{"id":3901,"date":"2005-10-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-20T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2005\/10\/20\/hazienda-2\/"},"modified":"2005-10-20T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-20T10:00:00","slug":"hazienda-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2005\/10\/20\/hazienda-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Hazienda"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hazienda<\/a><\/h2>\n

Preview of the new Kramer game by Moritz Eggert<\/i><\/p>\n

Living in Munich means living in the most expensive city in Germany – the (usually)
\nnice weather, the closeness of the Alps and the many beergardens and other available
\nhedonistic pleasures make for extremely high rents and costs of living. I know many a
\ngamer here who can’t afford an apartment big enough to store his\/her games!<\/p>\n

But there are also benefits of living here, and one of them is living around the
\ncorner of the headquarters of Hans-im-Glueck, undoubtedly one of Germany’s best
\npublishers for quality boardgames. As I’m a regular visitor of their monthly
\nboardgame evenings I sometimes have the honour of being able to test the new designs in
\nthe pipeline. One of Hans-im-Glueck’s new games for this year’s Essen fair is
\n“Hazienda”, a new boardgame by master designer Wolfgang Kramer. But convincing
\nBernd Brunnhofer, head of Hans-im-Glueck, to give a special preview of this game was not
\nas easy as I first thought:<\/p>\n

‘We don’t usually like to do previews.<\/i>‘ says Brunnhofer.
\n‘Even if they are positive they tend to create a too high expectation that nobody
\ncan compete with, as was the case with “Euphrates & Tigris”. Now E&T is
\nconsidered a classic, but when it first came out there was a certain backlash to the
\nimmense hype that didn’t make us happy<\/i>‘.<\/p>\n

But after promising to make this a descriptive preview instead of an evaluating review
\n(the latter would be morally dubious anyway, as I was slightly involved in the
\nplaytesting of this game), Bernd was only too happy to indulge me in the secrets of this
\nnew and certainly interesting Kramer game.<\/p>\n

“Hazienda” takes place in Argentina, sometime between the 30’s and
\n50’s. The players (2-5) represent land owners who want to get rich quick by
\nestablishing trade routes and accumulating acres of land. Earning and spending cash is an
\nimportant motor of the game, but of course it is victory points that count at the end of
\nthe game, after all this is a game with the eponymous ‘Kramer Leiste’ (Kramer
\ntrack) to keep track of VP!<\/p>\n

\"brunnhofer<\/p>\n

Each player starts with 20 bucks and a selection of animal and land cards. The board
\nconsists of a ‘land track’ with 5 different types of land surrounding the open
\n‘Pampa’ spaces so typical for Argentina. Appearing throughout the Pampa spaces
\nare markets which players try to connect to their land spaces via ‘animal
\nroutes’. Animals come in 4 different kinds, and have to be played as a match, so a
\npig trade route can only be lengthened by playing more pig cards on it. There are also
\nwater spaces (lakes) that accumulate victory points when the player owns adjacent animal
\nor land tiles. There are two VP calculations in the game, one after half of the animal
\ncards have been used up, one after all of them are in play, the latter situation ends the
\ngame.<\/p>\n

If all this sounds rather abstract it comes as no surprise. First of all this is a
\nKramer game (what do you expect?), and even Brunnhofer makes it clear that ‘this is
\ncertainly not an unconventional game’. But Kramer’s designs are widely known for
\ntheir durability and elegance, and so ‘Hazienda’ is certainly worth a closer
\nlook. In fact the options for the players are impressive – there are 3 actions per player
\nturn, and they can be multiples of the same action and be done in any order.<\/p>\n

First of all it is possible to buy cards. There are always open animal or land cards,
\nand these can be purchased for 3 bucks each. You can also try your luck and buy unknown
\ncards from the deck for 2 bucks. Playing a card also counts as an action. Land cards are
\nplaced to own the corresponding land spaces (shown by placing a tile of your colour on
\nthe board) and animal cards are played to create animal lines to reach the markets (also
\nplayed as tiles in your colour). The players usually try to create lines of at least 3
\nland spaces on the land track – the longer a continuous stretch of land is, the more VP
\nit will bring during the calculations (2 per space). Placing a hacienda on a land line is
\nexpensive (12 bucks), but it brings an additional VP per space, so you better save up
\nactions for doing it before the game ends! It should be no surprise as the game is named
\nafter them….<\/p>\n

