“Woodland rulers engage in debate in this tactical solo trick-taking game.”
Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/334590/for-northwood-a-solo-trick-taking-game
Playing Time: 20 mins
Weight: Light
Genre: Solo Tricktaking
Designer: Wilhelm Su
Players: 1
I’ve played a lot of solo games this year, and there was a lot of interesting experimentation, but the standout for me was For Northwood, a small, elegant game that is a relatively lightweight and interesting puzzle. The player plays as someone who must curry the favor of 8 nobles in 8 fiefdoms, where each fiefdom is a mini-tricktaking game.
Making ‘solo tricktaking’ work is no small feat. When the player visits a liege, he will try to hit an exact target of tricks to take, where the noble is flipping cards off the top of the deck and the player is responding with cards in his hand, a task that continues until the player’s hand is empty. All of this is enabled with an ‘ally’ system, where players bring four randomly chosen allies. Each ally vastly changes the capabilities of the player, which adds a lot of the variety to the game. They can also acquire additional allies along the way, which is vital for taking down the nobles that require taking 7 tricks (out of 8) or somehow taking none at all.
#20 may seem kind of high for a small card-based solo game but I noticed that this was my go-to mindless game, and I’ve played it dozens of times this year. And that’s a pretty good indication this is about in the right spot.
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