What could make everyone’s favourite (and only) RTS/Tetris/roguelite hybrid even more exciting? That’s right; Vikings! Drop Duchy‘s The North DLC has just dropped (I had to, don’t blame me), bringing with it a whole new faction with some differences, in addition to a couple of new boss battles and some fresh cards. The DLC is somewhat pricey, retailing for nearly a third of the MSRP price of the base game, which already had a pretty substantial amount of content. But the question stands: is The North worth it, or is this one DLC you shouldn’t pillage?
This faction, like all the others, isn’t massively different. The most obvious change is that you can’t chain attacks together anymore. Instead, you simply pick one of your buildings to attack a single enemy building, and that’s that. It’s certainly simpler, but you also lose all of the benefits of chaining attacks, which means it’s easy to find yourself in a wee spot of bother if you’ve planned poorly, since, y’know, each of your buildings can only attack a single time instead of you buffing up your entire attack strength into a series of strikes.
The other most obvious difference is that you can now pillage buildings. Since you’re likely very familiar with the game, you’ll know that the only buildings on the map are yours, so that means you’ll be pillaging your own buildings. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Worse yet, any buildings that are pillaged will be removed from your deck, so they get completely destroyed. Granted, you can get a hefty amount of resources from doing this. If this sounds questionable, The North faction does get a card that adds two random resource buildings to your deck in each round, so you can just use those (plus it’s nice not to have to crowd your deck with these buildings.)
Then there’s Fury. Whenever your shield takes damage in The North, you’ll get Fury points. Get enough, and a combat building will get added to your map (although just the outline and number show up, but you attack with them just the same). I’m sure someone more clever than I will see a lot of use for this function, but it personally doesn’t suit my playstyle. That being said, none of The North’s unique abilities suit my playstyle much, especially since even non-battle rounds are extended because you have to pillage your buildings if you’ve got combat buildings set up, which I thought was a weird choice. You can’t finish the round otherwise.
Then there are the boss battles, which show up at the end of Act One and Act Three. The first is against a gate, and it’s weirdly tougher than the default Act One and Act Two bosses. There’s a literal gate in the play area that opens up after a bit, but the enemy building cards added to your deck for the fight all get bolstered if placed near any other military buildings, including the gate itself. I’m not crazy about this one, as it certainly seemed less fun and intuitive than the ones we’re used to.
The new Act Three fight, on the other hand, has you go up against an enemy fortress with no military buildings added to your deck. Instead, several spots in the play area generate Corruption. If it gets high enough, one of your combat buildings is stolen, and you’ll have to fight it. It’s not too bad since all you need to do is just build on top of them to block them off, but I learned this the hard way and lost my first run against it anyway. Live and learn. I have to say, I also don’t really care much for the cards I’ve received while playing as this faction either. I’ve still got some stuff to unlock via the new faction quests, though!
Drop Duchy‘s The North DLC certainly adds some interesting new wrinkles, so I think it’ll be worth it for anyone who wants a bit more to sink their teeth into, even if I do think it’s a bit overpriced for what you get. However, if you’re like me and you don’t like this faction as much as others, that can certainly make it a bit of a tougher sell. But if you’ve ever wanted to pillage yourself, then there’s no time like the present.
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