Queendomino is a family board game for two-to-four players that takes around 30-40 minutes to play.

It is essentially a slightly more complex version of Kingdomino, sharing the faux-medieval theme and dominoes-inspired set collection game play – but with a few twists that raise it to being more like ages 10+.

The artwork is also very similar to its award-winning predecessor, whilst again you’ll get 48 tiles, four little cardboard castles and eight wooden kings. But this time they’re joined by 32 town tiles and a town board you buy them from; a bunch of cardboard coins; wooden towers (15) and knights (22); a handy colour score pad, plus cute wooden queen and dragon pieces.

The box is quite a bit bigger than the original, but the overall production quality throughout is again very high – making it very good value for the price tag, which is around £20. In fact, it makes a mockery of many other games in its price bracket.

Teaching Queendomino

The basic rules of Queendomino are identical to those in Kingdomino (including basic scoring and number of rounds), so I won’t go into depth on them here (please click on the link above to my review of that game if you need to).

Essentially you still do the same basic phases: add your new domino to your kingdom, then choose a new domino by placing your queen on it. What’s new are three optional phases in between them: use knights, construct a building and bribe the dragon (done in that order).

Knights can be placed on the tile you just added (so you can use two on your turn if you have them, one on each side of your new tile) and earn money – one coin per square in its area. Money is used to construct a building (one per turn, built on the only new terrain type, towns), which then give various benefits. Finally, if you don’t currently have the queen in your territory, you may bribe the dragon to remove a building from those currently available (there are six to choose from).

Town spaces appear on 20 of the 96 squares that make up the 48 dominoes in Queendomino; but they’re basically dead tiles until you build on them. Many buildings give you points or new ways to score points (including crowns, as with basic tiles); others give you bonuses when you use your knights to get taxes; plus, some also give you knights and/or towers.

The first player to claim a tower also takes the queen into their kingdom – but don’t get used to her being around. As soon as another player has an equal (or higher) number of towers, the queen will move to their kingdom. The queen gives you a one-coin discount when constructing buildings and counts as an extra crown in your largest area if you have her at the end of the game. On the downside, you can’t bribe the dragon.

The four sides

These are me, plus three fictitious players drawn from observing my friends and their respective quirks and play styles.

• The writer: The addition of the 20 town tile spaces reduces your chance to create large scoring areas, but many buildings let you score for having lots of small areas in a colour, rather than big ones. This reverse scoring adds an interesting extra tactical level that was needed and works well. However, it means towns can’t be ignored: it’s not as if you can choose a completely different way to try and win the game. However, as a gateway game, it now comes with a few light euro game elements that will be a good way to take your non-gamer friends to the next level.
• The thinker: I’m still happy to play Kingdomino as a light filler, as it has surprisingly interesting decisions in a short time span. But the extra play time, setup time and fiddliness introduced with Queendomino seem to muddy the waters rather than expand them clearly. More isn’t always a good thing and for every new potentially strategic element here another random one seems to have been added that balances it out, meaning it doesn’t feel any more controllable. I had high hopes, but surprisingly I think I still prefer the original.
• The trasher: The dragon adds a nice tactical element to the interactive part of this series, but can only be utilised by one player once per turn – so is better with less players (otherwise you may rarely get to use it). Its similar for scrapping over most towers, or most knights – if a couple of you go for it, it’s likely to simply benefit the other players as you’re watering down your own benefits and clearing undesirable tiles for your opponents. That said, the core element of choosing turn order still works well and its fun to put both games together to make bigger grids.
• The dabbler: I still love Kingdomino and was looking forward to this – especially after seeing the cute new pieces (some of the things the sheep are getting up to on the new tiles is hilarious). But unfortunately I was disappointed: the game just seems to add complexity for complexity’s sake without adding any extra fun. You definitely wouldn’t want to play with younger children – especially as the little wooden knights are ridiculously small (and, frankly, the wooden towers are too big – you can barely see what is on other players’ tiles if they have one on – and if its two or three, forget it!). The addition of score sheets was very welcome though.

