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Hansa Teutonica
Author: Andreas Steding
Publisher: Argentum Verlag
Year: 2009


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In ‘Hansa Teutonica’ players try to place their cubes and discs, traders and merchants, as smart as possible at various trade routes on the map to score points. They erect trading posts or complete trade routes, with which they occasionally expand their own abilities. Through the expansion of these abilities they have, sometimes temporarily but you cannot have all, an advantage over their concurrents, the other players, who also look for opportunities for a maximum score.

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These abilities can be found on a clarifying player board, dressed as a desk. On this desk one of these abilities is the amount of actions a player has; at the start of the game he has two. One of a player’s action could be placing a cube or disc on a route. Placing two of these at the start of the game has a player already finishing his turn. Nice swift game! Next player!

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When a trade route between two cities has been completed, a player may choose, with a separate action, to erect a trading post in one of the adjoining cities.  When doing so, he takes one of the placed traders or merchants from the finished route and places it in the city that has room for one to four trading posts. This way a trading network can be set up and expanded, scoring at the end of the game. Players also score when a trade route is completed by himself or others, provided he has a trading post in one or both of the adjoining cities. In these cities the trading posts rule by strict hierarchy: only the last player that has built a trading post has the most rights and scores!
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But two actions is just a little wee bit! How can this be increased? The abilities on the player board are covered by cubes and discs, revealing the next higher (or sometimes the same) capacity when one of these abilities is developed and a cube or disc taken away. For increasing his actions, a player would have to complete the trade route between Göttingen and Quedlingburg, choose for the action ‘development’ and take a cube from the action section on his player board. Great, now he has three actions already! And when a player really goes for it, he could develop this action section to a maximum of five actions per turn!
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When a route is completed and after any action what to do with it, the rest of these players cubes and discs go to the supply and only come back with a separate action. When resupplying a player gets three of these back at gane start but this action can be developed too by completing a specific route on the board and choosing for development – in a separate action!
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Between the cities of Coellen and Warburg bonus points scan be scored when a player has completed this route and placed a disc from his route on this bonus track. The disc – no cube! – already had to be part of the route and the colour on the bonus track must already have been developed on the player’s desk. And developing these colours is done on another route! Oh, and a player gains more discs by... developing, right, but somewhere at yet another route!
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In this way players score during the game and try to optimize the conditions for scoring bonus points at the end of the game.
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The game ends under one of three conditions and this sees that the game length is limited to ninety minutes. This still is not really short, and one of the few shortcomings of the game, but as with the most development games the train must first get under steam before it is able to ride. Therefore the first turns of the game seem to unfold quite identical: a run on the expanding of the number of actions or developing the resupply action. An erected trading post at these ‘development’ routes can be very profitable for the player who gives priority to it.

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Through these various points of interest the game has a nicely entwined  mechanism; a player wants this and a player wants that, and this makes that he cannot do ‘that’ if he has chosen for ‘this’.

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There is ample room for players to follow their own strategy: building a large network that scores points at the end of the game, or instead score a lot during the game by repeatedly completing trade routes where  a player has built trading posts.  The East-West route, scoring seven points for the first player who establishes it, is less attractive because it can easily be countered by other players. The bonus points that can be earned in Coellen are a better, shorter and therefore easier investment.
Because blocking the completion of another player’s route is part of the game, displacing these blocking stones is also part of it, and this deliberate blocking can be played to a players own advantage. The displaced trader or merchant may be placed on an adjacent route, together with a free trader from the supply. This way a player could complete a trade route outside his turn!

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Steding’s trademark seems to be the juggling with cubes: the ingenious ‘Kogge’ and the sly ‘Power & Weakness’ are earlier examples of this, and in ‘Hansa Teutonica’ we encounter it again. Playing against a historical background is nice but is of no importance as cubes stay cubes, and so this is a rather abstract game that one likes or not. But in contrast of other cube handling games, the structure stays in the background, and instead of a restriction by a mechanism the players are offered a palette of opportunities they can freely choose from. This freedom of acting and thereby the freedom for a player of following his own strategy, makes the game captivating. So in answer to the question if ‘Hansa Teutonica’ is a good game, the answer can be short but is somewhat longer: yes – but not too much importance should be allocated to the hype that arose after the game’s appearance. We really grant you the succes Andreas, but we know what you have more on your desk!
© 2010 Richard van Vugt

Hansa Teutonica, Andreas Steding, Argentum Verlag, 2009 - 2 to 5 players, 12 years and up, 45-90 minutes


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