Pax Penning Board Game Review

Year Published: 2024

Players: 3-5

Playing Time: 60-120 minutes

I’ve covered Pax games before: Pax Porfiriana, for instance. I’ve also played a couple others outside of these (Pax Renaissance, Pax Pamir (Second Edition)), and enjoy them all to varying extents. Pax Penning is in the same lineage, and while there are some noticeable differences between them, it’s useful to compare Penning to those earlier titles. Its strengths and quirks will become more apparent.

Not to bury the lead, Pax Penning is vying to be my favorite in this loosely-defined series (as much as something can be a series from disparate publishers and designers). It’s not without faults, both general and specific depending on your gaming context, but overall it’s a startlingly realized vision.

But First, a History Lesson

This one’s on Pax games, their traits and quirks.

Pax games inevitably have a market of some sort, and this market controls much of the proceedings in the game. Generally this is a market of cards, each of which has one or more abilities tied to its purchase and use.

These abilities, in turn, affect one of the game’s subsystems. These subsystems affect all players, though not always in equal measure. Pax games are invariably contentious, interactive affairs. And while the interaction is often direct, player-to-player, other times it’s indirect via these subsystems. So the changes to the game state are occasionally zero-sum but other times may help or hinder more than one player simultaneously.

It’s also a simulation of some historical period, but simulation is the wrong word because it implies a granularity to the historical proceedings. 

Every Pax game I’ve played really does have a concrete historical backdrop, with real events, figures and places. However, it’s often a bird’s eye view of these events, abstracting the particulars away so that history can potentially play out differently in your game. It’s commentary on political, financial and military systems more so than specific political, financial and military actions. The narrative is in the aggregate sweep of history’s ebbs and flows, albeit within a specific time period and geographic region.

Liberal card text and rulebook flavor text helps to bring the setting to life in most of them.

Pax Penning adheres to much of the above, while deviating in some significant ways that we’ll get into below.

And Now…Another History Lesson

This next history lesson is on the setting of the game, but here I’ll lean heavily on the designer and the game’s own descriptive text to help me.

Viking Age Sweden was a time of transition. The would-be king, having seen the burgeoning British empire and its use of a consistent currency to create some cultural coherence, wanted to do the same in his homeland. The results were…well, they were mixed.

The game’s currency is dual-faced; one side representing loyalty to the king’s fledgling efforts (and thus action currency in the game’s market) by keeping his official currency (the Penning) and the other side representing traditional silver and signifying a more uncaring disposition toward unifying the country under one banner and currency. It manifests in the game as the ability to roll dice, which is a broad analog for cultural currency. With these dice you can more easily adjust the faction hierarchy and shift loyalties toward or away from the would-be King (your own loyalty or other players!)

The other thing this game is NOT is an exact history. The rulebook unequivocally states that many of the individual names, events, and customs have been lost to history.

The somewhat abstract trappings of the game – including the use of ancient-looking chess pieces as representations of actions – is deliberate, an attempt to show that much of this history is known only in broad strokes but not in much detail.

The designer also rightly (though briefly) calls out some white supremecist groups who have, in more recent years, tried to fill in the gaps in this history with their own version of events. The notes rightly point out that it’s ok to leave something shrouded in mystery, particularly when the alternative is self-serving pseudo-history. Pax games are nothing if not opinionated on their subject matter, to the amusement of some and consternation of others, and this is no exception.

Mechanical Disparities

I would be a poor reviewer if I didn’t give you at least an overview of gameplay, particularly when there are some unique features here.

Your turn consists of dice rolls that broadly represent cultural influence, and the purchase of 1-2 actions from the market, which ideally rearrange the game state more in your favor.

The tension between Silver and Pennings drives the game. You’ll feel “poor” for half your turn if you lack one, and poor for the other half if you lack the other. Your currency ratio can be readjusted, but others can potentially readjust it as well. Pushing someone toward support of the King in the late game (i.e. flipping a Silver to a Penning), for example, when the King’s victory is almost destined not to happen, can be a sneaky way to create more of a chance for yourself.

The actions deviate from a traditional Pax market, in that it’s not a large deck of cards with unique abilities on them. Rather, it’s a rotating set of pre-set actions, and there are only five possible action types.

This reduces the rules overhead for possible actions, but the implications of those actions are where the game’s depth and complexity starts to rear its head.

The King makes some rounds around the board, “visiting” players (i.e. blocking their coins) and adjusting some economic possibilities in the central space, before The Thing happens. No, really, that’s what it’s called. The Thing.

