Sierra Madre Greenland Board Game

If you are a fan of theme in games, it's hard to think of a stronger theme woven through a game than in Greenland. Greenland is a strictly three player game which pits three tribes with the task of surviving Greenland's unforgiving environs. The game is played in ten rounds and is a combination of cards, people placements, dice and events.Greenland has a lot of little and often quirky game options, they all tie very closely into the theme, even if in a practical sense they don't always seem to fit within the flow of the game. And that's the biggest issue, flow. The game often feels clunky and sometimes tedious. There's an overriding ominousness which often has you losing wide numbers of your people in one fell swoop.Some things just don't work. One of the tribes has an animal that's nearly impossible to fulfill the upkeep with very little game benefit. Also there's a tremendous amount of reliance on dice role. It often negates much of the strategy part of this, putting key moments into the luck of the roll.But the theme is so damn good. It permeates all elements of this game and it makes trudging through, sometimes tough game play, to see where it all goes. Perhaps with a bit of a tune up, and collaboration with another game designer this could really elevate to an amazing game. As it stands, it's oddly compelling, completely infuriating, but alluring none the less.