Hansa Teutonica

[Gerald]

In Hansa Teutonica, the players act as traders trying to get victory points for building a network of offices, controlling cities, collecting bonus markers or for other traders using the cities they control. After controlling a line between two cities with your pawns you can decide to build an office (and maybe also establish control and/or get a bonus marker) or to get a skill improvement from some of the cities.

Players have to improve their traders' "skills" for the following effects: getting more VP from offices in their network, getting more available action points, increasing the number of available pawns, and getting the right to place pawns and get more special pawns.

This game appeared originally as Wettstreit der Händler at the Hippodice competition.

Here's a review from BGG (submitted by toulouse):

Intro & Background
When I was reviewing the awesome BoardgameNews.com Essen spiel preview, as I do several times leading up to Essen, I pretty much ignored Hansa Teutonica, as it didn’t seem to offer anything new or interesting. In fact, after reading the preview, even “meh” seemed like giving it the benefit of the doubt. After Essen, however, I started to hear a few rumblings that this might be a game I would be interested in. I played it for the first time at BGG.con (thanks, Tom!), and immediately purchased it. In fact, I got up from the table and said “if you don’t mind, I need to make sure I get one of these right now” and left the other four players to clean up, which is normally unacceptable, but in this case I didn’t care...I had to have a copy of this game. Since then I’ve played it seven more times, including at least once with each number of players (2-5). So you probably have an idea of where I’m going to end up with in this review.

Hansa Teutonica is a classic euro game in the veins of Tikal, China/Web of Power and Caylus. Initially it feels an awful lot like China/WoP, but as I’ve played it more I’d have to describe it as a supercharged Tikal with the wide variety of Caylus-like choices. The China/WoP “with a tech tree” descriptor is still there as a minor reference, but the action limitations and wide variety of placement options move it quite a bit away from the simplistic gameplay and limited choices of those games.

Each turn each player has a limited number of actions which they can use to claim cities for VPs, increase their abilities, block other players, or set themselves up to do any of the above. A lot of mechanisms are rehashed from other games but they fit together amazingly well to provide a fantastic classic euro gaming experience.

Components
Hansa Teutonica comes in a flat “standard” size large box, with hideous artwork (this is of course subjective, but it reminds me of high school art class walls, and the dude on the cover is effeminately creepy looking, though I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intentional). While the game comes in English and German, by looking at the front of the box and the sides you’d think it was only in German. The front has the phrase “Ein Stratiespiel von Andreas Steding” which of course means it's a strategy game by Andreas Steding, but to the non-German aware it might as well say “this isn’t something you silly Americans can play, move along please.” Fortunately, the back of the box has an English description as well as a German description, but (like the rules, covered in more detail below), the English was written by a non-native speaker, and the result ends up being comical and may indeed scare off English-speaking gamers who might attribute the poor translation to an overall lack of game quality.

Inside the box you’ll find a few large cardboard punchouts, including player mats (called “escritoires” in the rules, which serves to simply slow down rule reading and comprehension), Bonus Markers and Totally Unnecessary Soldiers(tm). There’s also a big bag of cubes and discs and a Pawn Thinger, and a double-sided board (one side for 2-3 players and the other for 4-5 players, ala China). And German/English rules in a full size, fully illustrated booklet.

The player mats are well designed, though a little busy due to the need to show numbers both on and under each of the tech advances. This can cause confusion initially, and the yellow player is at an even greater disadvantage, as the “gold” VP indicators are a very similar color and shape to the numbers under each ability. The mats are in a bit of an odd shape to represent a 3D desk or counter, but I didn’t pick up on that until I was looking up a rule and saw them stacked on top of each other.

The cubes and discs are painted wood, just a wee bit smaller than I like but certainly serviceable considering the gameboard (which probably would have had to be larger if larger cubes/discs were used). You’ll definitely want to bag this game using seven small (I suggest 3x3’s) bags: one for each of the players’ color cubes/discs, one for the bonus markers and city completion cube, and one for the two player Totally Unnecessary Soldiers and Pawn Thinger. Throughout this review I call the cubes and discs “Kontors” as they are referred to in the rules.

The bonus markers are metal plates with food on one side (very unappetizing food, it looks old and leathery) and the bonus on the other side. They will get lost on the board and when placed on the appropriate spot on your player mat.