Key observations

It may seem as if I’ve given Queendomino a rough ride, so I feel the need to point out here that in the wider community the jury is definitely out on which game is ‘better’ – in fact, at the time of writing, both games ranked a very impressive 7.4 on Board Game Geek.

Those who love it appreciate the extra play time, see it as having deeper planning than the original, while adding the elements they thought were lacking. Those who don’t (like me), amusingly, simply say the opposite: the extra play time feels unnecessary, while the extra bits are over-complicated and weaken the game’s fantastic core. Is it deeper – or overblown? I’m afraid that’s simply a matter of opinion.

The ability to combine Queendomino with the original is great if you like both games and has been very well conceived. I do enjoy making a 7×7 grid (rather than 5×5) when playing the original two-player and having both games means you can do this all the way up to four players. Also, this waters down the town tiles sufficiently to make them have a little less impact, bringing the original scoring methods more to the fore.

When combining both games, in fact, quite a lot of things seem better balanced. When playing just Queendomino, the town tiles seem to have been given a bit too much weight in terms of the numbering – but this makes sense when playing the bigger game: town tiles are rarer, so feel more desirable. Unfortunately though, if playing two-player, this combining of the games is only an option if you go for a player-created variant that makes 10×10 grids – quite the undertaking!

Conclusion

I was happy to see Kingdomino win the Spiel de Jahres award and over a year on from my review of the game I’m still very much enjoying it. I looked forward to Queendomino and was still excited about it as I was getting it out of the box.

But I won’t be keeping it in my collection. I am definitely in the “it’s over-complicated” camp and, with its extended setup and play time, I have many family weight light euro games I’d rather reach for (both my recently reviewed Thurn and Taxis and Maori spring to mind).

But this shouldn’t be seen as me giving Queendomino a ‘bad’ review. It’s high average ratings and scores of fans are genuine, while the production quality is high. The game is well designed and also works/flows beautifully; it simply isn’t for me. If you love the original, I suggest you try this one out – and if you thought the original was simply too light, again, this is worth a look. Just be aware of its Marmite nature going in.

* I would like to thank Coiledspring Games for providing a copy of the game for review.

Thurn and Taxis is a family board game for two to four players aged 10 and up, that takes around an hour to play. It cleverly combines hand management and route building, seeing it win the coveted Spiel de Jahres (German Game of the Year) Award in 2006.

This is very typical of games coming out of Germany at the time and thus often divides opinion: the game’s ‘theme’, which is very thinly pasted on, covers the establishment of German postal routes across Bavaria and beyond in the 17th Century – not one to get the heart racing!

The brown of the box continues inside, with many of the components sporting ‘the beige, with more beige’ colour scheme derided by some (particularly in the US); but if you can see past the colour scheme, the artwork and graphic design and clear and simple. In the box you’ll find a beautiful (if very beige) board, 86 small (Ticket to Ride sized) cards, 80 small wooden post offices, 20 cardboard chits and four cardboard player aids. You can still easily find the game for around £30 new (or £20 second hand), which is cheap by today’s standards.

Teaching

Thurn and Taxis is in the same family as Ticket to Ride, Catan and Carcassonne: classic German games you can pretty much teach anyone, as they have familiar and simple rules – but that also enough depth to hold the attention of more experienced gamers.

The board has 22 locations and each player starts with 20 post offices they will try and place on them (so you can’t complete them all). You’ll lose a point for each unplaced office at the end of the game, while each city falls into a region – and completing these regions will score you some bonus points (decreasing for players completing them after the first). There’s an additional bonus for placing in all the different coloured regions.

Each location has three identical city cards (so a 66-card deck). Six of these are visible at any time (think Ticket to Ride), or you can draw blind from the top of the stack. What really makes the game sing is the order in which a turn is structured: draw a card; play a card to your tableau to continue your route, then choose whether to complete your current route (by using all the cards in your tableau).

All the cities are linked to at least one other (up to seven) by roads. Any card you play into your tableau (after the first) must continue the route you start in either one direction or the other – but you can only add to the two ends. This means that, if you didn’t have a card in hand at the start of your turn you can add – and if you get unlucky with your card draws – you may have to discard your route and start again.

