 So Hansa Teutonica we pointedly waited to do this review because for a while well rim waited I was fine doing it Yeah, but we've lately just due to constraints of time and due to feeling very self-assured in our ability to assess games quickly Have been reviewing games, especially tabletop games based on one playthrough. Sometimes that's enough. Yep And you know what? Koo, COUP, one play was enough. In the case of Hansa Teutonica One playthrough was also enough, but I had to be sure Okay, I wanted to give a real deep review of this game I haven't played it enough to go really deep like we can go deep enough like four or five times We have not solved it. However, I can say this Hansa Teutonica Came out in 2009 Andreas Stedding is a stand-up tabletop game that is quick to play Quick to teach and has survived repeated plays with experienced and skilled gamers That is more than I can say for most tabletop games that have ever existed Yeah, that's more than I can say for most tabletop games that I own I think the fundamental thing with Hansa Teutonica, right? Is you look at a lot of board games out there that have multiple victory conditions or Multiple ways paths to generating victory points like Kalis. You can go in the castle You can try to do the gold thing try to do the buildings Then in most of those games Most of those games one way is just better than the other in Kalis You should just go for the castle fuck everything else, right? Unless you get some magic jeweler thing and even then he lost by a point like it still didn't work It was just close, but in the five six times I played Hansa Teutonica, right? All ways are not necessarily viable in a single instance of the game But across playing the game multiple times based on what people do Different ones will become the way you should have gone like if the game is going long Then the key becomes the way to go the key and the network and building houses But that means you need your privilege of awful. The game is really short, right? Yeah, you know that then like one colon is you could might be enough to win you and cold guy learn that when me and Roe just fucking blitz the end of the game and left everybody behind Yeah, and it's like you get like these piddly points like during the course of the game just from building offices and it's like Those points usually don't matter if people get a whole bunch of end of game points But if you can get enough of those points quickly enough the game will just fucking end And then those end of game points will be so insignificant compared to the during game points So it's like not only yet to choose a path of victory But you have to see how the game is going and if there's a lot of players You don't have a lot of control over how the game is going and you have to play For the path that is going to be the winning path in that game Yep, not in Hans Newtonica overall. That is what makes this game so fascinating to me And why I have such a high opinion of it because let's look at two similar like two different directions of game Agricola has the same there are multiple paths to victory, but you just get the baby Yep, well get the baby. Yeah, but there's other like do you do you go for house upgrade points? Or do you go for animal points? Well, your cards usually tell you what to do. They do and the resource is available Usually tell you what to do and you sort of have to do a little bit of everything to get a good score in that game Anyway, exactly. So you have two things affecting the game in the sense on one hand Your strategy is driven. What by your preference and your cards not so much by what anyone else is doing So if if I see scots going for a house upgrade that almost doesn't affect my strategy at all And as you were going for house upgrade now, I'm taking it from you Even then usually you're not taking it from me because the game's set up to where two people doing the same thing Isn't too big. There's enough for two people to do the same thing. There's not enough for three people No, the only game interaction though. It comes down to blocking scots move at a critical point Oh, you wanted to build the baby. Well, guess what? I'm on the baby. You can't build the baby this turn That that kind of blocking other players is all that matters and two the game has extremely Diminishing returns in every victory point direction forcing you to do all of them at least a little Now go in the other direction a game like El Grande has the direct player fucking the direct player interaction everything I do Directly relates to what you do and before and after what I do I move some pieces there you have to react to that the game is so reactive Your strategy has to be so high level in meta, but as a result the game is almost purely political Hansa to tonica Has the direct interaction the game is extremely reactionary your strategy Mostly has to revolve around reacting to other players on a tactical level And maybe changing strategies mid game But at the same time you still have this solitaire sort of build up optimization It takes the best aspects of a game like agricola and the best aspects of a game like el grande Mages them together into something that's actually really quick to play right so the way the game works generally is that you have Cubes and discs fuck with the actually name. Oh, yeah, actually we got it. We get so Problem with this game the rulebook is garbage We complain about rule books and tabletop games being poorly written for the last decade bad as attica. No, I'm not attica um, uh Hella helis helis. It's not as bad as helis. Attica's got to find rules Attica's fine helis is the bad read the rules In old game like portorico or tiggers new fradies or bonanza And then read the rules to Hansa to tonica and I defy you not to try to shoot yourself in the right So there's one piece the disc is called a merchant and the cube is called a trader Okay, I don't fuck you gonna keep that straight Well, do you draw them from your stockpile of merchant traders or your supply my supply or my stockpile No, fuck that we called it the disc in the cube And we called it the the graveyard and then whatever the graveyard and the supply No, the graveyard in the bag the bag and the general term bag is an action And the general term discs and cubes collectively are dudes So for example, you must play a disc on this place But you may return a dude from your supply meaning either a disc or a cube Yeah, seriously don't like the rulebook just cross out There are