Jordan Zimmerman
United States
Monterey
California
-
A nice change of pace.
When you buy the East Expansion you get an additional expansion: a set of cards that can be used with the original game. These cards each contain the names of three cities on the original board. Each player gets a random one at the start of the game that they keep hidden. Players get one post-game VP each for having presence in the cities. If a player controls all of them he gets five post-game VPs. I have yet to play this expansion and I don't have much desire to. One of the great things about Hansa is the lack of randomness and complete disclosure of other players' possessions. These cards go against the grain of Hansa.
We played the East Expansion board last night as a three player game. The East Expansion board is the same for three, four or five players. East Expansion is one of the best expansions of a game in recent memory. The major appeal of Hansa - open ended play, almost no randomness, no hidden pieces - are all preserved. It makes for a nice change of pace for veteran Hansa players.
Some of the more interesting changes:
* The Bursa and Actiones cities are combined and there are manny roads to this city. This change removes a lot of early game contention to get an extra action - i.e. it's much easier for everyone to get the extra action.
* There are four roads that have "permanent" bonus markers. These BMs are very interesting in that they are very powerful
"Move any two traders" - this loosens the game up a lot. In the original, it can be hard to dislodge a player who is determined to control certain roads/cities. The original has the remove three traders BM but there are only two and they're hard to get.
"Claim and move" - this helps players who are behind in actions. You can claim a Kontor and then immediately move two traders.
"Improve Privlegum" - this is an odd addition. It's very nice to have, but I wonder why it was felt that there needed to be another way to improve Privlegum.
"Claim Special City" - this offers a way to get presence in three special cities regardless of privilege or trader/merchant type.
* It's much easier now to get the red city connection bonus. There is now a much shorter path to this.
Other than the above, it's the same wonderful game. We all enjoyed the East Expansion. I'll probably still mostly play the original, but this will make a nice change once in a while.
-
Alex Sorbello
United States
Albuquerque
New Mexico
-
Quote: "Improve Privlegum" - this is an odd addition. It's very nice to have, but I wonder why it was felt that there needed to be another way to improve Privlegum
Simple, Now you do not need to claim the privlegum route. you can claim this other route, place a token and still get the benefit through the bonus marker. More likely to actually have privlegum out now so there is more fighting for routes where in the basic game it wasn't.
-
Jordan Zimmerman
United States
Monterey
California
-
lexen wrote: Quote: "Improve Privlegum" - this is an odd addition. It's very nice to have, but I wonder why it was felt that there needed to be another way to improve Privlegum Simple, Now you do not need to claim the privlegum route. you can claim this other route, place a token and still get the benefit through the bonus marker. More likely to actually have privlegum out now so there is more fighting for routes where in the basic game it wasn't.
Yeah, but why single out Prililegum? Why not the others?
-
Eric deRuiter
United States
Kew Gardens
New York
-
jordanz wrote: lexen wrote: Quote: "Improve Privlegum" - this is an odd addition. It's very nice to have, but I wonder why it was felt that there needed to be another way to improve Privlegum Simple, Now you do not need to claim the privlegum route. you can claim this other route, place a token and still get the benefit through the bonus marker. More likely to actually have privlegum out now so there is more fighting for routes where in the basic game it wasn't. Yeah, but why single out Prililegum? Why not the others?
There are more routes to get the other benefits, so this seems to be a way to lower the competition to advance Prililegum, although in a different way than the others (more roads leading to the same city). It seems this will also be a route taken by a different player as it requires merchants, where the regular city to advance Prililegum does not.
I also found it interesting that a player can get influence in the city that awards actions by going to an entirely different city, so someone left out of the rush for actions can make up for that with victory points.
Good review by the way. I've only played once with the new map (3 players) but we liked it and drew similar conclusions.
-
Alex Sorbello
United States
Albuquerque
New Mexico
-
Quote: More likely to actually have privlegum out now so there is more fighting for routes where in the basic game it wasn't.
Quote: Yeah, but why single out Prililegum? Why not the others?
The answer was already given.
Privligum is the least likely power to be used. This way it will be more likely used and thus created more competition for scoring cities.
-
Jordan Zimmerman
United States
Monterey
California
-
lexen wrote:
Privligum is the least likely power to be used. This way it will be more likely used and thus created more competition for scoring cities.
I don't agree. The least used power is always the Keys for me. Privilege is one of the most used powers (and it already has two roads).
Usually:
#1 Actions
#2 & #3 Liber/Merchant or Privilegium
#4 Bags
#5 Keys
-
Eric deRuiter
United States
Kew Gardens
New York
-
jordanz wrote: Usually:
#1 Actions
#2 & #3 Liber/Merchant or Privilegium
#4 Bags
#5 Keys
I would agree with this. There always seem to be time to get keys later, and that rarely happens.