The board is quite busy but again serviceable. There’s a lot going on there, and a few of the scrolls are not quite as tied into the cities they’re supposed to be as I’d like, but after one game most players shouldn’t have any problems.

The rules for Hansa Teutonica are written, as noted above, by a non-native English translator, and the result is often quite amusing. My personal favorite is the section describing triggers for the final scoring: “And of the Game”. It doesn’t help that there are Latin terms mixed in with the English. However, the rules are certainly suitable for playing and adequate for a reference. Even though I was taught the game, I could see myself having learned it from the rules. While there are a few ambiguities throughout, none are critical to gameplay, and it was easy to make logical assumptions where there were questions.

Setup
Setup is pretty quick: Three of the bonus markers are placed face up on the three villages on the board, each player places cubes on all but the leftmost spots on each of the skill tracks on his player mat, one cube on the 0 spot of the VP track on the gameboard, and each players’ remaining cubes are divided into two groups: a personal supply and a general supply (we call this “El Grande” style). The starting player gets 5 in his personal supply, the 2nd player gets 6 and so on.

Mechanics
On their turn, each player may do any number of actions, determined by the rightmost empty spot on the action skill track (on the upper right of the player mat). Everyone initially starts with two actions, and throughout the game each player may increase the number of actions available up to 5 actions. The actions available to each player are:

Resupply Kontors: Bring the number of Kontors from your General supply into your Personal supply as indicated by your “bag” level skill track on your player mat.

Allocate Kontors: Place a kontor (cube or disc) on an empty spot on any road.

Displace Kontors: Replace an opponent’s Kontor with your own, paying one kontor to your general supply to replace a cube and two to replace a disc. Your opponent immediately moves the displaced Kontor to a new nearby empty road spot, and places one or two additional kontors from their general supply nearby as well.

Move Kontors: Move the number of Kontors indicated by the current “book” level on your player mat to any other empty locations on the board.

Establish a trade route: We tend to call this “claim a road.” Once all the spots between any two cities are filled with your own Kontors, you may do this action. Claiming a road lets you either (a) place a Kontor in a city on either side of the road (limited by kontor type and your current “privilege” color) or (b) remove a Kontor from the associated skill track if there is a related scroll in one of the two cities. The removed Kontor goes into your personal supply.

The player mat shows five difference skill tracks, which can be upgraded during the “Establish a Trade route” action if your trade route ends in a city that has a scroll that matches the skill track you wish to enhance.

The five skill tracks are:

  - Town Key: This increases the multiplier for your “Cloud” of connected cities at the end of the game.

  - Actions: This increases the number of actions available to you each turn.

  - Privilege: This allows you to place in empty city spots with different colors (initially you may place in only white).

  - Book: This gives you a disc instead of a cube, and increases the number of Kontors you can move each action.

  - Resupply Bags: This increases the number of Kontors you get when you resupply from the General supply to your personal Supply.

Whenever a trade route is established, the player(s) who controls the cities on either side gets a VP. A player is in control of a city if they have majority in that city, with ties being broken by the rightmost Kontor. If a bonus marker is on that route, the player who establishes the route gets the bonus marker to use as a free action from any point onwards. On the same turn, that player puts out a new bonus marker on the route of his choice. This last rule is the one that everyone forgets. The player mat has a place for the new bonus marker to go until it is placed, but it makes the marker blend in with the mat. There are so many things going on during someone’s turn that this has been a slight issue for our games (especially because not having the new marker out changes what the next player will potentially do). There’s also a special “scroll” in the lower left of the board that provides VPs at the end of the game.

The game ends instantly when one players’ score reaches 20, or if 10 cities are full, or if a Bonus Marker can’t be replaced (because they’ve run out). Then the final scoring happens, with bonuses for Bonus Markers, 2 pts for each controlled city, 1 point for each city you have a Kontor in that is in the largest contiguous group (the “cloud”) times the key on your mat, 4 pts for each completed skill track, and additional points for each of the discs you’ve placed in the lower left (at Coellen). The player with the most points wins the game, and there’s no tiebreaker (in the 8 games I’ve played, it’s never been closer than 5 points or so between the winner and the next player).