problems with the rulebook besides the fact that it names things weirdly That we had this game taught to us by multiple people multiple times and they all got shit wrong until Rim read the rules extremely carefully and referred to board game geek multiple times and while I was reading them Was repeatedly swearing out loud. Yes We might even still be playing it wrong, but I doubt it. Yeah, I think we're pretty good now All right. So anyway, the way the game works is that you have Dudes cubes and discs right and you put them on the board on these roads and each road is a number of spaces Once you've filled it it takes, you know actions to get guys out there and fill up a road But eventually you fill up a road Then you can use an action to score the road when you score the road You can usually just put one of your dudes at the end of the road either end if there's two ends Every road has two ends except for the ending roads. Those have two ends Uh, yeah, every road has two ends. They have to yeah, I guess so um But anyway, and then you put your guy one of your guys who was on the road into the space on the end of the road Now if any road that has it is touching that guy Right, you're gonna get points pretty much when people scored in that general area But there are a few roads that are magic roads and if you score on those you can score normally or You can upgrade your shit to be more efficient So you have a little eclipse style thing in front of you meaning you've got a board where you put a bunch of Cubes and discs on it covering up things and to upgrade when you do that action You take a cube or disc off of the appropriate spot put it into your bag Aka your supply and then your power is upgraded So you lift a cube off the axiones and now daddy three axiones So the the things you can upgrade is you can upgrade your axiones We're going to use our terms not the game's terms right well axiones I think is also the game's term anyway. It's just actions. Yeah, it's just more actions So obviously that's the that's a basic thing to go for it's not a bad thing to go for at all Yep, for example take two actually just good to get more action. It's just on your turn. How many actions? I got five having a baby in a Gricola. It's pretty strong. Yep The bag so the bag isn't one of the actions you can take is to get guys from the graveyard into the supply So or the only yeah, you can only use guys who are in who are not in the graveyard So being able to get more guys out of the graveyard with a single action Basically saves you actions So upgrading that is very similar to upgrading your axiones and that it increases your efficiency Of getting shit done. Yep. There's the Lieber Sophia or as we call them Liebers Or just discs the Liebers is really powerful the Lieber Is one of the actions you can use is to helicopter guys around the board So it's sometimes you might be able to get guys onto the board for free But they'll be in a bad place So you can use the helik the Lieber helicopter to move guys The more you upgrade the Lieber the more guys you can move with a single action That's really freaking strong and also upgrading it. Remember the mechanic. I said it's a clip style You take the cube or in this case the disc off of that area and bring it into your bag So now you have more discs right so you start the game with one discs And there's four discs sitting on the board to get more those four extra discs Well, three extra discs you need to upgrade the Lieber which is upgrading the helicopter power There's the privilege as we like to call it Right, so there are certain places on the board where you can't put a guy because they're upgraded colors And you need to upgrade your privilegum right your privilege to go into those spaces Yeah, mini maxi and maxi. So there's like there's a lot of spaces like no one can go and there won't be any competition for those spaces because People don't have privilegum. So if you get privilegum, you can just go there uncontested and it's pretty freaking strong Yep And the final upgrade is the key the key doesn't do anything to make you more efficient It's a score multiplier at the end of the game It multiplies one of the scoring aspects of the game So it's the network aspect So if you have a large network of dudes in houses on the board at the end of the game You get a lot of points for that the key will multiply the number of points you get for that if you upgrade the key So that can be really strong scoring wise But if you don't have a big network or if the game is very short not allowing anyone to build a big network Upgrading the key is pretty futile. Yep. It doesn't do anything for you until the end Right So usually the key gets rushed at the end, but it's really easy to get early. So maybe you just go for it early But then never if the game doesn't go long You just wasted that shit and if someone else goes for the key early Maybe try to rush the game so it ends quickly So their key is useless because if they if they went key early and the game goes long They're just gonna win So to give you a sense of all these multiples has a victory you can form a network So as you put guys in these towns, you're your largest contiguous branching network So not a line like most games are just every everything they can get to everything else The biggest branch you can possibly make blob basically You just multiply the number of dudes you've got out there in that branch times the key value Which goes up to four which can be tremendous that can be alone. We'll just win the game I've seen people get 20 30 plus more points than any other scoring mechanism combined, right? You also get points at the end of the game for every special disc you use We'll talk about those last the plates plates You also get points for every city that you control in terms of having a lot of guys in those cities Like you're controlling that one city. Yeah, it's like, okay I didn't make a network, but I just got control of a lot of spots. You know, so that's times two It's pretty strong And there's the colon table where you can upgrade there and put a disc into it Just to get a big fuck ton of victory points at the end It's pretty much just get points and usually that's the way to get a lot of points If you have when row filled up three of those things Yeah, you need privilegum to get those colon points except for the lowest one and that adds up because it's like what eight nine Ten eleven or something like that or nine ten eleven twelve The top one's