You can only lay a route once you have three cards in your tableau, but waiting longer gives you point bonuses (a seven-city route is very lucrative). When you turn in your route you can place an office in any towns you don’t yet have one, but you can only place either in one colour (so ,for example, four grey cities), or only of each colour (so a grey, a blue, a red etc). Regardless of the amount of cities you place, all the cards in your tableau are discarded and you’ll start a fresh route next turn.

When you complete your first three-card route, you receive a bonus carriage (worth two points). If you later complete a four-card route, it will be replaced with a three-point bonus and so on – right up to a 10 point bonus for completing a seven-city route (having also done a five and a six – you can’t skip these bonus levels). If someone claims their 10-point bonus, this also ends the game (as does someone placing all of their offices), so you have two routes to victory. Finish the round, most points wins.

The four sides

These are me, plus three fictitious players drawn from observing my friends and their respective quirks and play styles.

• The writer: While many disagree, this is one of my favourite Spiel de Jahres winners (just behind Ticket to Ride). It’s a very simple game to teach, can be played by players of all abilities, and has enough luck in it to turn up some surprise results. But at the same time, an experienced player will begin to find more strategic and tactical depth that should, in the long run, give them an advantage over time. Despite being well over 10 years old now the game is still in print too – not something some of the other previous winners can claim. For me, that is for one simple reason: it has easily stood the test of time.
• The thinker: While Thurn and Taxis ha a lot of luck in terms of the random draws, with a deck of just 66 cars it is quite easy for a player with good memory to follow certain cities and to know the chances of what you need coming out soon. You can also play safer by playing slower, but this of course opens you up to defeat by more reckless (and of course lucky!) players. The two ways to win can also make for interesting pacing, as a player rushing to victory via completing the bonus carriages can devastate those playing the long game – but not every time, as the slow player can collect some large bonuses too. A very good tactical game.
• The trasher: Each turn you can use one of four officials as a bonus action: take two cards instead of one; play two cards into your tableau instead of one; refresh the six visible city cards, or get a bonus carriage even if you’re up to two cards short of the amount you need (when you complete it at the end of the turn). This makes every round really tactical, while also giving you a better chance of flying by the seat of your pants if you want to push your luck to get that exact card you need. But you can also clear the decks if there’s a card there you’re pretty sure the next player is going to need!
• The dabbler: I wasn’t wowed by the beige and typically German box cover of Thurn and Taxis, but at least the lady on the front is smiling: a fair reflection of what turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable, if themeless and bland looking family game. You have to wonder a how a re-themed version in space, or a board that pops a little and some nice plastic pieces (a la Ticket to Ride) may liven things up a bit – but really, who cares? It’s a simple teach, easy set up and plays fast – yet every turn you have genuine decisions to make. Against the odds on first viewing, this is now right up there on my list of favourite games.

Key observations

Even Thurn and Taxis detractors don’t claim it is a bad design, but you see phrases such as ‘puzzle’, ‘optimising’, ‘themeless’, ‘abstract’ and ‘low/no interaction’ in the same sentences as those branding it ‘boring’. As I often say to this kind of criticism, you’re not judging the game, you’re judging your tastes.

No, it isn’t for everyone – only family gamers who like a thoughtful euro element need apply. And I do feel, more than any other game, it suffers for its similarities (and closeness of release) to the behemoth that is Ticket to Ride. Interestingly people almost equally describe it as both TtR+ and TtR Lite, which probably just proves that while the games share similar basic components they are actually very different beasts. Generally though, I would definitely suggest trying the other: but I find the experience they bring very different. They share a similar level of luck and planning, but TtR is much more combative and obviously interactive.

Speaking of luck, while Thurn and Taxis definitely has it, an experienced player who reads the deck will tell you that there’s much less luck here than in Ticket to Ride. I’ve had games of Ticket to Ride where I know I’ve lost due to a colour simply not coming my way, or because of accidental blocking; where in Thurn and Taxis it will be because I’ve taken a risk and it hasn’t paid off – or someone else has simply played better than me. Again, this is either going to appeal to your or not.