Optimal number of players: 5
Hansa Teutonica plays from 2-5 players, with 5 being ideal as it causes the most contention. With two players, there are special rules:
Place the Totally Unnecessary Soldiers on the board at setup: : For some reason, there are cardboard soldiers you place in spots to separate a few areas of the board into provinces. Why these weren’t just printed on the 2-3 player side of the board to begin with (it wouldn’t have impacted 3 player games) is a mystery. You never move them, they’re there the whole game, they get bumped occasionally leading to potential confusion, and they are, as stated above, Totally Unnecessary.
Move the Pawn Thinger up to two spaces before or after your turn
In order to use the Allocate, Displace or Establish a Trade Route actions, the Pawn Thinger must be in the province
You can move the Pawn Thinger anywhere for the cost of one action
The two player game is actually quite good, and the movement of the Pawn Thinger can be very strategic, especially in the early game.

Game Length
The game takes roughly 1-2 hours to play, more with more people. This is NOT a game you want to play with A/P gamers, as the game will come to a screeching halt when it is their turn. We had one such player at my first game, and he took longer than all of the other players combined. As always, this is subjective, but unless you really like that A/P player, don’t play this game with them.

Strategy
Here's a few pointers that might help you out:
  - Bags and Actions are important in the early game.
  - Getting into cities near the scrolls early on can result in a lot of VPs throughout the game.
  - Blocking gets you lots of “free” cubes on the board.

Rating and Summary
Hansa Teutonica is now my top Essen 2009 release, supplanting Tarantula Tango, Fast Food and Ubongo 3D. I think it has the legs to be a classic “heavy” euro, and I expect to play it quite a bit in the near future.

[Gerald]

Here's another review from BGG (submitted by James Sheahan):

Hansa Teutonica had a lot of good reports during Spiel 09, and even more afterwards. It was on my list of games to check out but, at a glance, it looked a bit dry. However, having played it now, Hansa Teutonica has a lot of really good things inside it and should not be missed.

The board shows lots of cities and routes in between them. Each route has spaces along it which can be occupied by player’s traders (cubes) or merchants (discs). Merchants are less numerous, can be used instead of traders, and for some actions only a merchant will do. [Note: I shall refer to traders and merchants as pieces unless I need to refer to one type specifically.]

Players aim to score points by building a network of trade routes between cities. Each player can perform a set amount of actions during their turn - the number of actions as well as how much each action can do is determined by the player’s escritoire. This escritoire is a desk that shows the player’s stats. During the game, the player can develop these stats.


ACTIONS
Each player starts with 2 actions per turn. An action allows a player:

- To place one of their pieces on any empty route space
- To move pieces already on routes to any empty route spaces
- To replace an opponent’s pieces already on a route space with one of their own. (In this case, the player discards an extra trader, plus their opponent gets to place their displaced piece, plus an extra one, on any empty spaces along neighbouring routes.)
- To add pieces to their supply so they are available for placing onto the board
- To claim a route


CLAIMING ROUTES
When all spaces on a route are full of a single player’s pieces, that player can claim that route. First, they remove all of their pieces from that route. Second, the player can then place one of their pieces into one of the cities at either end of the claimed route (so long as there is space and the player is allowed to use the remaining city spaces - determined by the escritoire). A piece in a city is called a Kontor.

If one of the cities at either end of the claimed route has a special option, the player can use that instead of gaining a Kontor. These special options allow the player to claim points at the end of the game, or upgrade a stat on their escritoire. Upgrades can allow a player to perform more actions, gain a merchant, add more trader/merchants to their supply in a single action, enter more city spaces, and so on.

If a player claimed a route with a bonus marker next to it, they claim this too. Bonus markers not only give the player special one-off powers (like removing three pieces from the board) but are also worth points at the end of the game.


SCORING
Some points are scored during the game. A player who controls a city (most Kontors in it - or the most recently added Kontor if tied) gets 1 point each time a route is claimed that connects to that city. Also, adding a Kontor to some city spaces can score 1 point too. As soon as one player reaches 20+ points (or if 10 cities are full, or the bonus markers run out), the game ends and final scoring occurs.