eleven. All right, so it's eight nine ten eleven. What's eight plus nine? It's not a bigger jump I forget the numbers like seven eight nine eleven Whatever it's a big freaking score if you can get more than one in there So upgrading your privilegum and then getting colons is just a pile of points You can ignore the rest of the game, but you are giving up your discs to make that happen Yeah, you need to get Lieber's also. So if you go all Lieber all privilegum, then you can go colon and get those points Seriously, you might think we're being dumb for not using the terminology in the book the book fucking sucks So the way you actually play and that well, oh, there's more points If you control the city anyone who scores that city from any road Yeah, I talked about that all right Yeah, you get a point There's some bonus points for scoring certain places and putting your dudes on them So scoring in a hot area early So like if I go to the city that's touching the axiones road and I put a dude in it early Anyone else who tries to upgrade their axiones is going to end up giving me a point when they do so unless I immediately jump in there With my privilegum sure and get above you, but that's then you're not getting axione either Yep, but you also get points and I get a point when you do that at the two ends of the map There's two red flag cities if you connect them with dudes Which happens more often than you think it would you get a pile of points and all the all this second set of points We talked about you get during the game Yep, the rest of the points are at the end and that's key because the way the games end are one if all if 10 of the cities on the board get full of dudes never happened and never get any game I've played ever two if the I think the better order to do this and so to run out Yep, if the special plates that we haven't talked about yet are all taken There's some nuance around that, but it's pretty straightforward. The place run out. Yep Or three if anyone gets to 20 points now the scoring track goes all the way around the board to 100 Which makes you think ah ha the end of game scoring Right is really most of the points and you know it and a lot of games it is But because that that end of game score is so low just 20 it's possible to rush it may and Preventing anyone from having a large end of game scoring Scalls scores overall will be low and those 20 points that you got really quickly might just be enough to end the game So there's another reason this game is so interactive the actions you can take the actual things you do with your axiones now again On your cheat sheet eclipse board There are five little reminders as to what the actions do They are Worse than bullshit. They will confuse you. I would recommend cutting them off of your game I would actually recommend blacking them out putting stickers over them They anyone new who tries to look at those things just gets confused as to what they mean They're literally worthless But you can pull guys out of your bag. You can put guys on the board You can move guys around with your Libra helicopter. You can score something scoring takes an action Or and here's where the game gets doubly interactive You can displace someone from a spot. They're already on on the road so let's say there's a road to upgrade axiones, right and I put two guys on it one two then rim goes and he puts a guy in the third spot And that's that's the whole road. Well in order to score the road I have to have the road have three guys on it that are all mine. So either A I leave those guys there forever pointlessly. Yep B I helicopter them away to a different road or C I bump rim off that road taking control of it and allowing myself to score it But if I bump rim off I have to spend not only one guy to put a guy there in place of rims guy But another guy has to go into the graveyard who had to fight rim And then I get to take the guy he bumped and put him on an adjacent road And I could take a guy from my graveyard and put him on the board So he basically gets a free action of putting a guy onto the board And a free action of getting the guy out of the graveyard. So it's super helps someone when you bump them off So getting bumped is a really reactionary thing people are trying to get bumped sometimes and sometimes they don't want to get Right. Well, it's like if you upgrade your bag allowing you to get guys out of your graveyard really efficiently Then you want to be a bumper, right? Because it's so easy for you to bump people off You have tons of extra guys, but if you keep bumping people you obviate their need to ever bag Right. If you're getting bumped a lot, you can just upgrade your lever and helicopter Right. And then when someone bumps you it's like, okay, I have to move my I get extra guys on the board But they're in a shitty location But that's fine because I'll just helicopter them into place really efficiently So the lever discs the merchants I guess to bump them you got to bump two daddies Two guys go into the graveyard and then the guy you bumped gets two extra guys out of his That's why lever is so strong just upgrade lever put discs out and then get people to bump your discs off And you'll get all these free guys on the board without having to upgrade your bag And then because you upgraded lever already you can helicopter them into the good position really quickly So with all of this there's also special plates And you're going to fuck those rules up like three or four times before you get it right There's always supposed to be three on the board unless the game is over So many games we've played with all smart people We ended up with two on the board one on the board five on the board How the fuck did that happen every we all fucked it up? Yep So at the end of every turn our meme we always say is is plate integrity maintained Yeah And then everyone has to agree that it is before we continue to the next turn Yep The plates if you score a road that has a plate pointed at it You get the plate and then you can take a new plate to put somewhere on the board The plates have powers like remove three dudes from the board or hey guys four extra actions right now Some of the plates are just obviously more strong like the five four or five extra actions at once But I find those to be weaker. I like the uh, they're very very strong And I like the remove three dudes the swap one can be very strong in the right situation But in other situations it can be worthless right the remove three dudes