Hansa Teutonica: My Favorite Game Mechanism

[@tronstank7290]

I enjoy that you can do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. No route is blocked because of a card needed to build in that route. Placing bonus tiles on routes that will feed you points for having ownership of the towns built on the route. It encourages players to build in a way that isn't zero sum or risk you building and give yourself points while also getting that bonus tile. Solid game.

[@valentinb6333]

Nice video! Thanks for you work.

[@rigolgm]

My absolute favourite boardgame after years of boardgame. So much to enjoy in it. For me, I especially like games where I can see what's going on visually without having to constantly check little cards with rules exceptions etc.

[@jameystegmaier]

It's a great game! I agree that it's really nice to focus on the decisions the game offers rather than remembering or looking up a ton of little rules.

[@tronstank7290]

Also, the evicting mechanism is great. Allows the adding cubes to the board without using an action on your turn. Coupled with the liber action, claiming offices or upgrading becomes much easier to accomplish.

[@Avelice0]

My favorite non-Euro mechanism is the dice rolling for the tea house in Istanbul. You choose a number then roll 2 dice. If your roll is greater than or equal to the number you said, then that's how many coins you get (and you get 2 if you fail). Strict dice rolling for resources clashes a bit in a euro-style game, but what I love here is that a player can specify exactly the risk they want to take. Plus there's an ability tile which can let you mitigate this luck even more. The mechanism can really lead to some excitement near the end of the game, since a player might need a specific amount of coins to win and can take that risk to try and win the game. It's truly a small part of the game, but I get excited about using the tea house every time I play Istanbul.

[@jameystegmaier]

That's brilliant! I like that the choice is there to take a fairly non-Euro action, but you can also avoid it if you want.

[@Avelice0]

Yeah, I think that's the best way to incorporate non-euro elements, is to make them optional. Then chancier choices are there for people that like chaos, but players aren't forced into it. That's a reason why "Manhattan Project: Energy Empire" looks pretty cool to me--you roll dice for energy production and pollution. But the type of dice you roll depend on how clean your energy is. So you can just run clean energy for less risk/less reward, or go full on pollution and get a lot of stuff but for a bigger risk. I really appreciate games which aren't necessarily about mitigating risk, but rather about choosing if you even want any risk at all.

[@BalooSJ]

I haven't played enough Hansa Teutonica to know whether the interaction is as elegant as it seems, but I like how merchants and upgrades interact. As you mentioned, if another player displaces your token, you get to move that token + another one from your general supply to an adjacent route (and the other player has to pay another token from their stock to their own general supply). But if your token was a merchant (represented by discs instead of cubes), you instead get two additional tokens (and the other player has to pay two additional tokens instead of one). You start the game with one merchant, but when you upgrade your Book of Knowledge you gain an additional merchant, as well as increase the number of tokens you can move for one action. So I'm thinking there's a strategy where you upgrade your merchants which both improves your ability to block AND the ability to rapidly take advantage of empty routes, and I'd be interested to see how well those abilities synergize with one another. Another thing I like is that the game is kinda short, so you really need to consider how much time and effort you have to spend on building your engine compared to building your trade network. It's very easy to focus on "If I build this route here twice more that's going to get me to four actions and then I can build that route there to get a second merchant and I should build that one once or twice to improve privilege because for some reason all the white trade offices are taken already and oh wait did the game end?"

[@salty-horse]

Small rule correction: When you complete a route that has a bonus marker, you automatically get it. Only then you get to decide between placing an office, or doing a city's special action (if it's a special city).

[@jameystegmaier]

Thanks Ori! Yes, you're right. I was thinking more about the city's special action.

[@eugenebryant557]

So glad this was in the comments. I thought we had been playing this rule wrong all these years. Which would have explained why my buddy, who always takes tokens, crushes us 80% of the time, but alas, I guess he's just way smarter than me. A brilliant game that I am unfortunately not very good at.

[@salty-horse]

You may find this player aid helpful: boardgamegeek.com/filepage/107938/hansa-teutonica-player-aid

[@Stephen-Fox]

I think the Compete action, especially (where you take someone else's animal cube out of the game, permanently, from a tile you share with them), but also some of the Dominance Cards (Oh dear, a volcano just erupted right where you've got a large number of creatures on that one tile), in Dominant Species would qualify, which combine to form what some have described as the sort of euro game only a wargame company could publish. Extremely mean game at times, not helped by needing to think about 15 steps ahead for some of the later actions to come up in a round due to it using the actions resolve from left to right, top to bottom style of worker placement that I think Age of Empires uses, with a whole bunch of workers per player giving a lot of chaos but very little randomness (I think there may be zero output randomness, only input randomness?)

[@jameystegmaier]

I think that's a perfect example, Stephen, though somehow I still haven't played that game! :)

[@wheatgrowssweet]

I appreciate the strategic depth of bluffing mechanisms, but personally I have yet to really enjoy a game that incorporates bluffing as a primary mechanism. I've purchased and played lots of bluffing games such as Sheriff of Nottingham, Masquerade, ONUW based on positive reviews and based on how much fun other people had playing them, but I've learned that I simply do not enjoy that kind of player interaction. Similar to war mechanisms or "take that" style gameplay, bluffing can create interesting decisions but it's good to keep in mind that it can leave players out or leave them feeling unsatisfied.

[@jameystegmaier]

That's true, bluffing games aren't for everyone, and sometimes they work better than others. The bluff mechanism in Hansa is very, very slight--really the only time to do it is if you think someone is going to go out of their way to block you.

[@wheatgrowssweet]

It definitely sounds like a game I would like to try! I'll try anything once.

[@vpocyk]

i'll try your trick next time i'm playing 😭

[@RaduGaston1]

There needs to be more euro games with voting in them. Cuba has voting where you determine the new laws (ways you get points) that come into play.

[@jameystegmaier]

Are there some voting games where it's the citizen of the city/area are the ones doing the voting (by themselves or in combination with the players)? I think that would be interesting.

[@Stephen-Fox]

...I've played a couple of Nomics that would up trying to develop a citizenry outside of the players who would vote on new rules... (And, memorably, a couple where one or more parties tried to come up with rule states where the game could create rules outside of player input)

[@clumsydad7158]

Jamey, nice, you may like my amateurish "gaming aesthetics" vlog, where i do reference Asara... oh wait, that's Kramer & Kiesling, not Andreas Steading, duh... well, anyways (-: peace

[@jameystegmaier]

Thank you! I'll check it out. :)