Players get points for:

- Each escritoire stat that has been increased to its maximum (4 points each)
- The number of bonus markers they own (variable)
- Routes claimed leading to the special city that awards end game points (variable)
- Each city they control (2 points each)
- The largest number of Kontors in contiguous cities multiplied by their Kontor multiplier (a stat on their escritoire from 1 - 4)


THOUGHTS
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Hansa Teutonica. As you may be able to tell from the description, Hansa Teutonica doesn’t really have any especially unique mechanics behind it. There’s a bit of El Grande, even a little hint of Ticket To Ride, and lots of others. However, it’s the combination of ideas that really delivers the great gameplay and does give it its own identity. It’s the decisions to be made that are superb: Upgrade abilities or create your network? Place Kontors early when it’s easier and they could score points, or place later when they have more chance of controlling a city? Displace a piece for your gain even though it benefits the other player? Which stat do you upgrade first/next? These are all difficult and interesting choices.

The board is constantly changing which makes it feel responsive. The rule for replacing other players’ pieces is excellent - it may be expensive but it’s still an option, it means there are no total blockages to slow the game down, and it encourages player interaction. We found we would often fill in the last space along a route already being dominated by a player just so they would displace us and we would get to add a trader for free. I really liked that game mechanic.

The theming of the escritoire is a really nice touch too, as if the player is sending out orders to his traders and merchants from his desk. Upgrading the escritoire’s stats is of central important to the player’s strategy. You need to plan which upgrades and in which order so you know which routes to aim for. Plus, you want to upgrade the stats that will most match your scoring strategy. For example, if you are going to focus on building a network of Kontors, you’ll probably want to upgrade your Kontor multiplier as much as possible at some point.

Plus, there are lots of different strategies you could try to earn points. You could aim for lots of small points during the game (shortening its duration) rather than focus on long-term points; you could aim to fully upgrade stats on your escritoire; you may build a network of Kontors and upgrade your Kontor multiplier. We all felt there were lots of interesting strategies that could be used. It seemed important to focus on one and maximise that than try to accomplish too many different strategies.

Overall, Hansa Teutonica may not be singularly original but it really does deliver a decent, deep and relatively quick Eurogame. I was glad I had a chance to play it after Spiel, in fact, so much so that I have ordered a copy of it now too. It was almost the one that got away.

[dyeyk2000]

Anybody tried this? Winning game of the year at bgg recently, and i might be almost willing to overlook the theme issues.

[Talismanic (Mark)]

I only played it once. Its an interesting game though, I would not mind playing it again. However, its in that category of games that I would play but would not buy. I think a great part of the appeal is the seemingly deep strategy the game has as well as challenging tactical choices. There is a sense of having a number of choices and not being forced to do something sub-optimal when playing (though it can happen that you choose between a lesser of evils).

That being said, its a typical Euro in the sense that you feel like your just racing around to gain VPs rather than being a merchant forming trade routes in the middle ages. It will not appeal to gamers who are primarily into conflict and AT, even if it is game of the year, though there are some blocking and mild screw-you actions in the game.  

In any case, I suggest you try it out to see if it appeals to you. 

[Talismanic (Mark)]

Also note the ff from BGG:

10 THINGS to know about HANSA TEUTONICA

1) Deutschland Uber Alles There are German games, and then there are German games. This is just about the Germaniest game you could ever hope to play. Post-Medieval historical theme? Check. Theme only tangentially related to gameplay? Check. Map/board full of subdued, muted earth tones? Check. A million little wooden blocks? Check. This game promises, if nothing else, a thoroughly Teutonic engagement. Needless to say, it delivers.

2) Berlitz Calling If you want to get the authentic Hansa Teutonica experience, you're going to be using more than just German. Sure, there are valuable little spaces on the board called "kontors" (German enough, there), but you'll also be dealing with the Latin "privilegium" and the French "escritoire". Or you can be an ugly American/Anglican and call them "houses" "privilege" and "player mat".

3) Forking Paths If you really dig multiple paths to victory, you could spend a lot of table time with Hansa Teutonica. There are so many different ways to rack up points in this game, you halfway expect everybody to win, every time. Grabbing kontors gets you points. Having a big trade network gets you points. Developing your skills/escritoire gets you points. Other people build trade routes including your city? Points. Build an across-the-map trade route? Points. Complete that one trade route in the corner with the different-colored guys holding the barrels? Points. I swear, you get points for even looking at this game.