We have never triggered the end game due to completing 10 cities, and I find that as we get more experienced the game end is more often triggered due to running out of bonus markers instead of reaching 20 points, although that still does happen.
-
Jordan Zimmerman
United States
Monterey
California
-
Bonus Markers are the key to winning Hansa.
-
KAS
United States
Arlington
Virginia
-
jordanz wrote: Privilege is one of the most used powers (and it already has two roads). The expansion board only has one route for Privileges while all of the others have 2 or 3 routes. And the 2-3p base map, only has one route for this also.
jordanz wrote: Bonus Markers are the key to winning Hansa.
Not sure if you mean the expansion board or the base (or both) but regardless, it sounds like you may want to play this with some other groups. After a lot of plays of this I have not seen any particular "thing" consistently lead to victory other than good play.
-
Yours Truly,
United States
Gainesville
Florida
-
Nice review.
I agree that this is one of the better expansions in recent memory.
I would add a couple points:
- There seems more of an emphasis on merchants on this board.
- There are the 3 "non-kontor" cities. Importantly, one of these is the Action city. So people can't set up shop there right away and harvest points off of others upgrading actions, as is possible in the base game. They have to do some other steps first (special bonus markers) to get a kontor there.
One thing I disagree with in your review though:
jordanz wrote:
* It's much easier now to get the red city connection bonus. There is now a much shorter path to this.
The layout on the board is deceiving. As it's laid out, it takes up less board space, but it's really about the same length in terms of cities (5) and towns (14 in base vs. 13 in expansion).
As for the expansion being easier, I would argue it's actually harder in the expansion: 4 white and 1 orange in the base (assuming an uncontested attempt), vs. 3 white and 2 orange in expansion; also you need a minimum of 1 merchant in the base vs. 3 merchants in the expansion.
So in the expansion you'd need at least 2 book upgrades before you could do the connections, whereas in the base you could do it with 0 book upgrades.
-
Tim Seitz
United States
Glen Allen
VA
Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him. 2 Sam 14:14
-
JohnnyDollar wrote: Nice review. I agree that this is one of the better expansions in recent memory. I would add a couple points: - There seems more of an emphasis on merchants on this board. - There are the 3 "non-kontor" cities. Importantly, one of these is the Action city. So people can't set up shop there right away and harvest points off of others upgrading actions, as is possible in the base game. They have to do some other steps first (special bonus markers) to get a kontor there. One thing I disagree with in your review though: jordanz wrote:
* It's much easier now to get the red city connection bonus. There is now a much shorter path to this.
As for the expansion being easier, I would argue it's actually harder in the expansion: 4 white and 1 orange in the base (assuming an uncontested attempt), vs. 3 white and 2 orange in expansion; also you need a minimum of 1 merchant in the base vs. 3 merchants in the expansion. So in the expansion you'd need at least 2 book upgrades before you could do the connections, whereas in the base you could do it with 0 book upgrades.
No, I think we can objectively say that the east-west connection route in the expansion is much easier.
1. It takes fewer actions. If you just consider direct placement and claiming actions required, both boards require a minimum of 21 actions. However, the sea routes provide significant bonuses. The 4-space route allows you to place 2 extra pieces (saving 2 actions) and the western-most sea route allows you to move 2 (equivalent to another action). If you take the 4-space route twice and the move-2 sea route twice it will have cost 22 actions, but you save 6 actions from making use of the bonus markers. A minimum of 2 merchants are required (not 3), so when you add the 4 actions to pick up an extra merchant, we are at 20 actions instead of 21. Both routes require orange privilege, so that cancels when comparing.
2. It benefits from displacements from the heavily contested action city. Not only does it take fewer actions, two of the routes are adjacent to routes into the hotbed city on the west side. There will be a lot of displacement from those routes because they offer extra actions and a larger bag. In the base game, the east-west connection is not close to ANY skills upgrade route, so there is little opportunity to take advantage of displacement.
3. It is harder to block. In the base game, there is a single office in one of the cities along the shortest path. It is common for a player to take that city to lock out other players from claiming the direct path. this would require any other player to either go around or to obtain an extra kontor bonus marker. In the expansion, there is no single-office city. All of the cities have at least two offices. While the western-most city only has a single route, which can be clogged up, the move-2 bonus marker will enable you to remove most annoying squatters along that route as needed.
4. It's easier to transition into a east-west connection strategy. The expansion board's sea routes have extra value in addition to their network value. Routes will be worth claiming just for the effect of the bonus markers, so once you have a couple of those locations claimed, getting the remaining cities for the connection bonus is easily achievable. In the base game, there is not much reason to claim those routes, unless you are already intending to make the connection.
5. Completing the connection in the base was empirically rare. In the expansion, it has ended every game I've observed so far.
-
|
|