Finally, despite it having some seriously harsh detractors giving the game more than the average very low scores at Board Game Geek, the game is still ranked well inside the Top 100 family games and inside the top 350 games overall.

Conclusion

Thurn and Taxis could well be the most euro-ey euro of them all, while also being the more euro and worse looking cousin of one of the most celebrated games in the hobby (Ticket to Ride): neither of which enamour it to many modern gamers. But for thoughtful family and light euro gamers this is a genuine classic you should definitely try.

While I have quite deliberately not played it to death (once per month feels about right for the base game), this has become one of favourite family games. But it also has two expansions which add a little extra to the mix, so if it does become a favourite there are options to add a little variety too. Highly recommended.

Welcome to my first ‘mini expansion mini review’ for this little £10 dice and card expansion for the excellent Cthulhu-meets-Yahtzee push your luck game Ancient Terrible Things.

Even as a fan of the game (which is in my Top 50 games), I found the original re-rolling mechanism a little frustrating. Most of the time you could only reroll individual dice (by spending tough-to-get tokens), rather than being able to ‘lock’ dice and reroll the rest – so if you already had a totally crap roll it cost a lot of tokens to try and make it a better.

Recognising the problem, they did release a downloadable ‘version 2.5’ rule update that changed this to allow you to spend tokens to reroll or lock dice, but it’s fair to say a lot of owners of the original game would never have seen it.

In the company’s recent release, Konja (which uses the same ‘dice quest’ dice system), the designers added two extra dice and some cards that dialled-up the reroll system a step further. These white dice are used to activate cards that let you either reroll or lock – but if you don’t need to use them, there’s a 50-50 chance per dice (three sides are blank) you’ll have rolled a symbol which will let you instead take much-needed bonus tokens. It’s a small change, but it works really well.

What Madness of McGuffin does (you guessed it…) is introduce this system to Ancient Terrible Things.

Each player starts with two extra cards that represent these two re-roll options: the lock option card doesn’t ‘exhaust’, so could be used twice in a round (with both white dice) – while the standard reroll card does.

Another nice twist is that the reroll card can alternatively, at any time, be ‘sold’ to give you two cash. Money is often hard to come by in the game (especially using scenario two), and some of the loot is super tempting, so this gives you the option of giving up a nice reroll ability to grab that swag item you’ve always dreamt of owning.

Eight cards for £10 would be a bit of rip off. But don’t worry – you also get a complete new set of 16 dice for the game, including the two new white dice and three purple ones (used with the Lost Charter expansion). Unfortunately these dice are a little smaller than the awesome ones in the original game, but frankly the little skull pips totally make up for that in terms of theme – and despite being a little smaller they’re still high quality.

Conclusion

If you’re a fan of Ancient Terrible Things, I think this is worth picking up. It certainly makes the reroll situation more interesting, while adding a little extra theme for those who want it. I think my only lingering problem with the game now is the swag cards, which seem so much fun but are generally hard to get. I think I’ might draft some $1 items at the start of the game, and perhaps allow players to trade in unwanted items for half their value when shopping at the store. Maybe I should go try that out…

The Ancient Terrible Things: Madness of McGuffin mini expansion is available direct from publisher Pleasant Company Games, which has a lot of great little add-ons for its games over at its online store. Thank you to them for providing a copy for review.

Konja* is a two-player only dice and card game from the same design/art team (Simon McGregor and Rob Van Zyl) that brought us Ancient Terrible Things and Snowblind. A game lasts 30-60 minutes and while the age on the box says 8+, that may be a little low (I’d probably guess 10+ unless they’re a full-on gamer child).

Players are duelling wizards; a popular theme, but as usual with Pleasant Company Games the art style makes it stand out from the rest. Also like the aforementioned games, this is a dice-chucking push-your-luck game with cards throwing in special abilities and one-off powers along the way.

In the box you’ll find 11 custom dice, 40 cards, five wooden idols, five thick cardboard tiles that make up the play area, and about 100 cardboard chits in various shapes and sizes. All the components are of the usual high standard: fair value at around £20-30. There’s also a handy card effects cheat sheet separate from the rulebook.