4) Different-Colored Guys Holding Barrels? Yeah, I thought it was weird, too.

5) Defense = Offense One nice thing about Hansa Teutonica: Plenty of player interaction. Multi-player solitaire, this ain't. Particularly cool is the mechanic whereby you can dislodge another player's trader (i.e., little block or "guy") from its spot, but with a double-edged consequence... you lose a guy from your supply, and he gets to re-place his guy, plus an extra guy, elsewhere on the board. So blocking other players' trade routes often makes sense as an offensive/progressive strategy.

6) Meals on Wheels The only random element of the game is the bonus markers, little discs that have printed on one side a way you can "break the rules" and on the other side, for some charming Teutonic reason, an image of a hearty-looking meal on a plate. Some of these bonus markers are quite powerful, giving you three or four extra actions per turn; others let you usurp control of a city that you have a kontor in by swapping your position with someone with greater privilege. Just as a point of personal style, I'm not a big fan of the bonus markers; it seems to me that this game has enough going on without special "gimmes". But based on what others have said as to an evolving consensus regarding the "right" moves to open the game, that slice of randomness is probably a good thing.

7) It Will Probably Shock You To Learn This About Bonus Markers Yes, they give you points.

Go Minden I have no authority on which to suggest strategy for this game, but just at a total first glance, I'd say: Get the middle of the board. Don't dicker around too much in the corners, where the "skill developers" are. Get hold of Minden, smack in the middle, and develop a good network from there. Displace some other player's guys if you have to; they'll probably wind up building routes into your cities and dumping some more points in your lap. Maybe that's obvious advice, but if you were going into your very first Hansa Teutonica tilt, you could do worse than to bear it in mind.

9) "Do not leap out houses." This is my favorite sentence from the first-English-translation rulebook. I have no idea what the authors mean by it. And yet, I believe it to be very sound advice.

10) Endgame This is a well-done brainteaser of a game; strategically, you're juggling a lot of balls at once. It's one of those games where you finish one go-round, and immediately you're curious to see what it would be like to try some other approach. Ultimately, it's perhaps a little too abstract for me to really invest in, either emotionally or financially. But that's just me. You probably know whether or not you're "the kind of person who would really like this game." And you're probably right.

by loopster70 (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/505574/10-things-to-know-about-hansa-teutonic

[xtriker]

who has this game? I want to try it out!

[viscoos]

The only copy i know of is with earl and cath. Their house is usually available for gaming. It is in fairview

[dyeyk2000]

Hmmm thanks for the mini review Mark.

I'm generally opposed to games with poor theme implementation and poor interactivity. Will probably skip this one for now until I get to try it so I can decide better.

[Brel]

Haven't tried this board game yet but it got me interested as I think it has similar theme with the following PC / video console games that I was quite fond of playing:

• Patrician IV
• Port Royale
  
• Merchant Prince

The above games are quite addicting and simulates trading, piracy, politics, and economy.   The latest of the three, Patrician IV, has maybe the closest theme to Hansa Teutonica in that it revolves around the Hanseatic League, an economic alliance of trading cities and their guilds that dominated trade along the
coast of Northern Europe in the later Middle Ages.  It is good that Z-man republished Hansa Teutonica because it may just give further exposure to this gaming genre that I think needs a boost.  I hope somebody can create a PC/video game in this genre that can do what StarCraft did to Dune. 

[viscoos]

Brel!

Yung Port Royale hindi ba parang Sid Meier's Pirates! yun?

[Brel]

Brel!

Yung Port Royale hindi ba parang Sid Meier's Pirates! yun?

Oi! Happy new year pala sa inyo! 

May konting similarities pero for me kulang pa ang effort ng Pirates! Nakaka-adik yung trading nung mga games na na-mention ko and parang mas free and open yung world.  Exciting din yung mga features na nagiging available or na-a-unlock each phase.  May missing ingredient yung Pirates na di ko maintindihan. hehe 

[maskmanjoe]

I'll have to agree with Brel, Port Royale does share alot of similarities with Pirates but i believe the former focuses alot more (and alot better) at the economic aspect of ship trading along the Caribbean. I thoroughly enjoyed Port Royale than Pirates (though the dancing part of Pirates was quite fun). I eagerly await the chance to try Hansa myself.

