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Introduction
As a child, I remember watching an episode of Blue Peter where they talked about “the fabled Northwest Passage” – a way from Europe to Asia through the frozen seas of northern Canada. I was utterly captivated by the stories of famous explorers from yesteryear who attempted to forge a way through the ice (and snow!).
There are two versions of Through Ice and Snow, a standard version and a big box version which includes the Myths & Legends expansion.
The map takes you from (I believe) Resolution Island in the east to Paulatuk or Smoking Hills in the west. You are a nineteenth explorer searching for the Northwest Passage and you follow in the footsteps of such figures as Sir John Franklin, Sir Robert McClure and Sir William Parry, themselves following the pioneering voyages of Martin Frobisher.
Gameplay
This is essentially a worker placement game, where you take actions with the crew of your ship including officers (captain, carpenter, scientist) and also Inuit that you can recruit.
Through Ice and Snow is played in rounds and each round the ships move to a new location and then players take their turns placing workers. Finally, there is a maintenance step before moving to the new round. These steps or phases are called the sailing phase, the actions phase and the embarking phase.
There are several resources to manage during the game – food, timber, rifles, dynamite and dogs. Then there are tracks on each player board to record the levels of health, morale, Inuit crew members and the sled level.
One player starts as the expedition leader and this is indicated by the helm token, which is a ship’s wheel. Crucially, the expedition leader is going to choose the destination (the next anchor point) during the sailing phase. They also get to choose whether to sail off-shore or in cabotage, close to the shore. Sailing off-shore is cheaper in fuel terms, but sailing in cabotage allows the expedition to chart the territory and this is significant for end of game objective scoring.
During the setup of Through Ice and Snow, each player will have received an Investor and a Cartography card – actually they receive two of each choose one of each. The Investor card provides extra starting resources and an end game objective. The Cartography card is another kind of objective – for each one of three territories indicated on the card that has been charted by the end of the game, the player scores five points. This means that there is an incentive to take control of the expedition and direct the sailing phase – which route to choose, when to sail in cabotage for charting.
There is ice everywhere, so the expedition leader has to blast it apart before the ships can proceed. This requires at least one dynamite – some routes need more than one. If the current leader does not have the required amount of dynamite, they have to pass the helm token to the next player. If everyone is out of dynamite, then the expedition has failed and everyone loses!
Health and morale suffer attrition at this point, then the leader takes either a cabotage or off-shore event card and applies the effects. Beware, if morale sinks too low, the crew will mutiny and in their rampage they gorge on food. If health sinks too low, the result can be scurvy and eventually death. Scurvy puts crew in the infirmary where they still consume food but are unable to take actions.
Fuel is spent by all players, not just the leader and anyone without sufficient fuel has to be towed. Cabotage costs two fuel and off-shore only costs one fuel. The ship token is moved to the new anchor point and cards are revealed from the hunt and species decks. The anchor point, or rather the territory it belongs to, dictates how many species cards are turned up, while the number of players determines how many hunt cards are revealed.
Now play proceeds to the Action Phase and players take turns placing their crew on action spaces on the board. Most of the action spaces require an officer and possibly one or more ordinary crew members.
The captain can take the lead action, which secures the Helm token for the next round. They can explore, which scores points and raises morale. The points received are determined by the lowest of the player’s sled level and number of dogs, so this is a reason to collect dogs and upgrade the sled. The captain can visit the Inuit which gets the player a dog and a fuel boost. Finally, they can recruit one Inuk (singular of Inuit). This Inuk may replace an officer in some actions. So, recruiting Inuit increases your pool of workers, but they are also another mouth to feed.
The carpenter can build a cabin, which scores points for the player. They can upgrade the ship, which costs timber and gains an upgrade tile. The carpenter can upgrade the sled or they can recycle timber, which effectively converts one fuel into one or more timber.
The scientist can discover species and this may score points immediately if it is a new species and points at the end of the game if the specimen is uneaten. From the rulebook “When food ran out, the crew fed on whatever animals were left on board, trying to avoid the dreaded cannibalism”. The scientist may also hunt with enough crew and rifles to overcome one of the revealed hunt cards – this increases food and health. Finally, they may experiment to increase fuel and gain dynamite.
