Borealis: Arctic Expeditions
- Designer: Dariusz Mindur
- Publisher: Lucky Duck
- Players: 2-4
- Age: 10+
- Time: 45 minutes
- Played with review copy provided by publisher
- Publisher: Lucky Duck
Step into the role of a leader guiding a scientific team into the unexplored boreal regions. Your goal is to observe and take pictures of the Arctic’s most charming wildlife. You will play cards from your hand onto one of three spots on your personal board to snap a photo. This action makes your scientists slide left and right, but only if their colors match the symbols on your card. You need to line up vehicle symbols, race to complete objectives, and arrange animals in specific patterns for end-game scoring. The aim is to earn the most points and gain lasting recognition at the Society for Polar Inquiry. Perhaps you might even get a small, snow-covered island named after you.
To begin, shuffle the deck of animal cards and create a market with four face-up cards. Randomly select two scoring cards and one objective card for each of the three types, placing them on the table. Each player receives their own board, choosing between a symmetric or asymmetric side. Flags sit at the top of three exploration columns, with one scientist of each color also at the top of each column. Players start with a hand of four cards and have the option to discard and redraw once.
On your turn, you can choose to either Observe an Animal or Regroup.
To Observe an Animal, play a card from your hand into a location that has the matching scientists shown on the card. Stack the cards so the bottom parts remain visible. Move the scientists in the direction of the arrows on the card. If the vehicle on the card matches one of the vehicles on the space below your flag on that location’s track, move the flag down one space. Refill your hand with a card from the market, then refill the market. You can always take a mystery meat card if needed. You also have the option to spend 1VP to refresh the market exactly once before drawing a new card.
To Regroup, discard as many cards as you want from your hand and draw that many new cards from the deck. Score 1VP for each scientist currently in your camps. Then, take all scientists from both camps and place them together in a single location.
After your turn, check if you have accomplished any of the active Objectives. If so, declare it and take a 5VP token. Until the end of the current round, any other player who also accomplishes that objective scores 5VP. At the end of the round, discard that Objective card.
The game ends after any round where one or more players have 7 cards in a single location. Finish the current round so everyone has the same number of turns. Scoring is then completed as follows:
- Score for sets of animals of the same species in a single location (using the chart on the player board)
- Point values for each space on your tracks where your flag is located
- Some animal cards will award VPs directly
- Score the two scoring cards based on the criteria shown on the card
- All VP tokens collected during the game
- Point values for each space on your tracks where your flag is located
The player with the most points wins. If there is a tie, the player with the flag furthest down the exploration track breaks the tie.
My thoughts on the game
Borealis: Arctic Expeditions turned out to be a pleasant surprise from Spiel 2025. For me, Lucky Duck has always been a company I turned to for their app-integrated games like Chronicles of Crime. I honestly haven’t had as much success with their analog-only titles. However, the animal theme and the promise of a challenging puzzle-solving game were enough to attract my interest. In short, the game delivers on its promises.
The core of the game is finding the best card to play and the best place to play it. This decision has many different layers to consider. For example:
- Which location will you play it in? You need to have the required scientists there to play the card.
- Where do you want your scientists to end up? This becomes important for later card plays and scoring during recovery turns. It can be useful to have many scientists in the igloos, as they all return to a single space when you recover, giving you many options for your next turns.
- Will the card play advance your flag? Good bonus points can be earned if you move the flag far enough down your three columns. There are only 7 spaces on the track, and you can play at most 7 cards in a column, so to get the huge rewards, they must all cause your flag to move.
- Does the animal icon on the card match those played previously? Another big part of scoring is the reward for sets of the same icon. Remember that you will only play a maximum of 7 cards to a column, so each non-match greatly reduces your maximum possible score.
- Does the card help you towards one of the three Objectives? You must keep an eye on what your opponents are doing, but getting a 5VP jump on some or all of your adversaries is nothing to sneeze at.
- Does the card help you towards the two end-game scoring cards?
- Where do you want your scientists to end up? This becomes important for later card plays and scoring during recovery turns. It can be useful to have many scientists in the igloos, as they all return to a single space when you recover, giving you many options for your next turns.
As you can guess, the game has a fair potential for analysis paralysis. It is extremely rare that any card in your hand would be able to meet all of the above criteria. I suppose you could try to run through every option on each turn, but I generally just think until I find something that seems pretty great and run with it. After all, it is just a game.
For me, it becomes a delightful challenge of figuring out the best play you can make from the four cards in your hand. There is just enough freedom to let you try to plan things out in advance. It feels rewarding when you make a play of two or three chained actions that get you to the place you want to be in.
I suppose that you could go the entire game without ever having to Regroup by choosing and playing cards that kept your researchers in play. However, between the VP reward, the clumping of researchers, and the dumping of unwanted cards from your hand, it is definitely a viable option to take on your turn.
Our games are currently closer to an hour, and I do not know if that is because we are slow or still getting used to the game. I can definitely see where the game could fit into the 45-minute range. I also think there are viable strategies to speed up the game by pushing one location to 7 cards quickly, though we haven’t seen games in that time window just yet. Borealis is a great puzzle of a game and a nice counterpoint to the QR-code driven games that I have generally associated with the publisher. It will definitely get more plays this winter.
Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers
Doug G.: I understand why people like or love this one, but it is a bit too puzzly for Shelley and me. We enjoyed our plays, though the scoring options can create very different outcomes and the luck of the cards can play a big role as well.
Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers
- I love it!
- I like it. Dale Y, Steph H
- Neutral. Doug G.
- Not for me…
- I like it. Dale Y, Steph H
