I saw Hansa in a store today, glanced through the rules, read the reviews on BGG... looks pretty interesting.
Anyone happen to have tried this game yet? Is it on par (interest, complexity, fun) with Puerto Rico? Settlers?
- Seth
Hansa - interesting?
Thu, 04/08/2004 - 16:46
Thu, 04/08/2004 - 23:17
#1
Re: Hansa - interesting?
sedjtroll wrote:
I saw Hansa in a store today, glanced through the rules, read the reviews on BGG... looks pretty interesting.
Anyone happen to have tried this game yet? Is it on par (interest, complexity, fun) with Puerto Rico? Settlers?
I just bought my copy today and played my first game. I had heard a bit about the mechanics and liked the sound of it, but for me, since Web of Power is my favorite game and Paris Paris was also a big hit, almost anything by Schacht is a "must-play" for me. My initial reaction to the game is that it is potentially even better than Web of Power -- there's more of the "good" and less of the "bad" things that people might not have liked about Web of Power. That said, there *is* hidden-but-trackable information, which for some reason bothers some people to no end. I personally like this kind of element, but someone who didn't could just as easily play with public holdings, the game wouldn't lose anything (though it would probably lock up the end game with perfect planners).
It has a mechanic that I like very much whereby a ship moves from town to town along predefined routes, and on your turn, you're allowed to move the ship (which you must pay for!) as much as you want to, taking one action at each town -- and only one action! It's a classic "want to do more than you can" problem space.
I have a couple of small concerns about the game, the chief one being that the "game clock" is contingent on the players choosing to take a particular action (replenish the markets in the cities). In our game, people were quite cagey about doing this; I could see the game being quite variable in length as a result. Not sure how much this worries me yet...
Bottom line, my initial reaction is that I think it's really an excellent little game. As for whether it compares with PR or Settlers? That's kind of like asking "Hey, is the new Creed CD as good as Revolver, or Pet Sounds?" PR and Settlers are singular achievements in game design. I don't think there's a lot of room for comparison between Hansa and those games; the three all feel quite different to me. I guess I would say that I (based on one playing, anyway) would prefer Hansa to Settlers; I think Hansa has more interesting decisions and less luck. As for PR, I think they fill different needs; PR is a 75 minute almost-heavyweight, Hansa is a 45 minute middleweight.
I'm looking forward to playing it more and exploring its depths further. As of one playing, I'm quite happy with the purchase and highly recommend it!
-Jeff
Tue, 04/20/2004 - 20:38
#3
Finally played Hansa!
Saturday night I finally got to play Hansa! I had grown to think that I was going to be disappointed, but thankfully the game was actually pretty good.
I played a 3 player game with 2 friends who were basically your average gamer-type. We were all trying to figure it out as we went along (the rules were simple enough, I'm talking about strategy here). Basically, Chris set himself up nearly 100% on the left half of the board. Cory spread himself a little too thin. I set myself up mostly on the right half of the board, but with some booths over on the left as well (an outpost in the center of the board and an outpost on the extreme left - sorry, i don't remember the town names offhand).
I ended up winning by a large margin, 50-36-32, even though one turn I did something I was fairly sure was a pretty bad play- which set someone up to get a bunch of points and at the same time make me lose some barrels, basically undoing my last turn.
It was noted that the right half of the board is far better to control than the left half, as you can stick the boat over there and it's difficult to get it back out again. There's only 1 real spot on the left where you can't hardly get accross the board, and there's a couple places on the right where you're basically stuck on the right.
After one game I think the game is pretty good. I'm certainly willing to play it a couple more times to see if my initial impression is correct.
- Seth
Well I went ahead and bought the game yesterday afternoon, and even almost played it.... until Tyler's D&D group finally showed up and we had to quit righ after we just set the thing up. I continue to get the feeling that we will like Hansa in much the way we like PR (not that it's a similar game in any way other than we'll like it in that way).
Then again, I thought All For One would be more to the liking tof my friends than it was.
I'll let you know after I actually play the game- hopefully this weekend.
- Seth