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viktor_haagThis weekend I tried out two games I own but have not yet played: Mac Gerdts' Hamburgum and Martin Wallace's Scandinavia expansion map for Age Of Steam.
Hamburgum
This game is a simple resource management game. Build infrastructure to generate resources, turn those resources into opportunities to score, and capitalize on those opportunities at the right times for maximum effect. The game has two unique features: the first is the mechanism for choosing actions on your turn, and the second is the notion of being able to choose the moments when you score (to a point).
Like Mac Gerdts' previous efforts for Eggert Spiele, Hamburgum uses the "rondel" to choose actions. The rondel is a circle divided into pie-shaped slices; each slice has an action on it. On your turn, you get to move your action token up to three slices around the pie for free. Where your token stops determines the action you can do on your turn (so on each turn you may do two things: determine what action you'll do, and then do that action). You can move your token farther than the three free spaces by paying victory points. This is an interesting mechanism for interleaving player activity, and for controlling the tactical flow of a player's actions, organizing the actions into "natural" sequences, and preventing you sometimes from doing what you really want to do immediately next without paying an opportunity cost.
Unlike many similar games, when you spend your resources to score, you are given the opportunity with some scoring actions to defer your score. You can spend resources to build infrastructure (ships, citizens occupying buildings) or to score (by devoting resources to the various churchs). The first donation to each church gives the donator victory points, straight up. Each subsequent donation takes more resources, but then provides the donator with a scoring token, which may be scored immediately, or held until later in the game. In most cases, waiting costs you nothing, as your opportunity to score never goes completely away, and only in one particular case will the value of a token lessen. Each church has tokens that let you score in four different ways (token types). And you can only hold one unscored token of a type at once, so the minute you acquire a token type of one you already have (unscored), you must score one of the pair.
This requirement vastly increases the tension in what's otherwise a relatively simple game, because there's an urge to time your acquisition of scoring tokens for maximum effect; however, if you wait too long, other players may get the tokens that are in your long term plans.
Hamburgum is by far the lightest of Gerdts' offerings for Eggert Spiele, and is not a must-buy. However, if you really like games like Puerto Rico, Goa, Cuba, or Pillars of the Earth, then you might like Hamburgum.
The components are up to the publisher's typical opulence for a decent price, and the game does provide a two-sided map board, to give you a bit more legs out of variety for the game.
Age Of Steam: Scandinavia
I performed abominably in this game, and ended up in dead last place. What's worse, it became quite clear that this would happen about two-thirds of the way through the game. This is the second time I have played a tight AoS board with this same group of four folks and had my lunch handed to me. I clearly don't play AoS enough.
The Scandinavia map adds two features: expensive "ferry" track builds that cross short distances of water (including one super ferry that requires urbanized end points before it can be built), and the ability to move a cube from one port city to another (taking up no links) at some point in your delivery chain. Building a ferry is a normal part of track building; it just costs extra money.
However, port-shipping a cube takes up your declared special action for the turn. This, combined with the fact that the map plays with one turn less than is standard for AoS, means that the game plays fast and furiously. After some thought, it also means that the Locomotive action is absolutely vital. You cannot afford to forego too many cube deliveries to bump your locomotive, and you cannot afford not to have locomotive at least once in the opening turns of the game (i.e. you need to get locomotive before any other player gets to choose it twice). I'm also of the mind that you cannot really afford to build last on the first turn, so if you end up at the back of the turn order auction, then you'd better be able to build first, or have engineer (so you can build where others cannot), or at the very least move first. Turn order on the first turn should almost certainly go: Locomotive, Urbanization, Engineer, Build First, Move First. But Move By Sea might have good opportunity value depending upon where you build and where the cubes are located.
I'm not sure I'd want to play either this map or the Ireland map again with four players; at least not until I've tried them again a few times each with three. Age Of Steam is a knife-fight in a phone-booth at the best of times, and tight boards only make that worse; some players might enjoy that kind of nastiness--I, however, do not.
Hamburgum
This game is a simple resource management game. Build infrastructure to generate resources, turn those resources into opportunities to score, and capitalize on those opportunities at the right times for maximum effect. The game has two unique features: the first is the mechanism for choosing actions on your turn, and the second is the notion of being able to choose the moments when you score (to a point).
Like Mac Gerdts' previous efforts for Eggert Spiele, Hamburgum uses the "rondel" to choose actions. The rondel is a circle divided into pie-shaped slices; each slice has an action on it. On your turn, you get to move your action token up to three slices around the pie for free. Where your token stops determines the action you can do on your turn (so on each turn you may do two things: determine what action you'll do, and then do that action). You can move your token farther than the three free spaces by paying victory points. This is an interesting mechanism for interleaving player activity, and for controlling the tactical flow of a player's actions, organizing the actions into "natural" sequences, and preventing you sometimes from doing what you really want to do immediately next without paying an opportunity cost.
Unlike many similar games, when you spend your resources to score, you are given the opportunity with some scoring actions to defer your score. You can spend resources to build infrastructure (ships, citizens occupying buildings) or to score (by devoting resources to the various churchs). The first donation to each church gives the donator victory points, straight up. Each subsequent donation takes more resources, but then provides the donator with a scoring token, which may be scored immediately, or held until later in the game. In most cases, waiting costs you nothing, as your opportunity to score never goes completely away, and only in one particular case will the value of a token lessen. Each church has tokens that let you score in four different ways (token types). And you can only hold one unscored token of a type at once, so the minute you acquire a token type of one you already have (unscored), you must score one of the pair.
This requirement vastly increases the tension in what's otherwise a relatively simple game, because there's an urge to time your acquisition of scoring tokens for maximum effect; however, if you wait too long, other players may get the tokens that are in your long term plans.
Hamburgum is by far the lightest of Gerdts' offerings for Eggert Spiele, and is not a must-buy. However, if you really like games like Puerto Rico, Goa, Cuba, or Pillars of the Earth, then you might like Hamburgum.
The components are up to the publisher's typical opulence for a decent price, and the game does provide a two-sided map board, to give you a bit more legs out of variety for the game.
Age Of Steam: Scandinavia
I performed abominably in this game, and ended up in dead last place. What's worse, it became quite clear that this would happen about two-thirds of the way through the game. This is the second time I have played a tight AoS board with this same group of four folks and had my lunch handed to me. I clearly don't play AoS enough.
The Scandinavia map adds two features: expensive "ferry" track builds that cross short distances of water (including one super ferry that requires urbanized end points before it can be built), and the ability to move a cube from one port city to another (taking up no links) at some point in your delivery chain. Building a ferry is a normal part of track building; it just costs extra money.
However, port-shipping a cube takes up your declared special action for the turn. This, combined with the fact that the map plays with one turn less than is standard for AoS, means that the game plays fast and furiously. After some thought, it also means that the Locomotive action is absolutely vital. You cannot afford to forego too many cube deliveries to bump your locomotive, and you cannot afford not to have locomotive at least once in the opening turns of the game (i.e. you need to get locomotive before any other player gets to choose it twice). I'm also of the mind that you cannot really afford to build last on the first turn, so if you end up at the back of the turn order auction, then you'd better be able to build first, or have engineer (so you can build where others cannot), or at the very least move first. Turn order on the first turn should almost certainly go: Locomotive, Urbanization, Engineer, Build First, Move First. But Move By Sea might have good opportunity value depending upon where you build and where the cubes are located.
I'm not sure I'd want to play either this map or the Ireland map again with four players; at least not until I've tried them again a few times each with three. Age Of Steam is a knife-fight in a phone-booth at the best of times, and tight boards only make that worse; some players might enjoy that kind of nastiness--I, however, do not.
