I managed to win my learning game of For Northwood.
It’s a solo trick-taking game where you gain points by winning the exact number of tricks required by the ruler of each of 8 fiefdoms, with those requirements being a sequence from 0-7. Succeeding at the 0- or 7-trick challenges is worth 4 points; then 3 points for 1/6; 2 points for 2/5; and 1 point for 3/4. To win the game you need to score 16 points out of the possible 20, which in practice means failing in no more than 1-3 of the fiefs (depending on the fiefs you’re failing in). The higher difficulties require 18 points or a perfect 20; or you can treat the thresholds as Bronze/Silver/Gold victories. In this game I scored 17, having failed at my bid to win exactly 1 trick (the fief card which has been flipped upside down; not displaying a speech bubble or target value, and hiding its ruler).
You can tackle the fiefs in any order, deciding which one you are most likely to succeed at based on the hand of 8 cards you’ve drawn. When you win a ruler over to your cause, you slide them down to reveal their speech bubble exclaiming “For Northwood!”, which I found to be a ridiculously endearing bit of visual design.
(The entire theme is super cute and peaceful – each trick is a “conversation”; card suits represent topics; trumps are that ruler’s personal favourite subject to talk about; and the aim of the game is to convince everyone to band together for the good of the kingdom!)
To aid you in achieving your specific goals, you have four constant Allies, each of which may be used once per fief. The recommended allies for the first game provide the abilities “discard all trumps from your hand”; “draw two cards and then discard two cards”; “draw back up to eight cards”; and “swap this ruler with another one” (i.e. change trumps). That “draw back to eight” ability can dig you out of a hole when you’re not quite going to make it, but at the same time easily flip “trying to win tricks” into “trying to lose tricks”, as you’ll suddenly have many more cards to navigate than you probably wanted.
Each of the rulers also has an Ally ability, and at the start of any visit to a new fief you can choose to substitute one or more of the rulers who have previously been won over to your cause for any of your regular allies – but this is a one-time use for those rulers, after which you remove that ruler card from the game. So as the game progresses, you will have fewer choices regarding which fief to tackle next, but more choices about the prospective allies who can help you to tackle them.
The recommended starter set-up has the Kings and Queens for rulers, and the Jacks for allies; but the ‘full’ game will have you randomly dealing the 4 allies and 8 rulers from a larger set of 24 cards, and so the available abilities will vary from game to game.
The cards are good quality, but there’s plenty of shuffling of the conversation cards (eight fiefs means shuffling the deck eight times during a game), so I sleeved those cards half way through, and it all just fits into the box like that. I wouldn’t attempt to sleeve the other cards (and it mightn’t work at all with heavy-duty sleeves).
I really enjoyed my first game. It immediately made sense as a trick-taker (I took one look at my very first hand and intuitively opted to try to lose all the tricks, and succeeded without using any ally abilities), and I can see that it will provide a good amount of variety with the randomisation (plus there’s a little booklet of 16 challenge scenarios). On first impression, I’m very happy to have backed this.
Game 2: I quickly lost this one by failing a 4-pointer at the outset (leaving no room for error), and then failing at the very next fief as well. D’oh. I kept playing and succeeded at the remainder, but for only 13 points in total.
I am 2 for 4. I could have had a perfect 20 points just now, but I miscounted how many more tricks I needed during my attempt at 7, and pruned my hand more aggressively than I should have, which led to me taking the exact number of tricks I’d wanted, but one fewer than I’d needed :)