Pax Viking

I am a major denier of Eklund’s greatness and, frankly, card-based BDSM stopped being my hobby a long time ago. Still, I had been circling Pax Viking for ages, until I found it on sale and said the usual thing: “Fine, maybe his son’s games can make it to the table.” And it did: it seems to depart quite a bit from the other Pax titles, chiefly because the rules can be read and, for the most part, quickly understood, along with what you are supposed to be pursuing.

Each player takes charge of a Viking chieftain, with ships and troops, and sets out to gather glory while spreading fire and axes from the frozen North to the edge of the East. Its basic flow is much more approachable than a first encounter with other games in the series: it does not immediately drown you in an ocean of information, but gives you clear room to make a plan and develop it.

At the table, it mixes a little area control, a little cards-and-karate, a little engine building and, above all, a great deal of diplomacy. Players are not merely playing alongside one another; they form strategies, read each other’s intentions, and fight to be in the right position when victory is decided. For the first games, the fixed intro Saga deck for the relevant player count is a very good idea: it keeps things moving and lets the interaction come to the fore without immediately turning into a tangle.

We tried it with five and it ran just fine; in fact, we liked it enough to play it again immediately, this time with three players and a far more grand-guignol game, with three people on a razor’s edge for the win. With the standard game and the standard Saga deck, I consider it a very good experience. It has depth, but it also has plenty of chances for a game to fizzle, especially with a completely random Saga setup—of course, there are people who enjoy that “Eklundian” level of difficulty because it makes them feel special. Still, if Pax games scare you, or you have already taken a dislike to them, this is the entry in the series worth looking at.