About game:

We first met with Nusfjord game on Essen 2017 Games Spiele and it immediately caught our attention. Let me share with you folks our experiences we have after over ~10 session of the newest Uwe Rosenberg game.

It is 50 years ago. Nusfjord is one of the small villages in the Lofoten.  You are the owner of one of major fish companies in the area. During that time, Nusfjord is a vibrant, beautiful and very busy center of local commerce and production.

In this worker-placement game you would have to expand and develop you company, investing in shares, extending fishing capabilities, constructing new production as well as processing facilities.  The ultimate measure of you success will be of course gold / money you are able to accumulate in couple of rounds you have. Plan your moves wisely, as all of them would have long-term repercussions!
Number of players: 1-5 (for me the best is 4)
Playing time: Relatively quick game. Playing with 2 people, we managed to finish first game in 30 min, and another session easily in 20 min. You can probably count around 20 minutes per player once you know the game.
Complexity: This is low-medium complexity game, kind of a good intermediate position between simpler and much more complex games.
What I like:
  • Beautifully produced elements, especially fishes
  • It has it’s climate – it really matters and you can feel that you actually deal in fish industry and all aspects connected to it
  • Three decks of buildings allowing for replayability
  • While to some extent complex, it is pretty fast game
What I do not like:
  • As usually, I would like to see in Uwe’s games some additional negative interaction but it is not there
  • You have a feeling you have already seen all those mechanics / rules / game solutions in previous games of that author
  • After over ~10 sessions it seems that accumulating gold rather then doing anything else is a winning strategy. Hopefully, there are others similarly effective, but we do not found one yet.
For whom?

This is not game for beginners, but on the other hand not overly complex. It can attract attention due to beautiful elements and everybody who heard about legendary games of Uwe Rosenberg should start with position, moving to more complex (Le Havre, Agricola, Caverna) later on.
More about the game:

And now couple of the pictures:

Player board:

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Tree decks of cards (different fish each:) ):

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Area with possible actions as well as buildings:

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VERDICT:

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This is not a bad game. I would even say it is really good “transition game” between popular, fairly not-complicated Eurogames (Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, etc.) and very advanced positions (like Through the Ages or Agricola with all expansions).

However, what that game lacks for me is element of surprise and fresh ideas. I see so many similarities to other Uwe Rosenberg games that it is hard to find something new. Of course mechanics, game-play, scalability, components quality are of highest level. But you cannot escape the feel that you have already see all those things somewhere… Still, I encourage you to play and formulate your own opinion.

See you in another game review!

PS. If you would like to read other session reports from my blog in English, just click on Category: In English