is ridiculously strong in just about any situation Oh, and the plates are especially if your bag is not upgraded the plates are also worth points The more you get the more points each one is worth Right so it's like you can just play for the plates and then using the plates also Helps you get more plates and more other things also I've seen people win this game ignoring everything and just trying to get every plate as fast as possible Yeah, it can and that ends the game as well So even if no one gets to 20 points if you get enough plates you can end the game pretty quickly This is a game primarily if you want to talk about the skills involved of predicting what other players strategies are and coming up with the best counter to them While simultaneously obfuscating what you're doing or putting yourself into such a position of strength that people can't stop you It's not a game where I can tell you like settlers just do this one of these two things every game It's like all right. You have to really assess what's going on in the whole lay of the land every turn See what everyone's doing and there will be a different path to go every different game based on what people have done Yep, and your path might change mid game You also just might be fucked based on where you're sitting or something. Yep a pretty powerful strategy I've found is to focus on a few things like I'll upgrade your actions a little bit Yeah, just focus on something basic early on until you see the lay of the land Yep, and wait and see and hope that people move the game in a certain direction That you can then react to and capitalize on the fact that you were waiting for them to move The theme of the game has something to do with the the hunziatic league Yeah, and it doesn't exist. We can't figure out what the fuck is going on Yeah, we ignore all the theming of the game trading some shoe, whatever who cares That's why there's that game like games like portorico or a tiggers and euphrates to this day Hold this extra tier for us because one they're extremely complex well thought out mechanically as games But two the theme is Integrally woven into the games in such a wonderful and nuanced way that a lot of more modern games just don't do This game has terrible iconography It's extremely confusing without a very specific and detailed explanation of how to upgrade everything and how everything works Someone who read the rules 20 times and the internet But uh, otherwise it's a really solid game. I'm really surprised it held up I mean thern in taxes, which we loved didn't make it through four playthroughs before we figured it out We were done with it. Yeah, this game. I think we'll have a decent bit of staying power And everyone seems to really like like take it to ride basically. Yeah This is more like those older german board games with cubes In a lot of ways Another i'll point out, you know, if we're talking about strategy If you upgrade your actions or your bag once You get an immediate bonus If you upgrade your actions a second time you don't get a bonus you have to upgrade it a third time So it's usually not worth it to try to blitz actions hard Your best bet is to blitz actions as fast as possible just to get to three actions And then you don't need that fourth action immediately. You can do that opportunistically if you're clever Yeah, it's like if there's an opportunity to just be like Helicopter score with two actions to get that axionist upgraded. I would go for it Yeah, but don't spend three turns orchestrating your four actions early game That you get much more bang for your butt getting that third action and then going somewhere else or getting bag one bag upgrade Which is probably easier to get and is also going to save you actions Yep, if all the other players are like just having this death match with discs everywhere around the actions Go upgrade your key and your privilege a whole bunch. Yeah, or just start taking cities in the middle Yep, that's if people forget they can take cities in this game. That's another thing is that usually in a game Right, there's like a hot spot where all the valuable shit is and people fight over that in this game This is valuable shit all over the place. There's not like areas of the board that are dead Why would you ever go there? It's like no the whole board is hot. There'll be a plate over there That's looking hot. There'll be a nice city. You can get over there easy connection Right, you can go for the colon if no one's going for the colon. It's like that's worth a ton of points It's pretty hot if you just sneak in there once everyone's going for all those other hot things I'll just take some axione right it's just hot stuff everywhere And you'll see once people if you play with people who've played a lot There'll be cubes all over the place not just in like one area. That's awesome Yep Now it's interesting the game takes two to five players But there are three variants to accomplish that two player has this thing where there's these nights that move around I haven't played it. We haven't either people say it's not that great. Okay Three and two and three well two and three player use one side of the board Four and five player use another side of the board that has just more connections between cities I think the game is best with three or five players board game geek says the game is best with five players But three and five are very different kind of like the difference between three and five in Puerto Rico Very different strategies very different game I worry that with four players the board's a little too open Yeah And but I think four players doesn't work on the smaller one So I think you should try to avoid playing with four people go for three or five So I don't know what else I can say I mean you guys should play this game If you're playing board games play this one So Andrea is steady. It's interesting because I actually didn't know who he was and he doesn't seem to have a lot of Games at least that are known in the u.s To his name Like scottish highland whiskey race That's amazing. Yeah, I don't care what that game is Yeah, hispania is the only one that I've heard of okay. I mean italia. I've seen but I've never played Hard of africa. I've seen but I've never played Uh, oh the Hansa tutana expansion. I need that. All right. God damn it. Who knows what's in that thing Yeah, I kind of really want it now. Okay, and it doesn't look like he's published anything since 2010 Huh, maybe he's working on a masterpiece