Slick rogue-like where you skill up your units (up to 4 on map at a time) to defend a new island each round from a variety of viking enemies. It feels fair as you can see the terrain of upcoming islands and the types of marauders and choose the ones that suit the army you have built. There is no story or even any impetus to try out different builds on successive runs, which seems a weakness.
The Transamire Campaigns is essentially a series of Risk-battles. That is, you battle with numbers of generic units over a map broken into areas, onto which you are randomly deployed at the start of the battle, and then at turn end receive reinforcements based on the amount of the map you control. The dice mechanic is slightly different - one die per unit, add them up, high roll wins; units are capped at 8 per area: overall that is faster than Risk and the odds of winning feel similar though less swingy. Reinforcements are randomly deployed to your areas at turn end; you earn one per area controlled. There is a sequence of battles is handled on a "meta-map" - usually you start with 2 meta areas and have a choice of reinforcing your troops or starting a battle with a neighbour. There are also some cards you can spend that have some influence on battle outcome. If you like Risk, you'll probably like this: the interface is smooth; each battle is on a random map; the AI plays a good game. It does however have the problem of Risk that your chance of winning is largely determined by the random placement of your troops on the board at the outset of battle - if you are near a defendable section and have most of your troops clumped you have a chance. It is also possible that you will be wiped out before you even get to have a turn. This is not as bad as it sounds as you only lose a "meta-area" if the AI team that initiated the battle is the winner: if one of the other factions wins the battle, then you keep your map area. It also can take a long time to play as each battle ends up with a 2p battle as opponents are eliminated, and you are evenly matched it can go on a long time. The same is true on the meta-map too where you and an opponent can trade an area back and forth with progressing the game.
