Longboat is a quirky Viking themed card game with cute, eye-catching artwork and simple gameplay for 2-4 players. Designed by Mike Kay of Wight Hart Games, it comes in a compact box perfect for travelling!
I picked Longboat up whilst at Beachhead Tabletop Gaming show in February. Mike showed me the game and gave a basic overview of how it played. It looked great fun and easy to play and was a fantastic price, how could I not pick it up!
First Impressions
As soon as you open the box, the colours pop. The first 14 cards are the rules and the remainder are the game. This felt a little daunting at first, the thought of having to read through 14 cards just to be able to play felt a little overwhelming, however, as soon as we started reading them, I was hooked in! The rules are combined with comedy and diagrams to really get the theme of the game across as well as explain exactly how to play without having to use a ton of description. 4 of the cards are special action cards so you can keep them out whilst you're playing to remind yourself what certain cards do.
Game play overview
The premise of Longboat is to add cards from the tableau ‘river’ to your boat to get the most points. There are a few ‘characters’ with special actions enabling you to steal loot from your opponents, swap cards around in the tableau or add sheep to your opponents boat to reduce their points! Each round, you take it in turns to build the fastest Viking Longboat by adding Vikings to your boat from the river. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins. Points are calculated by the number of loot, vikings and shields of your colour in your boat.
Pros and Cons
Longboat has easy to understand rules with some humour thrown in despite being split out over 14 cards. In my opinion, the first 9 cards could have been put into a small pamphlet or leaflet but this doesn't draw anything away from the gameplay. It's a fun and entertaining game with eye-catching artwork and a strong theme running throughout. The game is cheap and compact making it ideal for travelling or popping in a pocket or bag to take with you on the go, however you will need a fair amount of space to play as despite the small size of the cards, those longboats really do get quite long!
Final Verdict
Overall, I felt this was a great quick card game, well themed and lot’s of fun. The turns are nice and quick keeping the players engaged and the tableau element got you thinking about future turns without being too heavy. It’s definitely a game I can see us playing with a variety of people on a regular basis.
In conclusion, we would rate this a 9/10
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