Haciendas can also be placed on animal lines, but this is done rarely.<\/p>\n

Another possibility is ‘hugging’ lakes with your animal or land lines. You can
\nalso cleverly create your own lakes (quasi godlike and slightly dubious from a realism
\npoint of view, but essential to the game. One could think of them as artificial water
\nspaces created by dams). This also costs 12 bucks, and you should select a lake form that
\nhugs as many of your spaces as possible as other players will also benefit from a lake
\nplaced next to their spaces, even if they didn’t do it themselves.<\/p>\n

\"board\"\/<\/p>\n

Connecting the markets is important in 2 ways: first of all each time an animal
\nconnects to a market (even if done several times in a circle by playing more and more of
\nthe same type of animal) you get the length of your land stretch plus the animal track in
\nmoney. Get rich quick schemes are usually quickly thwarted by your opponents who can
\ntactically place their tiles in your way to prevent a ‘circle run’ around a
\nmarket. The second and more important function of markets is that they are a VP cash cow:
\nthe more different markets you connect yourself to the more VP you get, in an exponential
\ncurve similar to the game Hare and Tortoise. Another way to make cash is to harvest a
\nstretch of land (this can only be done once per line) for 3 bucks per land space. Owning
\nmoney is not bad either, as 10 bucks convert to 1 VP – in both VP calculations!<\/p>\n

These are, in a nutshell, the rules of the game, and they can be understood quickly by
\nany kind of gamers. As is usual for this type of games you want to do many things at once
\nbut can only do so little in each turn. The road to victory is therefore to be as
\nefficient as possible with your actions, by maximising input and output. Balancing the
\nvarious VP requirements was therefore the most important task in the design work of this
\ngame, says Brunnhofer, who is an expert at removing unnecessary details to make the
\ndesign as fluid as possible. Early versions of the game included, for example, many more
\noptions for earning VP’s. One of them was the possibility to earn bonus VP’s for
\nthe longest land line. ‘We dropped this to eliminate the boredom of watching players
\nconstantly counting the length of their land lines, which bogged the game down
\nimmensely’ says Brunnhofer. Another way of calculating VP’s by multiplying them
\ninstead of adding them was also removed, because it ended in wildly differing sums which
\nmade close and more exciting finishes impossible.<\/p>\n

But there are also things which were added. ‘The original design of Kramer had
\nnumbered spaces instead of different land types, because he wanted to avoid similarity to
\nother games of this type. Playing land cards was done very differently, with the use of
\njokers and the possibility to look for certain numbers in the other player’s hands.
\nIn the end we introduced the lands again because they added more flair’. Good idea,
\nbecause otherwise “Hazienda” might have been confused as an Acquire variant,
\nwhich it certainly isn’t! Another later change (this time by Kramer himself) was to
\ninterrupt the otherwise continuous land track with Pampa spaces, which forces the players
\nto buy Pampa cards and also makes Pampa cards more valuable when they appear.<\/p>\n

The prototype I played was the finished version ruleswise, but the game itself had not
\nyet gone to the printer. This is usually done very shortly before the Essen fair, to give
\nthe possibility to change small details. Hans-im-Glueck is known to work hard on their
\nrules to avoid any opaqueness or confusion, and even as we played our 3-player game Bernd
\nBrunnhofer and Georg Wild made little notes for additional fine tuning.<\/p>\n

As the game is very dependent on an interesting map this comes in two versions, one
\n‘symmetrical’ and one ‘asymmetrical’, with the first one being
\nrecommended for beginners. As an additional service our own Guenther Rosenbaum from
\nwww.westpark-gamers.de has finished a special program that enables players to create any
\nmap they want from the original symbols and then print it out. Look for it now on our website<\/a> or on the official Hans-im-Glueck website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Hazienda” plays in 1-2 hours, and can be equally played aggressively
\n(hindering other players from building good ’empires’), strategically (go for the
\nmarkets to get a surprise VP rush) or tactically (just consider what is best for you each
\nturn). Each of these options will tax your head without bursting it, as the game play is
\nrather swift (which was not the case with the earlier versions, where too many options
\nslowed the game down). It plays equally well with 3 or 2 players, with only slight
\nmodifications in the distribution of cards. I predict that “Hazienda” will be a
\nwelcome new addition to the already impressive line of Kramer games.<\/p>\n

But don’t believe my hype – join Hans-im-Glueck in Essen to see the finished game
\nor play the game when it’s available. Although none of us would probably mind another
\nEuphrates & Tigris – hype or no hype.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hazienda Preview of the new Kramer game by Moritz Eggert Living in Munich means living in the most expensive city in Germany – the (usually) nice weather, the closeness of the Alps and the many beergardens and other available hedonistic pleasures make for extremely high rents and costs of living. I know many a gamer … Hazienda<\/span> weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spieleabende"],"views":7,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}