SR: Hansa
After I had recently acquired Hansa it was time for a three-player session together with Raven and Shelak. Hansa felt like the right game today as my week had been pretty exhausting. Although it is still a medium light weight game I really wanted to get it to the table.
Game designer Michael Schacht has created a game with a medieval theme: The Hanseatic League (German: Die Hanse). Each player is a merchant of the Hanseatic League. One ship is mutually controlled by players consecutively in their turns to buy and sell goods, establish trading points and open new market booths. The game is set on a map of the Baltic Sea with pre-defined routes between cities such as Lübeck, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gdansk, and Riga. The ship can only take these routes in the direction as given on the map. The active player takes control of the ship and can pay money to move it to another city where he may buy or sell goods. In addition, he may build a new trading post using goods acquired earlier in the game. However, only one action is permitted in the city. The player can move the ship again to move to another city and take another action. Players need to collect sets of similar goods that can be traded for victory points. Additional points can be earned by having a market presence in a city with a monopoly being twice as valuable.
Final board position of Game #1
Raven decided to establish her market presence in Danzig, Reval and Lübeck while Shelak decided to go for Lübeck, Aalborg and Tonsberg. Naturelich started his enterprise in Stockholm, Aalborg and Kalmar. And from there we went a couple of turns. Raven was able to convert green (twice) and orange into points and established trading posts in only 4 cities. Shelak was able to convert blue (twice), red and brown goods. Unfortunately, he lost several goods upon other players selling there stuff. If you fall victim to this mechanism several times it can be pretty nasty. In the end it became pretty close between Raven and Shelak, while I was able to stay a little bit ahead.
Final score Game 1
Raven: 37
Shelak: 39
Naturelich: 46
Raven converted green and orange into victory points
We then played a second game that was much closer. During the game Shelak and I were able to get several monopolies going. Mine were destroyed during the end and Shelak came really close. But in the end, I was still lucky to win by a nose.
Final score Game 2
Raven: 37
Shelak: 51
Naturelich:56