Teaching

Konja is a straight race to 21 points. Between the two players are five god tiles (inspired by African mythology, which makes a nice change), one of which the active player uses on their turn.

Once all five have been used, they’re reset and the players go through them again (and again, until the game ends). These powers grant a special one-off ability to the player choosing it, then another ability that both players benefit from.

Next the active player rolls five dice (plus any extras they may have accrued), using various cards/tokens to change or reroll the results until they’re happy – or out of options. Their opponent then gets a chance to mess with them by rolling a dice that can cancel one of these results. Finally, the active player ‘spends’ their roll on various benefits: end game points, tokens to help in future rolls, or both.

The meat of the decision making comes in what you spend your tokens on. Magic tokens help you cast spells (instant discarded effects that can do everything from steal from your opponent to make your rolls better); while money can buy/upgrade victory point tokens, or buy new and improved ancestors (each player starts with three of these, which may be activated for various dice rolling effects). Finally, power tokens are used to power (der) the ancestors.

When one player’s end game points hits 21 or more, the round is completed and the player with the most points is the winner.

The four sides

These are me, plus three fictitious players drawn from observing my friends and their respective quirks and play styles.

• The writer: What makes this series of games stand out, Konja included, is the wealth of mitigation on hand for those pesky dice. This also has a nice blend of visible (ancestors) and hidden (spell cards), so you never quite know what your opponent may do. I think I’d mix it up even more, giving each player a replacement choice in round one for one of their starting ancestors. But, with all that in mind, it was a shame the player who won most times simply hoarded money for buying points, rather than buying ‘fun’ stuff like ancestors.
• The thinker: While there are many interesting ways to mitigate your dice rolls, Konja still felt much like an exercise in futility. You can add as many bells, whistles, twists and turns as you like, but if one player rolls ‘well’ and the other badly – guess who is going to win? Sure, I’m not the target audience here and I certainly didn’t have a bad time playing – the game is short enough that the high level of luck is acceptable. But there doesn’t seem to be a viable, more strategic option available here. For me the best dice games have a ‘roll and hope’ model that may win you the game, plus a slow and steady one with less outliers.
• The trasher: I’d really looked forward to Konja, as the thought of a straight push-your-luck dice battle always excites me – but I was a bit disappointed. There’s hardly any real interaction between players and it certainly doesn’t feel like the advertised ‘dice duel’. Sure, there are some spell cards that liven things up but beyond that – how is ‘roll dice, mitigate bad roll, repeat’ a duel?! A duel should be action packed! This game is ponderous, with a player’s turn feeling long and convoluted even after repeat plays. Not for me.
• The dabbler: As always, I loved the artwork and effort put into the components. The little skulls on the dice are adorable, which sounds weird – you’ll have to check them out. We really didn’t like the red ‘screw you’ dice power, which lets you mess with the other player’s results. Luckily there is a variant included where, instead of removing a dice from the other player, the red dice is used to upgrade one of your own dice if you roll something better with it. We found this also sped the game up a little, rather than slowing it down and frustrating us. Played like this, I found plenty to love in the world of Konja.

Key observations

For a game that revolves around a one-on-one dice chucking mechanism, Konja is actually a slow and thoughtful game. This thematic break can be hard to overcome and feels like a misstep for some players. This is not King of Tokyo.

While the god abilities is a good mechanic, the five choices are so specialised that they rarely feel like choices. Normally one choice is the obvious one, no matter what style of play you choose – at least one tends to be pointless, for example, or one may clearly favour your opponent. It also feels like a very mechanical step that breaks game flow for what is often a very small payoff.

Some have said that the card powers are unbalanced, but I can’t say this is really something I noticed – and even if it is a bit of an issue, the game is short enough that it is unlikely to be much of an issue. spell cards are one-and-done, while players start with identical ancestors: those you buy later will only be used a few times each, so are unlikely to have a massive impact – especially when you’re rolling a load of dice, which are pretty random themselves…

Conclusion

When a design team decides to keep revisiting the same mechanism, as a punter you hope they’ll continue to refine – or adapt – to create a set of games that fans of the original will love. Mac Gerdts and Uwe Rosenberg are the obvious proponents of this design ideology, and who can argue (sensibly) with their results?

