers or outposts. These give you victory points, obviously, but they also grant ongoing bonuses or income. Deciding where to build is crucial. Do you build early to maximize the income over the course of the game? Or do you wait to build in high-value locations that might be harder to reach? The game rewards long-term planning. You cannot just react to what is happening right now; you need to look at the board and say, okay, in three turns, I want to be docked in Scotland with a full hold of cargo, so what do I need to do now to make that happen?

Let us talk about the weight and complexity for a moment. Hans im Glück is known for that sweet spot of medium-heavy strategy, and Karvi fits right in there. It is heavier than Stone Age or Carcassonne, for sure. It is probably closer to something like The Voyages of Marco Polo or maybe even pushing toward Russian Railroads in terms of crunchiness. There are a lot of icons to learn. The first time you look at the board, it can be a little overwhelming. There are symbols for different types of goods, different ship upgrades, different raid rewards, and various card effects. However, and this is a testament to the graphic design, once you play a round or two, it all clicks. The iconography is consistent. Red usually means military, green is movement or exploration, and yellow is trade or income. The language of the game is clear once you learn the alphabet.

I also want to mention the art style. It is very... beige. I say that with affection, but it is definitely a classic Eurogame aesthetic. It uses a lot of earth tones, browns, greens, and muted blues. It is not going to pop off the table with neon colors like some modern Kickstarter games. It looks like a serious game for serious people who like wood and cardboard. Personally, I find it charming. It feels grounded. The illustrations on the cards are detailed and thematic, showing grim-faced vikings and stormy seas. It fits the mood perfectly.

One thing that surprised me was the variability. The game comes with a lot of different upgrade tiles and market cards. You will not see everything in a single game. This means you cannot just have a scripted opening strategy. You have to adapt to what is available in the market. Maybe in one game, the ship upgrades that focus on cargo capacity are cheap and plentiful, so you pivot to a trading strategy. In the next game, maybe the military upgrades are better, so you become a raider. I appreciate that the game does not force you down one path. You can win by being a peaceful merchant, and you can win by being a ruthless warlord. Usually, though, the winner is the person who finds the best balance between the two.

Now, no game is perfect, and Karvi does have a few minor drawbacks. The setup time is significant. There are a lot of little tiles to sort and place on the board. You have the loot tokens, the trade tokens, the ship upgrades, the market cards. It is a bit of a chore to get it to the table. Also, because of the thinking required for the action track—calculating how much beer you need to jump over opponents and which die to use—it can be prone to analysis paralysis. If you play with people who like to calculate every single possibility before making a move, the game can drag a little. It is not a short game. Expect it to take about two hours, maybe a bit more with four players.

But despite those minor nitpicks, the gameplay loop is incredibly satisfying. There is a specific feeling you get when you pull off a perfect turn. You spend a beer to boost your movement, you land exactly where you need to be, you upgrade your ship to hold just enough warriors to raid the next town, and you snag the victory points right out from under your opponent's nose. It makes you feel smart. And ultimately, that is what I look for in a strategy game. I want to feel like my decisions matter, and in Karvi, every decision matters. Every barrel of beer matters.

Comparison-wise, if you liked games like Champions of Midgard but wanted something with a bit less luck and more economic planning, this is for you. If you enjoy the movement and contract fulfillment of The Voyages of Marco Polo, you will find a lot of familiar DNA here. It sits in a really nice place in the market. It is not an ultra-heavy brain burner that takes six hours, but it is meaty enough to sink your teeth into on a game night.

I think the brilliance of Karvi lies in how it integrates the theme with the mechanics. The ship board isn't just a player mat; it is a limitation you have to manage. You cannot just hoard infinite resources because you physically do not have the cargo space until you upgrade your hull. That physical restriction forces you to be efficient. You have to go out, get stuff, come back, spend it, and go out again. It creates a rhythm of expansion and consolidation that feels very natural.

So, is Karvi worth adding to your shelf? If you are a fan of medium-heavy Eurogames, absolutely. It is a solid design with great components and a unique twist on the worker placement mechanic with the action track and the dice. It manages to make the Viking theme feel fresh again by focusing on the logistics of sailing and crew management rather than just the violence. Plus, any game that makes beer the most important resource for productivity is a winner in my book.

I highly recommend giving it a try if you have the chance. Maybe pour yourself a cold drink, set up the board, and see if you have what it takes to be the most renowned Jarl in the north. Just remember to keep an eye on your supplies, because there is nothing worse than being stuck in the middle of the North Sea with a thirsty crew and no wind in your sails.

That is going to do it for this weeks deep dive. I hope you enjoyed this look at Karvi. As always, the world of board gaming is vast and full of cardboard treasures waiting to be discovered. If you have played Karvi, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Did you go for the trading route or the raiding route? Did you run out of beer at a critical moment? Let me know.

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, keep your dice rolling high, your meeple standing tall, and your game nights legendary. This has been The Tabletop Tactician, signing off.