Explorers of the North Sea

To set up Explorers of the North Sea, place one of the double-sided starting boards in the center of the play area. Shuffle the 48 map tiles into a face-down stack and deal three secret tiles to each player. Shuffle the captain sheets, deal two to each player, and have them privately choose one while discarding the other. Each player takes one longship, seven Vikings, and five outposts in their chosen color, placing the longship with two Vikings on the mainland shoreline and keeping the rest nearby. Create separate supply pools for livestock, settlements, and enemy ship tokens, thoroughly shuffling the settlements and ships. Finally, randomly determine a starting player and give the player to their right the winter token.

The main goal of Explorers of the North Sea is to accumulate the highest prestige score by the end of the game. Players achieve this by sailing across the sea to discover new lands, capturing livestock, raiding enemy ships and settlements, constructing strategic outposts, and exerting dominant influence over fully explored islands.

On your turn, you must first choose and play a tile from your hand, attaching it legally to the growing board so that all touching edges match and it does not touch the mainland. Add a single piece to the newly placed tile as indicated by its illustration, such as livestock, a settlement, or an enemy ship. Afterward, you may perform up to four actions chosen from six available options: moving longships, destroying enemy ships, loading cargo, unloading cargo, moving Vikings on land, transporting livestock, or spending two actions to construct an outpost. When finished, draw a replacement tile if any remain.

At game end, players tally their scores using a dedicated pad. Points are awarded for livestock delivered to the mainland grouped into varied sets, built outposts, destroyed enemy ships, raided settlement values, and squared points for Vikings lost in glorious sea battles. Additionally, players score points for majority influence on fully explored, water-surrounded islands, granting one point per tile to the player with the most influence, along with unique bonus points from their chosen captain sheet.

The game continues in clockwise rotation until the player holding the winter token runs out of tiles in their hand. That player completes their final turn using their last tile, triggering the immediate conclusion of the game and leading directly into the final scoring phase.