Pleasant Company are doing it with this ‘dice quest’ game system and while I loved the first two offerings (reviews linked above), for me Konja feels like a small misstep. But hey – you can’t win them all, right? And I’m sure some players will prefer this to the others – if you like puzzley, gorgeous push-your-luck dice games you should definitely seek it and give it a try, especially if you haven’t played anything in this series. But why wasn’t I sold on it?

For me, a great two-player experience means getting inside the head of your opponent. This can be done in the simplest to most complex games: I love anything from The Rose King to Race for the Galaxy two-player. I want to be worrying about what the other player will do next but here I didn’t feel that. Take other Yahtzee-style games, such as Heck Meck or Decathlon. These aren’t ‘two player’ games, but when played with two you need to think about what the other player is up to: can I steal their tile, do I need to go for it on this event etc. Konja feels too restrained, despite all the mitigation. I just didn’t feel as if there were any truly satisfying ‘Hail Mary’ moments.

I know the guys have another game in the works with the same dice mechanism. Titled ‘Grim Heroes’ and slated for a 2019 release, it takes this dice system into the co-op fantasy realm – where I have high expectations for it working wonderfully.

* I would like to thank Pleasant Company Games for providing the game for review.

Transatlantic* is an economic card-driven euro game from designer Mac Gerdts. It plays two-to-four players and takes one to two hours (once you know the game), taking longer at higher player counts.

There’s quite a lot going on here, so the age suggested (12+) feels about right. But if your kids are younger and have player other Gerdts games, they’ll be equally at home playing this one.

Transatlantic sees players taking the roles of shipping companies in the age of steam, taking a historic journey from the earliest commercial steam ships (mid 1800s) through to the early 20th Century (yup, The Titanic is in here). You’ll buy modern ships and watch older ones become obsolete, but hopefully long after you’ve made a solid profit from them. The theme is fine, and there’s the usual PD Verlag history document in the box, but it’s as dry as it sounds.

The components are a mixed bag, which I’d have to conclude fall a little short of what we now call average. The main and player boards are dull if functional; the card stock fine but with some odd graphic design – and poor colour – choices; the paper money is thick and nicely designed, but it’s paper money; and the cardboard chits and wooden pieces are fine but uninspiring. Overall it doesn’t look great on the table but is perfectly serviceable; although using largely dark shades for the cards was a big misstep.

Teaching

If teaching to players used to playing previous Mac Gerdts games Concordia and Navegador, this will be a breeze. But even if not, Transatlantic has an easy to follow and well written rulebook – including a separate sheet for setup.

While setup is a little fiddly it does skip through what would be a boring couple of opening rounds, while setting all the players up competing in the various oceans of the world. This is a game with an underlying economic element built around area control, so forcing everyone to place their first two ships into different areas gets things off on the right foot.

After this you’ll be taking typically Gerdts short, snappy turns – as with Concordia, you’ll play a card and do its action: that’s it. One of your cards (you each start with the same hand of eight cards) allows you to pick up all your played cards back into your hand, so you can do those actions again.

When you do this you also get to take a new card from a public display, so as the game goes on reach player’s hand of cards start to deviate from the rest (you probably get slightly less extra cars than in Concordia, but there are several that feel more specialised and unique than in his previous release).

Standard actions see you buying and then deploying new ships; filling those ships with coal; or using the coal on ships to earn profit by transporting goods or passengers. You’ll also be buying trade houses, coal bunkers and business markers – which then help you score victory points as the game progresses. Trade houses encourage you to use your ships in the sea you place them; while the rest of the markers will increase the value of ships you have of a certain colour.

