Wild Vikings is a fun and strategically rich game for a young child learning the art of bidding. The featuring of this game on Columbus Day is a bit of unintentional irony.

Three Viking ships (cardboard pieces) cycle through a port, accruing treasure through die rolls. One face of the die designates that a treasure from the common store go to one of the three colored ships, one designates that a treasure go to a ship of the player's choosing, one rewards the roller with a card for bidding, and the last opens up the ship in the front of the line for bidding on its treasures.

Players are dealt a handful of cards to start and then must spend them judiciously in bidding on the varying loads of treasure, as they slowly collect more. Cards match the three ship colors, with a wild suit thrown in, and only those that match can be used to bid for treasure on a given ship. When the ship unloads its treasure to the high bidder, it heads to the back of the line and the next ship heads into port, laden with treasure that will be bid on the next time the relevant die roll comes up.


One thing we like about this game that holds true for many of our favorite children's games is that there are varying levels of strategy that we can slowly roll out as Z's understanding and savvy grows. This also means that multiple adults playing alongside her can secretly be playing against each other, keeping things interesting for all parties. In the case of this game, there is strategy in how high you bid (trying to bid just enough so other players don't have one card more to bid up) and in where you place the treasure when you have a choice (usually best to load up the ship you have the most cards for).

At an early four, Z is an "all-in" kind of gal, meaning she runs out of cards quickly. One modification we might make when playing with someone her age is to let her double-up on her card draws, so she has more cards to bid with. Then again, keeping things as they are would help reinforce the general concept of "saving up," wouldn't it?

This is one of the better compact kids' games we've played in a while - it fits in a box that's about 6x8" and about 1" deep (guessing here). We'll probably travel with it when we head to Seattle later this month. It can scale widely in terms of player numbers, and we know other adults will enjoy it too, not to mention kids Z's age or older.