I saw you at sea with your see-saw ship
Let’s see if you can stop that see-saw tip!
- A Viking verse of dubious origin
Like shiny things? Feeling a little off balance? Time to go a-viking!
You’ve gone a-viking, and been very successful. You now have the tricky challenge of getting all of your treasure home. Unfortunately, your ship seems a bit off kilter and one false move can spill treasure overboard or make the ship suddenly lurch the opposite way. What’s more, the other Vikings at the table think it’s funny every time you do that, so they are deliberately setting you up to fail. But then, you’re doing the same thing, so fair’s fair…
Loading treasure onto a see-saw. Whose bright idea was that?
Itten. It was Itten’s idea. Viking See-Saw is a short 2-4 player game in the Itten Funbrick Series that measures your dexterity and ability to be awkward.
Vikings take turns stacking their treasure onto the raised end of the ship, which looks suspiciously like a see-saw with a flag. Unfortunately, see-saws have a habit of tipping when too much weight is added to one side. If you tip it, you take extra cargo from the cabin as a penalty. If anything goes overboard, that’s also yours to stack on future turns. Stack carefully. The first Viking to successfully load all of their treasure, or the Viking with the least treasure remaining once the cabin has no penalty cargo left wins.
Each Viking starts with an identical selection of treasure. Pieces are differently weighted and differently shaped. Some roll. All the better for making future stacking challenging for other Vikings!
These treasure components, along with the ship, are lovely. The only plastic in sight is the bags and the jewels, with the remaining components made of wood, metal, and glass. The metal pieces are satisfyingly weighty, and the jewels and glass balls are pretty. The ship itself is wooden, and the only setup it requires is installing the flag. The only disappointing and arguably unnecessary component is the blue ring that Vikings are to store their treasure in before balancing it on the ship. The rings are clearly hairbands, which feels both lazy and creative all at once.
I see, I saw, I ran out of puns - almost
Viking See-Saw is a nice filler game for adult and child Vikings alike. The different weights and shapes encourage strategy, both in not tipping the ship and in causing complexity for future players. Pretty components contained in a small box with a simple rulebook make this a satisfying little game that I will definitely get out when I want something funny, and importantly, light.
