I’ll be doing a full review of this once I’ve played a couple more games (I like my reviews to be based on at least 3 plays). However, I just thought I’d post my first impressions of this new game while they were fresh.

Nina & Pinta is a new game from Ragnar Brothers which I backed on Kickstarter. You may have seen them running demos at the UKGE. It’s set in the golden age of exploration and you basically sail back and forth to the New World setting up colonies and bringing back stuff. And attacking each other.

One unusual weirdness is that there are three New Worlds, named after Columbus’ ships: Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. It’s the first in the Ragnars’ “Quantum” series, and plays a little on the notion of multiverses. In the photo below you can see the three New Worlds radiating out from the centre. Each is based on the same map, but each land tile is randomly chosen, so you don’t know whether the Andes bit will actually be mountainous, or something else. There are also a scattering of gold mines, ancient civilisations (to plunder), and so on.

Being a bear of little brain., I forgot to take any pics, but Ben snapped one, so I can bring you a shot of the game just as it moves into the end stages.

On first play, it felt like there were three broad stages to the game. The first when you’re exploring the maps, when you’re more interested in grabbing stuff than fighting; the second when you’re filling up the land and starting to squeeze each other for resources; and the end game when there was quite a bit of carnage.

In the photo above you can see that all the land tiles have been explored, but there aren;’t lots of towns on the board. Lots of building and fighting is about to ensue.

As I said, I’ll come back with more detail another day. For now, let me just drop this game into your consciousness. I had a great time playing, and look forward to having another go. It also has a solo variant which I’m intrigued to have a go at as well.

A definite thumbs up so far 🙂