Looot

• Designers: Charles Chevallier and Laurent Escoffier
• Publisher: Gigamic
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3TD6Tcl
• Played with review copy provided by Hachette USA

In Looot, you need to gather resources and capture buildings to develop your fjord. Fill your longships and complete your construction sites in order to rack up your victory points. Store up the most riches, and you’ll be crowned Jarl of the Vikings!

To Setup: Assemble the gameboard (one segment per player) using Landscape boards, placing 2 Houses, 2 Watchtowers, and 3 Castles in their corresponding spaces. Place the Trophy board and 5 Trophies along one edge of the gameboard and place the Ocean board along one edge and put 30 Longships into a bag, drawing out 5 and placing them on Ocean spaces.

Each player selects a color and takes components: 1 Fjord, 13 Vikings, and 3 Shields. Shuffle and distribute random Construction Site tiles (Ports, Altars, Jarl Palaces) to each player.

How to Play:  On each turn, the active player must place a Viking.  Conditionally, he may capture a building or complete a construction site.  Optionally, he may select a longship, use a Shield or Claim a Trophy.

Placing a Viking (mandatory): Vikings must be placed on a Resource space adjacent to another Viking or a Longship. Vikings cannot be placed on a Resource space already occupied by another Viking. Take a corresponding Resource tile from the reserve and place it on an empty space on your Fjord.  Check for capturing a Building; play passes to the next player if out of Vikings.

Capturing a Building (conditional):- there are different rules for capturing Houses, Watchtowers, and Castles.

1. Houses: Capture by placing a Viking adjacent to a House.
2. Watchtowers: Capture by connecting two Watchtowers with Vikings of your color.
3. Castles: Capture by chaining at least 4, 8, or 12 Vikings of your color, with at least one adjacent to a Castle.

Construction site (conditional): As you capture buildings, you place them on your Fjord board.  Three Construction sites in your Fjord; and you complete them by placing required Resources and Buildings adjacent to them..  Completed Construction Sites earn victory points as shown on their reverse..

Selecting a Longship (optional): Place the longship on an empty space on your Fjord and draw another Longship for the Ocean board.  Filling Longships by surrounding it with the indicated Resources to earn bonuses; unfilled Longships lose 5 victory points at the end.

Using a Shield (optional): Use when placing a Viking for a specific advantage; flip the Shield after use.  You can gain double the resource, place on an occupied space or immediately place a second Viking.

Claiming a Trophy (optional):  At the end of your turn, claim a Trophy if you have enough Axes.  Note that you can only claim one Trophy all game, so you need to choose the timing wisely. 

The game ends when all players have placed their Vikings. Now you calculate victory points.

• Add points for Castles, Watchtowers, Houses, Gold, Sheep, Wood – for each of these things, there is a base value (see the chart at the bottom of your player board) and add to it any scoring bonuses from completed Longships.  Multiply this value by the number of the thing you have on your board.  Do this separately for each thing.
• Completed Construction Sites and claimed Trophies score the points visible on thenm
• Subtract 5 points for each unfilled Longship.

The player with the most points becomes the next Jarl; ties broken by highest value Trophy or shared victory if no tiebreaker.

My thoughts on the game

Looot is an interestingly spelled game that plays out interestingly as you have multiple things you want to do each turn but you are limited to only a single viking placement.  In addition, there is a fairly limited supply of Vikings so you need to make each one count.  As there are multiple objectives to complete on your own Fjord board, you often have multiple viable options that will work for you – but you’ll have to keep your eye on what everyone else is doing lest you lose the opportunity to get a particular building or type of resource.

I would definitely examine the board at the start of the game and plot out a strategy (and backup plans, and backup plans to the backup plans).  The horde of Viking figures will grow organically from the port board, so you know where everyone will start.  Things at the very far edge of the board may not be reached if the group doesn’t collectively head that way.   Pay attention to the location of the different buildings; if you don’t get access to them at the ones nearest to the port, maybe then work on getting to the next set…

I think that the game is a bit more interesting at a higher player count as there is more competition for the spaces on the board as well as more uncertainty to the board situation at your next turn as there are more intervening opponent turns between each of yours.  While it makes it a bit harder to plan, it also adds to the tension of the game, in a positive way from my perspective.  That being said, as you increase the player count, the amount of downtime between turns increases.  I think I’ll likely settle on the 3p version of the game as my favorite, but I haven’t played enough yet to be certain.

The good news about competition for board space is that the board is large, and as the horde of Vikings grows on the board, this generally adds to the possible places you can put your next meeple.  That might make it easier to get a particular resource… but if you’re worried about buildings too, you’ll want to have your Vikings placed on particular spaces, and that’s where things can get a bit dicey.  Houses are fairly easy as you only have to be next to a single house.  Watchtowers can be harder as you have to connect two different watchtowers together, and getting four connected Vikings attached to a castle can be quite hard unless you are heading off in a direction that no one else is competing for…  The special actions of your shields (playing on an occupied space or placing two vikings in a row) can be extremely useful here.

Early in the game, I like to take Longships when they make sense, and I like the mental puzzle of figuring out where to put them so that I can use a single resource tile to score multiple longships.  Once I have a few longships flipped over, I can then use the bonuses from them to guide my future resource decisions.  In a recent game, I managed to get gold nuggets worth 9 points each, and that pretty much became my single goal in the game… Once the midgame passes, it does become a bit riskier to take them as the chance of not finishing them and taking a 5 point penalty becomes a very tangible risk.

However, given that you can pump up the value of just about everything you could possibly collect – with the right tiles, you can make anything worth your while to collect.  And, if you’re the only person who wants a particular thing, you could definitely corner the market and score big points!  You probably won’t be able to compete for all of the eight different scoring categories, so make the most of the ones you can dominate and hope to carry the day.

Looot is a neat game that combines some interesting board play with an area control aspect with the solitary puzzle of getting all the bits in the right place on your board.  It’s the sort of game where you want to do multiple things on your turn, but you’re generally limited to just one thing – so you will have to pick and choose and figure out what is the best play at the given moment.  With only 13 Vikings total though, each one should push you towards one of your goals if you hope to be successful in the end.

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3TD6Tcl

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers:

Justin B (three plays): The worst thing about Looot, besides the spelling, is that it isn’t as interesting at two players. At the full player count, I really enjoyed this one, particularly the way Longships affect each play. While I’m not sure Looot is in “I’ll play this 50 times” territory, it has a nice mix of ways to score that will slightly change from game to game and my kids liked playing Looot just as much as the adults. Having it available on BGA only extends its life in my opinion.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Steph H
• I like it. Dale, John P, Justin B
• Neutral.
• Not for me…