Norsewind Game Review

It just so happens that I spent the last month of 2025 trying not one, but two different games from the designers of Zhanguo: The First Empire, Marco Canetta and Stefania Niccolini: Norsewind and Kingdom Crossing. I’ll keep my thoughts brief here…by saying that the designers’ other 2025 release, Kingdom Crossing, is the better game.

Norsewind (2025, Aporta Games) is a tableau builder for 1-4 players that plays in about 15-20 minutes per player. The most surprising thing about Norsewind—besides my burning desire to call this game Norsewood, not Norsewind—is that it seems to aim so firmly towards the middle of the pack.

Players draft cards in one of five suits, which are then placed into one of the four rows of their respective kingdoms. Some cards have Viking helmets—bad—and some have shields, which are good. At the end of the game, you want to build rows that have as many or more shields than helmets, in order for a row to score.

The one wrinkle Norsewind provides is the decision point when drafting a card. When a player adds a card to their tableau, they get income based on a single building type that appears in every other row of their kingdom. Plus, a single meeple can…

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