Naturelich Games

Thurn und Taxis

Game Background

Thurn und Taxis lets players rebuild Europe's first, family-owned mailing system. The Thurn und Taxis dynasty became a key player in the international mail and postal services in the 16th century and dominated the mailing system throughout Europe for a few centuries. Thurn und Taxis, the new game by Andreas Seyfarth and his wife Karen, puts players in the shoes of these pioneers to build their own network of mailing stations: In the course of the game players will create postal services between Munich and Salzburg, or Munich and Stuttgart or Zurich.

Artwork

Most of the action takes place on a game board illustrated by Michael Menzel. The board depicts a historic map of Bavaria and its neighboring countries.

Thurn und Taxis - The game board

In the 16th century, Europe consisted of many many small countries, each ruled by their own principal. And the board depcits the cities and the geography of that period nicely. In fact, I consider the game board and all the material to be top notch. The map is simply beautiful and a joy to play on, all the illustrations and cards are extremely atmospheric. For example, each town shows a drawing of a famous historic building. This is much nicer than simply using little "dots" to indicate the locations as it also offers enough space to put the small post offices into that town.

Thurn und Taxis - Detailed view of Basel

Thurn und Taxis - Detailed view of Munich

Thurn und Taxis - Detailed view of Salzburg

Hans im Glück has delivered a game with high quality components. The wooden buildings have a nice feeling to them, the town cards are thick enough to survive a couple of plays and the player aid will even resist the occassional Coke spill over (don't drain 'em, though). The point markers contain a nice backside that helps you stack them in the correct sort order during game setup.
The German first edition contains a two-page sheet with background information on the Thurn und Taxis family that's very interesting to read. The backside of the sheet contains a short description of the historic buildings displayed on the map, e.g. Munich's Frauenkirche or Linz's Wallfahrtsbasilika Pöstlingberg. This might spark players interests in both the historic or the geographic background of the game. Something parents might like for their kids...
Altogether, the artwork and components look very harmonic and well thought through with love to detail.

Thurn und Taxis - Game materials

The Rules

The game is based on a few easy to learn mechanisms. Basically, players establish routes between the cities on the board by drawing town cards. One player's turn is almost as simple as this: Draw a card, play a card, score points. Next player's turn.

The turn summary card: Draw, play, score

Once it's your turn you have to pick one town card from any of the six currently available. When taking the card you have to plan a little bit ahead, as each player has only one active postal route. The tricky thing is to ensure that the town card you draw fits to one of the end points of your current route. Whether a card "fits" is determined by looking at the map on the board: both towns need to be directly connected with one another. Over several turns the routes will grow longer and longer.

Town card of Salzburg

Once the player is happy with the lengths of the route or if there are no valid cards available the players can voluntarily close their routes. If the route was longer than three cards, the player will get the chance to perform additional actions:

1. The most important action is to place buildings inside some of the towns your postal coach has visited. The players may choose between two options: they can choose to place a building in all the cities of one specific country they have visited. This is particularly interesting if your route contains only towns from within one country (e.g. six cities in Bavaria, a very big country). The alternative option is to place a building in only one city per country you have visited. This scoring mechanism sets an incentive to visit a different country with each town card you play and is rather contrary to the first.


2. Basd on the player's buildings on the board they may be eligible to score bonus points. Bonus points are available for having a particularly long route, by visiting all cities in one specific country, by visiting one city per all the countries, or by being the player to end the game.


3. Upgrade you stagecoach if the route has been long enough to earn a better coach. Stagecoaches also score victory points. The better the coach, the more victory points.


4. Discard all cards from hand.

Building a house in Innsbruck early in the game easily scores some victory points as Innsbruck is the only town in the country of Tyrol

While this covers the scoring and turn order rules, there is an still one unmentioned game mechanism: getting the support by an official. Each player may ask one (and only one) official per turn for support. Since postal carriers, postmasters, administrators and cartwrigths are decent men, they will help you draw two cards, play two cards, exchange all city cards in the display or acquire a new carriage with 2 fewer city cards than required.

Thurn und Taxis - Two officals

The game ends after the first player has acquired the stagecoach #7 or somenoe has managed to place all their buildings on the map. The current round is played to the end before each player add their points: the points for the best stagecoach are added to the bonus points. The player's score is then diminished by one for each house they have not yet placed on the map.

Although the rules sound maybe a little bit complicated at times, they completely fall into place during the first game. All mechanisms are simple, elegant and logical without any ballast. The four rulebook pages contain several examples where questions could potentially arise.

Gameplay and Strategy

The hand management mechanism is an important part of the game: Players constantly have to look for matching city cards and plan ahead for potential routes. The luck element introduced by the card draws requires players to constantly evaluate and adjust their plans. It's certainly not a good idea to start your postal route in Lodz, which only connects to Pilsen. The more connections from/to the start city, the bigger the probability of creating suitable follow-up connections. In practice, the luck element can be controlled by keeping track of the city cards discarded or drawn by others. This oftentimes creates dense moments in the game: if another player gets support by the Administrator to exchange all city cards in the display this can considerably hurt your fellow players. At certain moments in the game you can play it difficult for your co-players. With experienced players this will create a natural "Thurn und Taxis-tension" at the table: once the first player establishes first operations in all countries, they can try to stop the others from getting to Lodz. This will give them a considerable regional bonus over the others. A counter-strategy is to keep at least one city in Bavaria a difficult place to get to.

The game is well balanced as there are multiple possible winning strategies. Play shorter routes to score high on regional bonus or collect longer routes to go for the length bonus. Try to stay focused on Bavaria or get a postal station in each country. I have seen either combination of these strategies win the game. There is probably only one thing which will definitely bring you in last: if you have to discard a short route without getting any points this will hit double. While the loss in points creates a small disadvantage the lost turn(s) are probably worse in the long run. Needless to say: if you can get a fellow player into this situation by taking the card they need this pretty quickly buys victory. Yes, Thurn und Taxis can be mean at times...

I have found the game to play equally well with two, three or four players. The four player game is probably the best as it creates the most interaction. But even with four players, the game will be finished just under one hour. I have seen four player games lasting only about 25 minutes.

Summary

Thurn und Taxis has become very popular with the groups I played in. The game has light to medium weight and contains very elegant game mechanics. Particularly placing buildings and scoring points create a very inspiring game experience. It is tense, it is fun and it's difficult to guess the winner ahead of time. The theme certainly adds to the experience. Together with the game components and artwork, the designers have delivered a highlight of 2006 that plays well with both casual gamers as well as more experienced players. As highlighted earlier, Thurn und Taxis has high potential for Germany's Spiel des Jahres 2006 award. But even if designers Karen and Andreas Seyfarth do not win the prize, the game will become a keeper and a classic for me, as me and my friends will always like to play a game (or two or three)...