Our review

From Atlantic to Pacific

Expedition northwest passage

searching for the franklin expedition

While I am writing this review the temperature outside is ranging around 35 degrees in shadow. So it is nice to be at the Polar Circle in my mind and achieving at least some mental cooling effect.

The theme of the game is one of the most mystery-laden ocean passages in all the world - the Northwest Passage. Since the Portuguese seafarer Magellan sailed around South America in 1520 to pass from Atlantic to Pacific and thus discovered a new route to Asia and India, there was also a search on for a northern route.

Setting aside the interest in discoveries in which Sir Francis Drake and also James Cook indulged in those times, there was and is also still today a focus on economic interest. After all, the route to Asia through the Suez Canal stretches over 21.000 kilometers and is thus longer by nearly 50%. If you take the route through the Panama Canal you lose four days which means about 20.000 $ additional cost for a freighter. So you can imagine how important it seemed to find a feasible route within the so far unexplored regions. And this adventure keeps going strong into today, as since 1969 only two trade ships managed to pass along the northern route. Only since 2008 the route was free of ice for several weeks in summer, due to the changing climate. By the way, Austrian Arved Fuchs also secured a place for himself in history books, as he mastered the passage with a sailing boat.

We go back to the year 1845 when the British Admiral Sir John Franklin set out with two ships and 128 crew members, under order of the Crown, to find and chart this sea route. This endeavor ended in disaster. He disappeared with all hands, and no-one managed to find a trace of him or his expedition. Countless attempts have been made to discover what happened to his expedition, and all were in vain. Even Roald Amundsen tried in 1903 with a reconnaissance mission of three years to discover the causes of the disaster. Now from the background to the game:

Now French publisher Matagot and designer Yves Tourigny have picked up the topic and - in my opinion - masterfully presented the problem. Matagot is only active since 2005 and has - with Takenoko, Cappuccino, Nofretete, Cyclades und Chrono’s - already published quite a few very interesting games. He designer is known to me only from his game „Blue Print“, but, anyway, with North West Passage he has created a masterpiece.

The Game: Two to four players find a game board showing Greenland for a starting place and the Pacific at the West Coast of Alaska and Canada for a target. The area is split into three marked regions, which influence the victory points to be had during the game. The further away from the starting harbor, the more victory points can be accrued. Each player is given his personal tableau, a ship, a sled and seven crew members, which are placed on the ship at the start of the game.

The board provides an area for play with ca. 100 squares representing uncharted territory. By and by you place exploration tiles and thus create the landscape. There are 64 tiles that cover two squares on the board, and there are always for of those tiles on display. The rest is put into a bag and you draw randomly from the bag when one of the tiles on display needs to be replaced. In addition to those tiles there are 36 tiles that cover one square and are stacked in six stacks on the board. Those tiles are meant for additions in case gaps are forming in the course of the game.

The essential component of the game is a sun disc in two parts which represents in a very simple but effective way the weather conditions in the Arctic. At the start of the game, the biggest part of the area, about 90%, are free of ice so that you can navigate your ship without any problems among the ice floes and islands. During the game the temperature changes with every round and the open ocean freezes over more and more. A ship that does not reach the southern half in time is captured in the pack-ice and immobilized. This forces you to switch to your sled for transport. But take care! If the weather changes again, sleds together with their crew can sink irretrievably in the polar sea. In this way the atmosphere, set by the topic, is excellently reproduced.

How do you acquire victory points? In each of the ten rounds of the game the active player has up to eight options for actions. You can take a two-square tile and add it to your stock. There is no limit to the number of such tiles that you can stock. To pay for this option you move one of your seven crew members from the “available” space into the “resting” space on the respective vehicle, ship or sled. Another option is to renew all four tiles on display by discarding them and drawing new ones from the bag and then to take one tile from the new display into your stock. This option costs the move of two crew members from available to resting. The third option is to place a tile from your stock on the board, it must be placed orthogonally adjacent to a tile that holds either your ship or your sled. The cost for this is one crew member. You can also transfer any number of your crew members from your ship to your sled, as actions can only be done by crew members present on the respective means of transport. Transfer between vehicles is only possible if they are located on the same tile. There is also the option to move your ship or your sled onto an adjacent square. This again costs you moving one of your crew from available to resting.  The first five options all serve the purpose to explore unknown regions and to advance further into the Arctic.

The tiles that you place show, now and then, pictograms; there are four different types of pictograms. When such a tile is placed you put the corresponding marker on the pictogram. They show Stone Cairns, Inuit (Eskimo), Straights or Remains of the Franklin Expedition. When your ship or sled reaches such a square with a marker you may take this marker. But the price for such a marker is high: To take Inuit or Stone Cairns you need two available crew members and for Straights and Remains you actually need three crew members. This yields the corresponding number of victory points, multiplied by 1, 2 or 3 depending on the region of the board where you picked up the marker. More points on the “Kramer” track can be acquired by completing an island, the amount depends on the number of tiles that are necessary for this, stated on a table on the board.

If you want to do several actions in your turn, the actions get more expensive, by one additional crew member per action. SO you must consider carefully if it might be better to wait until your next turn.

When you finally run out of crew members to pay for another action you pass your turn - the order of passing your turn determines the turn order for the next round.

Now a climatic change is happening. The sun disc is moved on and thereby triggers a partial freezing of the polar zone. Woe to the ship that at that point did not reach open water on time. It is irretrievably frozen into the pack-ice.

After 10 rounds we have arrived at a final scoring. If you did reach Canada, that is, the North West Passage and are the first to arrive, you score 15 points, the others in order of arrival 10, 6 and 3 points. The same goes for the return to Greenland, with the restriction that the last one to arrive does not score points. The rules explicitly state that it is not absolutely necessary to reach the Northwest Passage, as the main aim of the game - as mentioned in the sub-title of the game - is the search for the Franklin Expedition. It is essential to return within the ten rounds of the game and to collect as many markers as possible. This again aligns the game closely to reality, as in the course of time many explorers met with accidents in their search for the expedition. The rules also take this into account, you lose two points for each ship or each sled that you had to leave behind as well as for each crew member that you lost.

The collecting of markers is generously rewarded at the end of the game. For each set of different markers you score six points and for the majority in each category of markers you can rake in between 9 and 13 points. In this scoring, too, the player in last position receives nothing. The exact scores are stated on the individual player boards. This again puts the focus of the game clearly on collecting markers and not on finding the Northwest Passage.

I have rarely met a game that dealt with a given topic in such an exact and profound way. The target group for the game, in my opinion, is to be found between families and friends. The game is real fun and if you are now interesting in doing the journey yourself - there are cruises of offer for prices between 10.000 and 20.000 Euros! Bon Voyage!

Rudolf Ammer

Players: 2-4

Age: 14+

Time: 60+

Designer: Yves Tourigny

Artist: Stephane Poinsot

Price: ca. 40 Euro

Publisher: Matagot SAS 2013

Web: www.matagot.com

Genre: Tile place

Users: With friends

Version: multi

Rules: de en fr nl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Rare topic

Exemplarily implemented

Good components

Variable game play

Compares to:

Tile placement and gathering games on historic topics

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 6

Rudolf Ammer:

You can really immerse yourself in the topic and feel the delight in discoveries yourself. The changing placements offer new challenges again and again, the topic has been resolved with innovative solutions.

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0