Quick Thoughts: Minerva and Raiders of the North Sea

Some quick impressions on my first experiences with a couple of new games.

Minerva

I didn’t know anything about this before my friend brought it to the table, and it ended up being a wonderful surprise. It’s the first tile laying game in ages I’ve gotten excited about, with an interesting and unique activation mechanic that leads to meaningful choices with an eye towards balancing needing straight lines for optimal use of tile abilities with “blocks” for maximum scoring. This is a great game that made an excellent first impression and is something I anticipate adding to my collection in the future.

Raiders of the North Sea

This is a nice, highly thematic game that nicely captures the feel of building up in preparation for a specific action (in this case making raids of the surrounding area), executing, then doing it again.

The mix of complimentary mechanics seems to work really well and made the game fun. I did feel the two player game was greatly influenced by the setup in our game, and it seemed a bit prone to a runaway leader scenario. I imagine this would be less of an issue in a multiplayer game though, and overall I really enjoyed this and want to play more. Also, the expansions look interesting and seem like they may tailor this even more towards my personal tastes.

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Two strong, engaging games this time around. I’ve been lucky enough to try numerous new games in the last few months, and hope to be back soon with more thoughts. 🙂