Small nit-picky aside that regardless of historical accuracy or lack thereof, the first time there was ambiguity in table talk between “the thing” and “The Thing,” it was hilarious. By the time these instances reached double digits, though, much of the charm had worn off. I have considered a house rule where I call it the Sigtuna Conclave or somesuch. But back to the review…

The Thing is where you vote on the legitimacy of the King (or not) and attempt to push it toward his victory. There will be, at most, three Things in the game, after which the game must end. Victory is resolved in a couple different ways depending on whether or not the King’s efforts succeed, and things like having the most Pennings and/or being the highest on the game’s regional hierarchy can give you a better chance at a win.

I’ve buried the lead in regard to victory, though, because for true understanding we have to talk about heirs and coalitions.

A “Negotiated” Victory

When you win, you don’t really win. Unless you do. I’ll explain.

See, you start with a bunch of stones of your color behind a player screen, and this more-or-less represents your family and familial influence among the land.

These stones, though, won’t all be staying behind your screen. They’ll be moving around in an abstracted representation of alliances and marriages, and by game’s end the majority of your stones are likely to be somewhere other than your home turf.

This is fine, though, because if a player wins but the largest collection of stones behind their screen is yours, you are their heir and become the winner!

Except wait, not quite yet, because now you have to check behind your screen to see if you have an heir, which could transfer the victory again.

If two or more players point back to one another in this way, forming a circular chain of heirs, it’s possible to share the victory (i.e. a Coalition). Except that in one of the two endgame conditions, most total stones break the tie of a Coalition.

So you have to be aware of how you’re positioned on multiple axes as the endgame approaches. The fact that a lot of stone exchanges are hidden means that your mental map of the game’s alliances and coalitions will also be inexact.

This is both the hardest of the game’s concepts to wrap your head around strategically, while also being the most central to its intrigues and tension.

You can willingly give away your stones, or willingly take them from other players. The Bishop action in the market even allows you to choose a player and hand them stones unbidden! You might use this to make yourself their heir, or simply shed other stones so that you have no heir and can try for a solo victory.

It’s heady and slightly overwhelming at times, but exciting if you embrace the approximate nature of your knowledge and the barely-controlled chaos unfolding through this mechanic.

Gameplay as Theme in Pax Penning

I’ve talked before about the conflation of setting and theme, and it’s important here. The setting is Viking-age Sweden. The theme is the tribal, opportunistic social, monetary and political forces pushing and pulling the country toward a future it can’t fully imagine.

I make this distinction for a reason, because it’s easy to look at Pax Penning – and play it! – and think of it as a very abstract game. And that’s because it’s not aiming to recreate its setting in any detail.

Its theme, however, is brought to life with staggering clarity, and this is done via gameplay rather than the aesthetic trappings of its setting.

I’ve made a similar comment about Tigris & Euphrates, a masterpiece of minimalist setting design that is nevertheless extremely thematic, and it’s because you’re actively engaged in the theme during gameplay rather than passively absorbing it.

This, to me, separates Penning from many other Pax games in a rather excellent way: it’s not reliant upon flavor text to impart the theme. It lets us imagine the thematic implications via gameplay.

Not to dump too hard on other Pax games, they do a lot of this as well. But not to the same extent, to my eye. The abstraction in setting actually help to evoke the ideas explored more strongly. I similarly adore Pax Porfiriana, for instance, and think it has many of these same qualites. So perhaps it’s an embarrassment of riches to say that Penning is even stronger in this regard, but that does feel instinctively true to me.

I don’t know that I’m in Viking-age Sweden automatically in Penning, for clarity, but I know that I’m involved in a conversation that bridges an entire culture, and either supporting certain forces (the would-be King) or ignoring him and looking to other alliances for the sustained influence of my clan.

Pax Pamir (2nd edition) likely comes closest to what Penning does; it’s bound by card text as well but also seems more self-aware about the game’s role as a pastiche of political and military intrigue, an exploration of ideas instead of a treatise on its period.

In this way, the more abstract trappings of Penning actually help it a bit, because the evocation of its theme via gameplay isn’t obscured by a setting that’s demanding to take center stage.

An Aside on the Rulebook and Presentation

I’m not a components junky, and also can tolerate some rules ambiguity, knowing that I’m willing to put in the work to resolve it. But as a reviewer, it’s also worth mentioning these things for the edification of others.

First, the production is lovely. The (I presume) handmade cloth board and pieces are all evocative without seeming needlessly opulent.

