Jokkmokk

• Designer: Henrik Larsson
• Publisher: Wizkids
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 12+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The tranquil city of Jokkmokk has hosted a world-famous market and folk festival every February for over four hundred years. Visitors from across the globe don their warmest winter gear to experience the beautiful crafts, delicious treats, and breathtaking scenery Jokkmokk has to offer.

In Jokkmokk: The Winter Market, you gather your family members for a lovely trip around the merchant’s stalls of the folk festival. Will you focus on gathering souvenirs and trinkets? Will you enjoy the sights and sounds of winter in northern Sweden?

To set up the game, first you must choose which sets of cards you will play with in the game; generally you will use 5 or 6 of the 18 possible sets.  Each set has its own reference card which explains the rules and scoring criteria for that set.   The board is placed on the table and a start player is determined.  The meeples are placed in snake-draft order onto the starting spaces, with the start player’s pieces being the first and last in the line.  The Current Player token is placed just behind the last meeple.  Every remaining space on the board has a card dealt face-up to it.

On a turn, the meeple which is furthest back (i.e. the one next to the Current Player token) takes a turn by going forward and landing on a card.  The player will claim this card and place it in front of them.  Some cards have special effects, and those effects are resolved at this time as well.  Later in your turn, if you were to pick up other cards due to certain actions, you would NOT resolve the effects on those cards.

Now, move the current player token forward until it is just behind the new last place meeple.  If any cards were passed over, they are discarded.  Now refill any empty slots on the board with cards.  Continue this through the entirety of the deck.  Depending on the sets in play, there may be a mid-game scoring that is triggered when the first evening card is picked up.  

Otherwise, continue taking turns until there are no more cards left to be claimed, and then you score the cards you have collected.  Again, each set has its own rules, and they are pretty clearly explained on the reminder card.  The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player whose meeple is furthest back at the end of the game.

My thoughts on the game

So the rules explanation makes it seem like the game is pretty simple – and to be honest, it is.  Move a meeple, take a card, do the thing, add it to the collection, do it again.  The complexity in the game, such as it is, comes from the combination of card types chosen for each game.  There are three different classes of cards, and you’re asked to use two of each.  There are plenty of pre-made sets in the rulebook which ostensibly were tested by the designer/developer, but you’re also free to cobble together your own set.

In my initial plays, I’ve tried to try out unique cards each time, and so far, they all have been easy to understand.  Some of them are dead simple – i.e. collect this to score points – while others offer more complex actions that trigger when you collect the card.  Each comes with a summary card to explain how the card works and scores, and the back side of each gives a nice illustrated example. 

If anything, I’d like some of the cards to offer a little bit more; so far, it feels more often than not that players take one of the nearest available cards.  There are few occasions where a player jumps far ahead.  In some other games that use this last place person goes next turn order scheme, there is a bonus for finishing earlier – or perhaps the game ends.  Here, the game continues until all cards are collected AND the tiebreaker is being last in turn order – so unless a play is extremely advantageous, there isn’t a lot of impetus from the game to look that far over the horizon.

Admittedly, the game probably doesn’t need nor want that level of scrutiny.  It’s an easy going set collection game that is a great fit for a thirty minute window.  Each game can play out a bit different due to the combination of card types chosen for the game, and it has been enjoyed each time it’s hit the table.  The artwork is bright and cheerful and definitely makes it feel like a little bit of Sweden has come to visit. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, John P, Steph H, Michael A
• Neutral. 
• Not for me…