The forest realm of Northwood is in uproar, but not in the usual world-ending tour de force you’ve come to expect whenever you see the word ‘uproar’. No – it’s just that there are fierce debates going on, and the only roaring you can expect is from one of the animal rulers of the kingdom (and likely only when they’re hungry.)
Name: For Northwood! a solo trick-taking game (2023)
Designer: Wilhelm Su
Publisher: Side Room Games
Play type: trick-taking, hand management, predictive bidding
What the game is about
Can you sway the rulers of Northwood through conversation to join your cause? In For Northwood!, you will be playing eight rounds of trick-taking to score a certain number of tricks – conversations – to win each of the eight rulers over.
I was provided a review copy of this game by Side Room Games in return for an honest review. My thoughts remain my own.
How the game works
For Northwood! is a trick-taking game where you need to win over as many fiefs (out of eight) as possible. Every fief is tied to a ruler of the game’s four ‘suits’ – claws, flowers, leaves, and eyes. To win over the ruler of a fief, you, need to win the game (dialogue) with a number of tricks (arguments) equal to the number on the fief, ranging from 0 through 7. After having drawn your eight-card hand, you decide which fief you want to visit for a conversation.
The ruler you’re wooing determines the trump suit of the conversation. Every round, they lead the argument with a random card (their statement) and you react to it (your response). General trump rules apply (not ‘Trump rules’; how about we make Northwood great again?). If you win, you put one card into your victory pile. All other cards go into the general discard pile. The victory pile makes it easy to see how many tricks you’ve won.
The twist of this game comes with its special character cards. Four of those are your helpers, each one of which you can use once every dialogue. They all offer unique abilities that are tied to their suit which can help you achieve your exact goal. Go under or over and you bust! When you have convinced a fief ruler to join your cause, you can use their special ability once per game.
The game ends after eight rounds. Every fief you’ve won over gives you a certain number of points, and if you’ve reached a certain threshold (based on your chosen difficulty level), you have won!
Besides the general game described above, the game also has a scenario book of 12 different ways to play the game, all with their own rules and limitations.
Theme, setting & narrative
Have you ever seen cuter animals in a game? Everdell does a decent job, but For Northwood! takes it to a whole new level of cuddliness. Besides that, I really applaud what the game is trying to do by changing the way we think about conflict. I’ve said it before – theme matters. It is possible to look at a tried-and-true game trope (we all want the same thing, therefore there is conflict, hence it’s about battles) and put a believable spin on it. Instead of battles, why not a discussion? And instead of fearsome armies, why not cute woodland critters? For Northwood! knocks the theme out of the park; not necessarily in immersion, all the more in mindset.
How does it play?
For Northwood! (dear lord, how I loathe names with explicit punctuation in their names – and don’t get me started on irregular capitalization or lack thereof /rant) provides a clever take on trick-taking to make the genre, usually a definite multiplayer thing, into a solitaire experience. Like I said above, I think the theme plays a minor but significant role in this, but we’ve already discussed that. Let’s move on to topics more related to gameplay.
But why, exactly, is For Northwood! so interesting – both as a trick-taking game and as a trick-taking game for solo players? That’s partly because of its efforts to make the genre accessible to solitary players, along with games like White Hat – although arguably, that one didn’t reel me in like For Northwood! does. It foregoes a few key elements in a trick-taking game, like the fact that the winner leads the next trick, but the way it circumvents those characteristics is fresh and innovative.
Porting something from A to B (whether it’s about mechanisms, board games, video games, comic books, whatever) doesn’t mean mimicking every detail; it’s about creating something that fits within the new medium while evoking what the original was about. What is trick-taking about? Clever card play and winning the right tricks. For Northwood! keeps the trick-taking spirit alive by introducing rulers you can use to manipulate tricks, your hand, your victory pile, or a combination. It does take away a major element found in multiplayer trick-taking: that of drawing out trump cards, or high cards of a certain suit you have a lot of; but like I said, I realized a game can still feel like trick-taking without that.
What it adds is unique leaders that fundamentally change the way you play the game. You start the game with four of them (either chosen at random, at will, or because of specific rules), and they do things unheard of in most trick-taking games. You have a hand of eight cards, but if you activate a leader that lets you either draw or discard cards, you might not play eight tricks this round! Each suit has a different identity that separates them from others, too. The fun thing is that you can use any and all of your four leaders each hand, but you can also substitute one with an already convinced leader; they are happy to join your cause (but just for this once).
All of this plays into the push-your-luck element that manifests in a lot of elements of For Northwood!. Before you start playing, you need to figure out which leader to go for – this is not a decision you make in and of itself, because there are other factors at play, like the possibility of pigeon-holing yourself into only having either high or low values left, for example. The rulebook states that it is wise to try to play out the high and low numbers first since the middle ones are easier to accomplish.
And then, when you have settled on a leader, you need to decide if your four regular allies are enough, or if you need one from a previous round. You make these decisions based on your hand of cards, but you never know a) what cards that particular leader will throw at you and b) which of your own allies to use when and how. I love how this creates tense decisions to be made, and how gratifying it feels when you have decided on a tactic and it worked out. It occasionally leads to some frustration if the leader draws the exact card to foil your plans, but hey, that’s part of the game – For Northwood! uses a deck of just 32 cards, so what did you expect?
Don’t be fooled by For Northwood! by its small size, though, because its innocuous appearance can be misleading. What you get in that little box is a lot of game. Besides the base game, there is a scenario book; twelve in total, one for each month, that really challenges the way you approach the game in order to win. This even gives you a reason to get out this game at least once every month! Add to that the fact that this game has plastic cards, too (yay, no sleeves!), and For Northwood! has secured a place in my holiday bag for my upcoming vacation.
What you might like
- theme matters: For Northwood! shows how you can successfully do conflict without war and misery
- a solo trick-taking card game that keeps the essence of the (multiplayer) genre alive
- unique leaders further shake up what you know about trick-taking, and introduce a lot more variety and tricks (heh) you can put up your sleeve
- push-your-luck decision-making, paired with tactical choices to make the most out of any situation (and it’s only occasionally frustrating)
- lots of variety, replayability, and challenge thanks to the twelve-part scenario book
- travel-friendly due to its compact box and plastic cards
What you might not like
- you never lead a trick and the ruler always gets a random card, so you can’t draw out cards like you might in other trick-taking games
- you also cannot ‘draw out’ cards like you would in most trick-taking games
Conclusion
Games like For Northwood! don’t come along all that often; it combines challenge, variety, and replayability into a tiny package that you can chuck into your backpack wherever you go. It takes known quantities of trick-taking and challenges them; and by extension, you as the player. With tactical elements and push-your-luck added to the mix, For Northwood! is one of the best value-for-money ratios out there for solo gamers. I don’t think you need to hesitate to pull the trigger on this one.
Rating: ★★★★☆
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Stidjen Plays Solo 