But now to the rulebook. The game is parseable and playable, and the rulebook is going for sort of a streamlined minimalism in its presentation, which it largely succeeds at.

However, in this aim, it also sacrifices rigor at times.

When I sat down and read the entirety of the rulebook, I ended up writing down no less than eight questions I had, which seemed ambiguous to me based on the writing. It’s always possible that I am misinterpreting rules and thus it’s user error, but I’m approaching 1,000 rulebooks read in my lifetime and generally do fine with them. Eight questions about gameplay after reading a rulebook is a lot.

When I shuffled into the Rules forums for the game on BoardGameGeek, I discovered that every single one of those eight questions had independently been asked by others.

So I was not alone in my confusions, lending some credence to the idea that the rules could be a bit more thorough. Sorry, a lot more thorough.

To the designer’s credit, Matilda was there answering queries and being helpful.  This sort of engagement is great! There are two issues here, though:

1. It’s perhaps naive to assume that everyone will be aware of BGG as a rules resource, and will therefore have no way of resolving similar inquiries. And…
2. On at least one of the questions, the response from her was basically a shrug, not knowing how to resolve it and putting it to the players to decide.

I am, ironically in this case, extremely willing to house rule games, but usually it’s with lighter, party-style fare, not densely-woven strategy titles. Something about “do whichever you want” in this context doesn’t sit entirely well to me, as though it’s a known issue that playtesting can and should have sussed out, but didn’t, and so we’re left with something that’s slightly incomplete.

One could make comparisons to the game’s history here to justify it, but my skeptically wrinkling eyebrows as I read the response belied a different reaction.

Even ignoring that instance, some examples of play that cover the edge cases in the other rules questions would cover the game’s bases on other ambiguities, likely without bloating the rulebook to an onerous extent.

Still, the vast majority of the game is unambiguous and streamlined enough that I’ve had no true issues playing it. But these observations were pronounced enough that I felt it was worth mentioning in a review.

The Tricky Matter of Gaming Context

With all of this praise, it might be confusing to read that I hedged mightily on purchasing this game.

This, though, is because I know my gaming life.

See, the opacity in victory conditions – or rather, how to strategically navigate the game to take advantage of victory opportunities – is not something that will be apparent to nearly anyone on a first play. Or often even a second session. I sure as hell felt like it was fun but opaque through my first few plays.

The rules themselves are streamlined in Penning compared to many other Pax games, but the implications of those actions are sometimes confusing and dense.

And so this is a tough one when it comes to making first impressions. And if you play with a rotating cast of characters (say, in a club or at public meetups) or with people who own so many games that they rarely ever sink into a single game too much, it’s tough to recommend Penning.

I bought and then quickly sold Pax Porfiriana previously for exactly the same reason. Your first session needs to be a “learning game” and ideally you have 2-3 of these sessions before you’re ever worried about competing. But this doesn’t jive well with a lot of modern gaming.

Purcashing and ownership is an individual decision, but I include this for those who might have similar considerations. It’s tough to elicit the best moments from the game without a group where everyone has absorbed the basics of play and strategy. It can deliver on its promise in smaller ways in a single session, enough that I haven’t shed it from my collection, but it teeters on that edge for me due to these difficulties.

Some others may be in the same situation, but if none of the above raises alarm bells for your gaming group(s), you’re likely in the clear.

Pax Penning – Conclusions

I said that Pax Penning is likely my favorite Pax game, and that’s true. But it’s not the only one I’d want to play.

I enjoy Pax Pamir’s shifting alliances that reward opportunistic thinking and cause us to reflect on what “victory” means in an ongoing proxy war that leaves its inhabitants in a worse state.

I enjoy the direct, zero-sum victory conditions in Pax Porfiriana, and how the most brutal moments can feel like a true knife in the back, or perhaps a gut punch since no one is hiding their intentions throughout its bloody proceedings.

I enjoy Renaissance for how quickly it can play and how it adeptly maps the sweep of civilization through much of Europe, albeit in generalized ways.

Penning is perhaps the most interesting to me as a game where both the gameplay experience and victory feels like an emergent conversation between players. There’s a lot of unknowns, confusion, and miscommunication, just like in actual conversations! But it’s one that can’t wholly be attributed to the market of abilities and their application, but rather how you collude, manipulate, oppose and cooperate with other players outside of the strictly mechanical elements to craft a narrative together.

It’s a game as evocative of both its theme and design intent as I can name in gaming, which is quite a feat. It is categorically not a vision for every gamer, but it can be an excellent one for the subset who loves what it delivers.