---
title: 'Knarr is a Pretty Cool Board Game'
pubDate: '5/11/25'
tags: ['Gaming']
---

My latest board gaming obsession is quite an unlikely one for me. I’m not particularly fond  of the viking aesthetic in general, and, while I don’t dislike engine-builder games, they’re not generally the type of game I’d go out of my way to play.

But a little game called [Knarr](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/379629) struck a chord with me. Someone in my gaming group introduced me, and I enjoyed it so much I ended up picking up my own copy. Something that has only happened once before with [Akropolis](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/357563), another favorite of mine.

The concept of the game, without getting too much into the rules, is pretty simple; You play “crew cards” – so named because they depict and represent members of a viking crew – from your hand into columns based on color, when you play a card you trigger the effect of the card, in addition to the cards beneath it in that column. However, these cards serve another purpose as currency to purchase upgrades for you ship, which generally offer some immediate benefit, but also gets added to a separate engine that is triggered with another resource that you gather by playing the aforementioned crew cards.

That’s a gross oversimplification of the mechanics, but it pretty aptly describes the bit of the gameplay loop that tickles something in my brain. Basically the same kind of loop that hooked me on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, albeit on a much smaller – and more physical – scale.

The other thing I enjoy about the game is how tense the game gets. In many games I’ve played, once you fall too far behind you don’t have a prayer of winning, but, at least in the games I’ve played, even the player lagging behind the most can catch up with a good turn or two. Just about every game I’ve played of it thus far, aside from a few times where a player who was already in the lead ends with an amazing turn and smokes everyone at the last second, has ended with all players within a few points of each other. It really feels like it could be anyones game until the very end, and, in my opinion, that’s the mark of a truly fun and engaging game.