[viscoos]

ah hindi ko pa kasi natry yung Port Royale, but i immensly enjoyed Pirates! kahit na yung original version niya nilaro ko

Im currently procuring Patrician hehe

[dyeyk2000]

Played 5 man Hansa Teutonica this evening. Instructions courtesy of Maestro Adrian who did his best to inject some much needed theme into what may well have been the driest Euro I’ve yet to play. Wag ka mag-alala Adrian, hahanapan natin ng matinong kwento toh haha.

Initial Thoughts:

Components:
It’s as if this Euro wasn’t content with creating efficient and no frills rules, it decided that its components should be the same as well. The board size is just right (about 2 Agricola farms). Each player gets a strip of cardboard as a personal player board. And then the rest are your typical cubes and discs. After having to perfect my tetris skills with the grandiose boards of some other games, this is a welcome change

Theme:
See post above. For all intents and purposes, it could have been:

1.   A bunch of kids playing agawan base. Only this time there are like 20 bases and only 5 kids.
2.   That longest line game everybody plays during team building events wherein somebody almost always ends up in their undies. This time though, may agawan ng damit.
3.   A game in Takehshi’s Castle/American Gladiators wherein your team’s goal is to stand upright on precarious beams but then the other team keeps on pushing you off and jockeying for your position. The fatter ones are of course harder to push off.

PS
Jay – Maybe we could make a contest out of this? “Best Fanfic for Hansa Teutonica” Award. I'll sponsor the Mcdo Cheeseburger Meal as the prize. Haha

Gameplay:
And expectedly, this is where the game truly shines. The primary mechanic of the game is in creating a network between two cities. Connecting cities will grant you a varied number of things depending on what you want to achieve. The game then allows you several ways of doing this. Like most Euros, it is a game of efficiency and its primary screwage mechanic is the ability to knock off your opponents pieces from their established positions. The give and take here is, the game requires you to spend at least 2 pieces to displace 1 of your opponent's piece, and if that weren't enough, your displacement action earns him 1 more extra piece to place on the board as consolation. So the primary question you ask yourself is “Do the advantages I gain by knocking him off far outweigh the disadvantageous board position I may put myself in?” This is a simplification of the strategies of the game of course. No doubt there would probably be more under the hood.

All in all. Great game. Rules are very elegant and it would be almost chess like if not for the random food markers that appear in the game. Probably don’t like it enough to purchase it (for now ), but definitely a treat if you’re playing it with other people who understand the rules very well and know how to exploit the board.

[DJinn]

Thanks for beating me to the punch. There's really so much going on in this game that I didn't know where to begin talking about it and the game earlier.

Regarding the "retheming" I really think there's something to xtriker's calling the move action "Fly".  Since it involves your "book" value, I kinda saw the book as some kind of spellbook and you casting a spell to to make your people fly across the board.  And then I saw the bag as some kind of magical bag where you literally summoned your minions out from (instead of presumably being bags of money you used to pay workers with.)

Regarding the gameplay, I was surprised that everyone in our game, myself included, seemed to want to go for the cities that improved your abilites.  The reason I ended up going for the bonus/"food" counters (yun pa, pwedeng maging magic one-shot scrolls or something ) was because I always found myself blocked from either the action, book or bag cities and I didn't feel they were *that* worth fighting over. (Except for the first action improvement, which everyone seems to agree is essential.)

Also I don't think anybody realized, again myself included, the impact of controlling cities in the endgame scoring.  I realized that going after a large network of connected cities (whether controlled or not) synergized with trying to grab the bonus markers (and I even thought later on that I might have a shot at connecting the 2 sides ), but I didn't realize that I was also going to get a lot of points from controlling what ended up being a fairly large number of cities (whether connected or not).
(For the uninitiated, yes, there is controlling cities and there is connecting cities, both of which provide endgame points.)



Just thinking about it now, I guess I kinda feel like Jay in that recent Power Grid game we played where 5 of us were all bunched up in one area and we just left him alone on one side. Lol.  Hans and I thought it would be fun to block the 3 other guys, and you guys seemed to be having fun going for all the ability cities (and the occasional ability or +action bonus marker). Lol.  I'd like to see what a game where there was another guy or 2 going for city control/chain is like. (And maybe then I'll be able to get into the book and bag cities. Lol.)