Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
I picked up the new Mighty Boards game Red North at SPIEL Essen 2025, a title serving as the remake of Sӕr, a bluffing area control game for 2-4 players. Designed by James Dickinson, Red North positions players as the leaders of raiding parties battling for control of various outposts—one more than the number of players—and secretly playing cards face-down to seed bids during each of the game’s three rounds.
Red North scores each round by awarding points in ascending order based on the round number. That means that auction winners in round one score one victory point per outpost, two VPs in round two, and three points in round three.
This also led experienced gamers to attack the game the same way I did: they treated the game’s first round as essentially meaningless, by choosing not to add many cards to their hunting parties in round one. This was a bit of a surprise, but it surfaced in each of my plays. One other thing surprised me, given that Red North is a production from the very reliable team at Mighty Boards: Red North wasn’t very interesting.
“Mama, Can You Take Over For Me?”
During setup, each player is given one Glory token (used to increase strength) and seven cards, with each card representing either a Raider (in one of five suits, each with a strength level of value two) or a “Jarl”, which has no suit and no value of its own, but adds +1 strength to adjacent non-Jarl cards. Then, players form their initial raiding party by playing three of their cards face down in their play area.
In the first round, players have a choice of three actions: Reinforce, Withdraw, or Inspire. Reinforce allows a player to add a card to their Raiding Party, face up…but only if they flip a previously face-down card face-up to do so, partially revealing their bids to other players. Withdraw allows a player to move a face-down card from the table back into their hand. Inspire lets a player add a Glory token to a face-up card to add a single point of strength.
If you don’t want to take any of those options, you can pass. Once all players pass, all cards are flipped face-up and scores are tallied based on each player’s strength against each outpost in the game. The player with the most strength in each color wins both that outpost (and its associated power) and points equal to the round number.
A few things change in the second and third rounds, but not really. The main thing that changes is that the outposts are most valuable in round three. That also means that “losing” the first round is pretty meaningless. Taking no points in the first round isn’t an issue if you can win an outpost or two in the second round and something similar in the third round.
As is tradition here at the Bell household, I show a large majority of the review copies to my kids, ages 9 and 11. My first three-player game was with the children.
After doing a teach that was so short I only needed the player aids to both set up and teach the game, we jumped in. After a quiet first round where our scores were 2-1-1, the nine-year-old heard my wife walking around upstairs and asked if she would come downstairs for a second.
“Mama, can you take over for me? I want to go kick my ball in the corner over here,” he said to the table.
The 11-year-old was surprised, as was my wife, who stepped in and covered ably for my nine-year-old to play the final two rounds. Still, I cornered the nine-year-old.
“Hey buddy; any reason why you want to stop? Red North only takes about 15 minutes.”
“It just wasn’t very interesting,” he replied. And with that, he went off to kick his ball.
Even after that family play wrapped up, none of the family had much to say about Red North, either. Later that evening, I showed the game to my review crew, and that three-player game went the same way the family play did.
“I wasn’t that invested in the first round, since winning outposts wasn’t worth many points,” said one player. “I was happy to load up to win auctions in later rounds.”
And There We Have It
Red North is a mixed bag. It certainly does not overstay its welcome; both of those initial plays took less than 20 minutes each. Winning outposts doesn’t grant any legitimately game-breaking powers; depending on which of the five outposts are in play, one might grant a player a chance to boost the strength of a card or draw extra cards during the Deployment phase. Another outpost, one that is always in play in Red North, breaks ties when there is a tie for outpost strength, although that power could become very interesting if that outpost’s owner is tied for the lead at the end of the game, in which case, that power breaks the game-end scoring tie, too.
Even after two plays, I saw everything that Red North had to offer. Most of the round cards don’t have any powers, save for the Jarls. In the third round, each player has a once-per-game God card they can use to shake up that final round’s processes, and that ends up being OK. (One of them is simply to grab two extra points. In a low-scoring game, that’s certainly important. Is that exciting? Of course not.)
Red North was average fare. It certainly didn’t feature some of the pleasures Mighty Boards gave us in other lighter games from their catalog, from this year’s Tenby to recent additions such as Art Society and Rebirth. Red North is a good-looking game in handsome packaging with cool-looking viking art on each of the cards. I just wish it wowed more as a gameplay experience.