There are three more actions, one is ice fishing, which does not require an officer or Inuk and increases food by the number of crew spent on the action. Then there is exchanging resources where the appropriate officer may place any one resource in the stores to gain a particular resource – dynamite, timber or rifle – from the supply. Once there are resources in the stores, a player can place the particular officer for the store in question and as many additional crew to carry away those resources.
On the final round, when the last anchor point has been reached, some extra point-scoring actions also become available.
The embarking phase at the end of each round resets the game for the next round. Crew members, including any hired Inuit, return to their ship and the new expedition leader is chosen – the player who took the Lead action, the current leader if they have enough dynamite, or the player with the most dynamite. Then it’s time to eat and each crew member consumes one food. Finally, the cards revealed this round – Hunt, Species and Event are discarded.
Artwork
The artwork on the cards, the rulebook, the player boards and the central game board are all evocative of a nineteenth century style and add to the atmosphere of the game. The iconography is very clear and consistent, which makes the game easy to understand even after only one play through.
I would give the game a 4/5 for artwork.
Likes and dislikes
Through Ice and Snow is a hard game. There’s a lot to manage here and balance carefully. The penalties for running out of resources such as food and fuel are harsh – as they should be. I very much liked the style and atmosphere. The attention to detail is excellent and I particularly like that it has been designed in cooperation with cultural and historical advisors from the Inuit Heritage Trust, the Canadian Museum of History and Travel Nunavut. I also like the “expedition leader” mechanic – there is a real reason, in terms of end of game bonus points, to steer the expedition one way or another and therefore to compete for the helm.
If I have a minor quibble, it’s that the boards don’t seem to fit particularly well into the box. A redesigned insert would help here. One rule that we got wrong on first playing was that “crew members” means all crew including officers and Inuit. Officers and Inuit should be thought of a special crew that can fill any of the grey/blue ordinary crew slots as well as the specialised slots that match their particular colour – red, yellow, green or brown. This was not immediately obvious on a first reading of the rules, but I probably skimmed through too fast in my eagerness.
Complexity
The iconography is very clear and once learned, it all makes logical sense. However, there are a lot of actions, and the decision space is therefore quite rich. There are several different routes to scoring points and the pressure to husband resources carefully is ever present. The key to the game, like many similar games, is to be efficient with the limited actions. In this sense, it’s similar to Lost Ruins of Arnak or Agricola. I would say this is a 4/5 for complexity.
Replayability
There’s tons of replayability here. The combination of the slightly asymmetric starting positions from the investor cards and the objectives from them and the cartography cards as well as the different routes through the arctic and finally the advanced game modes, such as “Survival”, mean there’s a lot of value even in the base game. The Myths and Legends expansion adds much more variety with three new multiplayer game modules and two new solo scenarios. I think that this deserves a 5/5 for replayability.
Player interaction
Like any worker placement game, there is competition for the action spaces and there is also competition for the first player / expedition leader beyond the usual boon of going first. I don’t think there’s much “take that” – possibly forcing the expedition to sail in cabotage when one player is low on fuel, but apart from that, the interactions are friendly but competitive. They generally involve getting in first – to the action space, to grab the hunt card(s), to claim the species, to build a hut and so on. I really think this deserves a 5/5 for player interaction.
Component quality
The player boards are dual-layered and the game board is modular pieces of thick cardboard. The insert, as noted above, is less than ideal and some effort could have been made to better secure the board pieces. The cards are all excellent quality with a linen finish and the meeples are screen printed coloured wood. On balance, I would give a 4/5 for the component quality. There was a metal ship and metal wheel / first player token as an add-on.
Conclusion
Overall, I really liked this game and I would rate it 80%. There’s a lot of game to get stuck into here and the theme comes through very strongly. If you like Raiders of the North Sea, Lords of Waterdeep or Lost Ruins of Arnak, then I think you may like Through Ice and Snow.
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Published 12th Feb 2025.
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