Whenever someone buys ships, one that hasn’t been bought goes into the ‘docks’; meaning ships of this colour will be worth one extra victory point later. This means ships in a colour no one is buying become more valuable – but of course there are less of them around. You can try to specialise or diversify, but as usual in Gerdts games the name of the game is efficiency: the player who best uses their tactical situations to feed their long term strategy is likely to come out on top.

The four sides

These are me, plus three fictitious players drawn from observing my friends and their respective quirks and play styles.

• The writer: As a big Gerdts fan, and a lover of Concordia, I’d looked forward to Transatlantic with growing enthusiasm – especially after it was delayed a year to make sure it was just right. I also like how he takes a mechanism (such as the rondel) and runs with it for several games. Concordia kept just enough of his usual style but was an interesting take on deck-building – so another instalment was welcome. I even quite like the theme. It was easy to learn too, and despite some fiddliness easy to teach. But sadly, despite the pedigree, there just wasn’t a spark.
• The thinker: This game is way more tactical even than Concordia, especially at higher player counts. Ships rocket past in the buying market and money margins are so tight (especially early on) you’re left with little to no control over what to buy. I’m sure that with practice this feeling may dissipate, but after several plays it still felt more random and fluctuating than i feel comfortable with. And while this is offset by the short-ish playing time, I’d rather player a game with more control that plays longer. Unfortunately, a disappointment.
• The trasher: With a dull theme and look, I was surprised to find anything at all I liked in Transatlantic – but it definitely has some interesting interactions. Shipping decisions are often predicated by which ships have coal at what times, as sometimes you can ship a whole region – so timing can be crucial. Control of areas is also interactive, as you can’t beat pushing players’ ships out of areas they’ve spent money building trade houses in. And then there’s the Blue Riband – the only free victory point generator, but you can only get it by putting out the fastest ship into the North Atlantic.
• The dabbler: I was quite surprised that I liked Concordia, but I really couldn’t warm to this one. It looks pretty ugly and without a main boar to move around it simply isn’t spatially appealing. I was moving things around and playing cards, but so many of the actions felt as if they were just variations on a theme. I certainly didn’t hate the game, and everything worked, but I never really felt engaged. And for me it wasn’t the theme – I like something a little different and it’s nice seeing the old style painting of all those classic ships. I just couldn’t really get into it.

Key observations

The more critical words players kept coming back to while playing Transatlantic were ‘abstract’ and ‘dry’ – which is odd, as several of my group (including me) really like dry, abstract games!

During play the games seems fiddly, but I think this is exacerbated by its repetitive nature: you’re son dong the same things over and over, in the same fiddly way, but the payoff doesn’t seem to improve with time. Sure, you’re getting more money per transaction and maybe a slightly better action from a new card – but these things don’t feel different.

While I didn’t have any issues with the rule book, it seems a lot of others did. Sure, its a bit of a dog’s breakfast in terms of layout – but personally I didn’t find it slowed me down. That said, it doesn’t flow well and I had the advantage of being familiar with Concordia – which works in a similar way. So do be aware mileage in this department may vary.

Finally, colour blindness issues with the cards really need a mention. One ship colour is white – but unfortunately the others are black, darkish blue, dark green and a deep maroon red. No, I have no idea what they were thinking – and to make it worse, there is no symbology to tell them apart (they all have the same shape flag on them with no pattern). This is pretty unforgettable in modern gaming, and it does feel a little as if some of the older, traditional German publishers are getting left behind.

Conclusion

I don’t own every Mac Gerdts/PD Verlag game, but have played and enjoyed all the ones I’ve come across – including this one. But Transatlantic is the first I’ve owned that won’t be staying in my collection. Perhaps if it had come along before Concordia, the card play would’ve been enough to keep me playing – but this very much feels like a backward step from that, rather than a forward one.

If you’re a Gerdts fan, like economic games, or if the theme appeals, I’d recommend seeking it out for a play. It is a solid design and mechanically there’s nothing wrong with it at all. But in comparison to his other recent titles, I found it a little lack lustre in terms of a hook, a spark, or a reason to keep coming back. Transatlantic is a solid 6.5, but I just didn’t find anything to love.

* I’d like to thank PD Verlag for providing a discounted copy of the game for review.