The Pax series is an interesting beast. First created by, let’s say “controversial”, designer Phil Eklund the series’ games differ significantly on topic, mechanics, and many specifics but generally share a distinct perspective in how they represent history. I’ve never been completely in love with Pax games on the few occasions when I’ve tried them but I was still intrigued by Pax Viking despite some of my misgivings about the series. Pax Viking’s emphasis on the Viking trade networks, not just the raiding, and its focus on the eastward expansion of Viking influence through eastern Europe and down to the Mediterranean made it stand out amidst the many board games with Vikings as a theme.
I’ve actually been lucky enough to play Pax Viking twice now, once online and once in person. You can watch my first time playing the game on the Homo Ludens Youtube Channel, including much more informative discussions about Viking history from the other guest on the stream. More recently I acquired a physical copy of the game in a local Math Trade and got it to the table with some friends at one of Ireland’s largest board game conventions. The digital implementation is quite impressive but nothing beats moving around physical card board for me. The only thing I missed when playing physically was that it was much easier to check the victory conditions in the digital version - but I suspect as I become more familiar with them that will be less of a problem!
Unlike many Pax games where the board is either nonexistent or largely abstracted, Pax Viking makes its board and its version of European geography a central feature of the game. It more closely resembles a traditional board game as you move your longships across between areas to reach locations where you can activate cards and establish trade connections or alliances. The board contains a few initial locations that represent potential powerful friends or significant trade partners such as Byzantium, the Frankish monarchs, or even a trade route to China. It also contains many empty locations that players will fill over the course of the game as they buy cards (technically they are discs but in the game they function identically to cards) and play them on locations.
I was so anxious about teaching Pax Viking that this was the only photo of my game that I remembered to take - and it’s just the initial set up! It didn’t even occur to me until I was getting into bed that evening! Maybe I’ll try and do an AAR for my next game.
Learning any Pax game is a bit of a challenge as they tend to deviate substantially from more what you may be used to. Pax Viking alleviates some of this challenge by having a board - fully grasping the abstract nature of other Pax games is part of the learning challenge - but it can still take a few turns for the available actions to click in your head and form a coherent understanding of how the game is played. In my first game I only found I understood what was happening or what to do by around turn two or three and in my second game it seemed like the other players had a similar experience. Once things click, though, Pax Viking is simple enough. You have a pool of available actions and on your turn you will spend four tokens to take actions from that pool. They are relatively intuitive but Pax Viking’s very specific terminology can make learning them a little harder. Thankfully the game comes with ample copies of the Rosetta Stone which defines what all these terms mean in more detail so you can pass them around to the players for easy reference. I was a little intimidated by the prospect of teaching Pax Viking but in the end I found it to be easier than I had expected.
An interesting knock on effect of the slow(ish) process of learning what to do in Pax Viking is that the first game feels like it takes significantly longer. This is largely down to how a game of Pax Viking is won. There are no victory points in Pax Viking nor is there a set turn limit. Instead, there are four potential victory conditions and the first one to secure any of them and play an Event card (which triggers a victory check) wins the game. There are several categories of victory condition which differ by their complexity. In my first game, each victory condition was drawn from a different difficulty level. For my second game I chose three Standard and one Advanced because I thought it would be easier to teach but actually I think that was the wrong decision. The Standard Victory Conditions I drew all felt a little too similar where progressing towards one would also nudge you towards the others. This also meant it was easier for players to stop any one player from winning without really thinking about it. Next time I would make sure that the victory options were more diverse - the difference between the three Standard and one Advanced was the most interesting of the available options. The game automatically ends if the card supply runs out and when we finished there were only three or four cards left, which meant that the game felt a little long.
The reason that the victory conditions make for a longer learning game is that in your initial turns when you’re learning how the action economy works you aren’t really making any deliberate progress towards winning the game. Unlike games with a fixed end point, such as a Eurogame where you always play five rounds no matter what, during these early turns you might barely be advancing the end game clock. I found in my second game that we were all so focused on getting our little engines going, settling territories and spreading our influence, that we kind of forgot about how to win. This meant that we all naturally funneled into the victory condition that focused on pure expansion and neglected ones that emphasised control over multiple regions of the board or control within specific locations. I think in future games where players know to plan a victory strategy from turn one things will go much faster, which is good because while not the longest game I did feel like the final turns were dragging a bit.
I should also add that while the game is technically playable as a solitaire experience I cannot imagine doing so. Without the chaos of the other players disrupting your plans and potentially expanding the playable spaces on the board I’m not sure the game offers enough to be an exciting experience. I may try at some point just to see but I played my games at three and four players and to me that felt like a sweet spot. The box also says it is playable up to six, but I think that would be too many. I’m also hate waiting for my turn in a big game so unless an experience has to be that large (like Here I Stand) or allows simultaneous actions (like most drafting games) I try to avoid player counts above five.
As a representation of history Pax Viking is interesting. It is ostensibly set in 950 AD but includes events ranging from both the eight and eleventh centuries. You are given a player board with a specific character on it (with their own special power) which is fun but the game also ranges beyond the scope of one human life. It embraces a slightly fluid grasp of historical chronology to give a broader impression of what the late-Viking era was like. The designer has said that the idea of the game was more to capture the vibe of the Sagas, semi-mythic stories with a mixed to downright nonexistent grasp of historical accuracy, than pure history. Essentially you are crafting your own Saga narrative for your character. This is a cool idea and when engaged with on this level I really like it.
That said, some of the historical motives of the game have the potential to clash. While I like the idea of crafting a saga and engaging in a deliberately semi-fictional account of Viking settlement and trade, the game also has you playing a real person ostensibly competing to see who can be the next ruler of Sweden. I think the specificity of this victory clashes a little with the broader depiction of history in the game. That said, while I never really felt like I was particularly competing to become king (or queen in my character’s case) that also didn’t really interfere with my enjoyment of the game. It’s ability to wrap me up in the notion of competing narratives where each of us was trying to have our story be the most impressive pretty effectively overrode the idea of just becoming the next monarch of one small region on the game’s board.
I also appreciated Pax Vikings perspective, especially the focus on eastern and southern Europe, which stood out among the sea of available Viking games. The game is set is after the famous Great Heathen Army of 878, arguably the peak of Viking military raids in the British Isles, and in fact Britain only acts as a starting point for one of the potential player characters - it has no other role in the game. Most of the western half of the board is already populated with locations meaning that while there is potential for interesting actions there for the players there are limited options for changing the landscape to suit your strategy. Much discussion of the Vikings, especially in English, focuses more on their raids in the British Isles and Northern France but in Pax Viking we see the other side - the expansion eastward from Sweden. The settling of Rus and establishment of trade links beyond just western and central Europe. This also makes Pax Viking a great companion to a book like River Kings by Cat Jarman, which offers a similar alternative perspective. That I really enjoyed that book definitely set me up for having a good time with Pax Viking!
I’ve been a little mixed on my experiences with the Pax games. I admire their design but sometimes the abstracted elements are a little too much for me - I must confess that I love a good physical board. Pax Viking does a lot to address the elements of Pax games that I don’t like as much and provides a fresh perspective on an eternally popular topic in board gaming to boot. It would be a stretch to say that I adored my game of Pax Viking. Certainly my second game felt like it dragged on a little longer than I would like and the balance of victory conditions felt a bit boring. That said, it was a very intriguing game and I think several of my problems would go away as I play more - and I do intend to play it more! This is not my final expedition, I can promise that.