Last night was meant to be game 4 of Charterstone. But life predictably got in the way for one of the group. Unlike previous hiccups alternate gaming too place instead.

The substitute game hitting the table last night was Nusfjord.
Jonathan (Owner of the game) had only played the game solo, and for the first time a couple of days before. So this was a first for him as a multiplayer game, and it was the first time at all for Jeff and myself.

The decision to play Nusfjord was made late afternoon. Which meant Jeff did his homework and watched a couple of reviews online. Me? Once I was home I had tea and watched the latest episode of the relaunched Roseanne. It hadn’t even occurred to me to swot up like Jeff.

We had the usual joke of “it’s just like Agricola”, before Jonathan went over the rules.

I love the meeples they have in this game. The wooden fish, the little boat first player marker. The wood meeple is a wood meeple. In fact I like the components a lot with one exception. That’s the cardboard money tokens. Talk about letting the side down. They are minuscule. If this game ends up in my collection then these will be the first thing I’d upgrade in the game, possibly the only thing. I have spare cardboard coins from 7 Wonders, 7 Wonders Duel, and Clans of Caledonia that I could replace them with. Well you’d have spare as well if you had the cool metal coin upgrades for those games too.

I really did enjoy this game, despite coming in last. I found this game far more accessible than Feast for Odin. That was like a complete sensory overload with everything you could do. This game has 3 resources, fish, wood and coins. You can see the elements that Uwe Rosenberg likes to use in his games reused here. For me the way he’s mixed them works. I like the shares mechanic. You can issue them as an action and get money for them, you can buy other people’s shares. When you have another players shares they give you a fish for each share you have of theirs at the start of each round. The recruiting village elders to get slightly better actions that only you can take is cool. Building buildings will gain you a one off bonus, plus maybe points at the end of the game. These buildings also cover up spaces on your player board, that if empty give you negative points at the end. You also have to build boats to increase the amount of fish you bring in at the start of each round. But these boats are also worth points at the end of the game.

This isn’t a points salad type of game. Yes points are how you decide the winner. But these aren’t going to be massive scoring games. Jeff won with a score of 30 points, Jonathan got 27, and I came in last with 23. With the 3 building decks there is going to be some variety each game because not all cards are used. Plus then you will also get different combos.

I’m nearly on the edge of saying this is my favourite game of Rosenburg’s that I’ve played. Nope it is. No doubt about it. It hits the sweet spot for me. Yeah I’d happily play this again.

After we finished playing there was some general chatter, plans made for Fridays gaming, and then we disappeared off into the night.