Review from BGG (JCEntdecker)
Overview In Hagoth, players take on the role of ship builders who compete to build ships and successfully sail them from Bountiful to the Land Northward. Completing ships as well as arriving at the Land Northward score players victory points; the first to 25 VPs wins.
Game Play Players start out with 5 cards; on their turn, they can either play two cards, or take a free action. If a player chooses to play two cards, they must also draw two cards. Taking a free action means that a player cannot draw new cards. There are two types of cards: cards that let you do something, and cards that are parts of ship blueprints. Blueprint cards are used in the construction of ships: players use them to complete one of five ship designs. Different designs are worth different point values, and also take different amounts of time to sail. Designs that require more cards are worth more points and take longer to sail. Once a ship blueprint is complete, it must be built. This is done by first, collecting wood (this is done through cards or as a free action, and employs a d4), then placing that wood on the completed blueprint (also done through cards or a free action). Once all parts of the blueprint are built, the ship sets sail. When a ship sets sail, the player immediately scores points. The player will again score points once the ship reaches the Land Northward. Sailing is accomplished through playing cards or through a free action. There are also cards that hinder your opponent, either by skipping their turn, removing pieces from their blueprints, sending their sailing ships back a space, or even removing a piece of wood from a blueprint card. Players can only sail two ships at a time, and can only work on two ships at a time - they can, however, swap blueprint cards between ships that are not being built at any time, and can use any combination of ship designs as they choose.
Components The box comes with 100 playing cards, 50 wood tokens, 8 ship tokens, 4 victory point markers, a d4, a game board, and a rules book. Many of the components are top notch: the rules book is on glossy paper, full color, and filled with illustrations and examples. The board is of exceptionally good quality: sturdy, functional, and certainly able to stand up to repeated use. The artwork is outstanding, both on the board and on the cards. Further, the tokens are of the quality one would expect from the industry's leader in meeple-goodness. Each color gets two ships, each pair of which are of different sizes - that's a nice touch. There is some concern with component quality, however: The cards are not printed on the best card stock. I actually bent two during sleeving. Also, the d4 is really light weight. I've already replaced it with a heavier one. This being said, for the MSRP and the fun game play, I'm not overly disappointed in these shortcomings. The fact that Mayday sent out a free pack of sleeves for the cards also mitigates my concern over how well the cards will stand up to game play.
Overall Impression This is a very fun game. It's a light game that's perfect either as a filler or for something to play with folks who are not gamers. For example: we're planning on pulling it out with dinner guests whose gaming usually doesn't extend past Apples to Apples. It's easy to teach, easy to learn, and fun to play. What was surprising to us was the tension that the game maintained: it had an unexpected, but awesome, race-game feel to it. It also passed our two vital awesome game tests: 1) We want to play it again at the end of each game, and 2) we spend the five minutes after each game talking about why we did what we did, what we were trying to do, what we could have done, etc. - in other words, it was exciting enough to get us thinking of ways to strategize. Well worth a try.
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Looks nautical matey! Well whatever floats you boat, eh?
A viscoos joke, eh! He he he looks like we come from around the same generation...
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