It’s the age of discovery! The British Empire needs to find new naval trade routes to Asia, and thus launches many expeditions to the Arctic in order to find The Northwest Passage. In Through Ice and Snow you and your friends journey through the Arctic and vie to become the most prestigious explorer by documenting species, mapping treacherous lands and discovering the elusive Northwest passage.

As the expedition progresses new map pieces and routes will be revealed and added to the modular board. Each player is in charge of their own ship, and the crews include three officers with individual abilities:

• The Carpenter, a craftsman that provides improvements and structures

• The Scientist, a scholar that provides invention and research

• The Captain, an officer that provides leadership and organization

You can also recruit Inuit – exceptional guides who are experts in finding fuel, improving sleds and leading vital hunting parties.

Each voyage brings unique challenges and events for your crews to face: Those Arctic journeys faced many tragedies, since finding food was extremely hard, the overworked crews were prone to mutiny, and the weather was merciless. Succeed and become immortalised. Fail and be lost to the ice….forever.

Disclaimer: This is an unpaid review, and any views expressed are entirely my own.

Review:

Main Game:
The game is based on the search for the Northwest Passage as the then British Empire needs to find new naval trade routes to Asia, and begins launching many expeditions to the Arctic. You play ship Captains vying to become the most prestigious explorer, by helping the ‘fleet’ to map treacherous lands and seaways, discover new animal species (which you may also need to use to feed your crew) which you document for history.

The rulebook is detailed and well laid out for the most part, with plenty of pictures and diagrams of game components and examples of play situations that will / may arise. Set up isn’t excessively long once you get used to playing but for the first few games there are quite a few things you need to sort out before play can start.

The main game board is split into sections, and each section is determined by the player in control of the expedition at the point(s) where a new direction is required to be chosen, so this gives quite a bit of variability and replayability as these can and probably will change for every game, so no two consecutive games should be the same.

Once the first section of the board has been placed, and your own player board and the supply pieces have been set out, play can start.

The theme is one of naval exploration back in the days of wooden ships and hardy crews on the search for new discoveries and personal fame and wealth, and TIAS captures this very well in my opinion and the constant need to ensure you can feed your crew and any Inuit guides you may have picked up along the way really does bring home the struggles that these expeditions had to endure and overcome, i.e. battling freezing cold, avoiding predators such as polar bears, and ensuring you had enough food to keep your crew alive and also avoid anyone catching scurvy.

All in all, definitely not the same experience as a Viking River Cruise ☺

The game is essentially worker placement at its core, with you placing your crew consisting of Captain, Scientist, Carpenter and 3 Sailors onto the main action board, as well as any Inuit workers you have ‘hired’ during your expedition, which are then classed as part of your crew.

The actions they take can be limited by their type, i.e. the Scientist can’t use the actions of the Carpenter and vice versa, but there are also spaces where any worker can go to get actions / resources.

Each turn you take an action with one or more of your available crew members, and gain the reward / benefit associated with the action space you have played your crew onto. These could be extra fuel, more food, discover new species, upgrade your ship, use parts of your ship to ensure survival / avoid penalties. You can also build and leave behind stocked cabins for future expeditions to find, use dog sled teams, plus quite a few other actions that will aid your own ship in its goal of reaching the end of the Northwest Passage first and hopefully gaining the glory of winning the game.

Your ship can if you don’t manage things well run out of fuel and you will then need to be towed by the other vessels, causing you to lose points and your helpers to gain them, and every turn a new event will have to be navigated, and the severity or easiness of this depends on whether the lead captain decides to take the fleet close to the shore or out at sea as it goes to the next map point at the start of the turn.

The game is a nice mix of looking after your own interests as well as working together as a group to ensure things are covered and any dangers you could encounter are minimized, although sometimes it’s fun to do the opposite if it benefits you and hinders one or more of the other ships as ultimately you are trying to become the ship that discovers the new trade route and ultimately win the game.

There is a clean up phase at the end of / beginning of each turn that sees you having to feed everyone onboard, use fuel to keep going, and make your morale high enough so you can gain points.

Mutiny can happen and your crew can even die if you don’t look after them well enough, so this resource management aspect is of the utmost importance and is at the heart of pretty much every choice you make, for good or ill.

There is also a solo mode included with the game, which I find is always a great way of learning the rules and actions before introducing it to your friends / gaming group. The solo mode is quite well thought out, and can be quite a challenge to complete / win and is fun and frustrating at the same time.

The artwork and components were very good in the copy I played, and again really captured the theme and look of what things would have been like when expeditions such as these were being undertaken. 

I understand a few people had issues with warped player boards, but I do believe these are being addressed by the manufacturers. The other items in the game are nicely produced and the card stock is of good thickness.

If you enjoy worker placement games, and those that recreate important periods of history then I suggest you check out TIAS, as it really does this very well indeed, and every choice you make, be it on your own board, the actions board, or deciding which route to take at certain times really does add to the feel of recreating the struggles and life or death decisions Captains had to take in the name of human endeavor and exploration.

Through Ice & Snow.. make the right choices and you will survive, make the wrong ones and you’ll definitely find yourself on a very slippery slope too.

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