Snowblind: Race for the Pole First Impressions

Snowblind: Race for the Pole has players race for the south pole…

…and back… if they survive.

A press-your-luck and risk-management dice game in which 1-4 players take control of a polar expedition, racing to be the first to return from the South Pole.

Snowblind: Race for the Pole Game Play

TL;DR Players are drafting dice to take action then rolling the dice to see how bad the weather is to try and get their flag to the south pole and get back alive.

Theme

Racing to the south pole was a thing that happened so having this as the theme makes sense. It has the risk, supply chain issues and weather randomness all in there.

I’m not sure how time works in this game as the more dice you draft the more erratic the weather will be. These are expertly trained people, they would stop for the current weather not push forward then realise it’s really bad.

Setup

Looks like a lot! But it’s just dumping cubes, cylinders and meeples in spaces, that’s all.

Components & Artwork

Standard euro pieces really, although coloured dice are nice. The flags don’t stand up in their stand and I’ve got no idea how they ever would.

The board is a strange shape and too small for the amount of stuff on it and the corners of the score track don’t have numbers which is weird.

Ease of Teaching

The game is fairly straight forward and once people know what each of the actions do you’re good to go.

Snowblind: Race for the Pole Summary

There are plenty of Euro games that are race games. The Oracle of Delphi springs to mind as you move around islands completing the 12 tasks first.

In Snowblind, you’re pushing forward moving towards the pole while moving resources that you need to survive. Tents help prevent most of the weather issues but you only have 3 so choose your spaces wisely.

The main mechanism is dice drafting. You pick one from the board and resolve its relevant action.

But there is a problem there. Only 3 actions let you move a meeple with a lot of resources and it’s a 4 player game.

So players 1, 2 and 3 take those then you take a small pointless action. Then in the next round, players 2 and 3 take 2 of those actions and player 4 gets the one left…

It means they get off to a good start and as the last player in turn order, you falter and can’t catch up.

Player 1 came first, 2 second, 3 third and player 4 last, that’s all I’m saying!

Bitterness aside, the game isn’t interesting enough to play again anyway. It’s not euro-y enough to be a good euro and not fun enough to be worth the effort.

Jesta ThaRogue