The fact that the end of the game is player-driven led to some concerns from the community, me included. Far from being an easily observable event on the horizon, triggering the end of the game takes some deliberate planning. That might sound like a definite line in the sand, but it isn’t, as you’re constantly drawing and playing cards. The only game-ending condition is when a player plays the last card from their hand. There are no rounds or phases during the game. Martin Wallace has done a great job in being able to capture the open-ended feel of Anno 1800, and creating a board game which feels familiar. This creates a problem when trying to recreate a sandbox-style game – a game just like the Anno series. Having set victory conditions and round structure in a game will always mean it’s on-rails to some extent. Plenty of games claim to offer a ‘sandbox’ experience, but very few truly deliver it. These VPs come from a few different sources, including exploring the Old and New world, and enticing new citizens to your blossoming township. What starts off as a game of generating a few basic goods, slowly snowballs into an intricate machine, fine-tuned to produce those all-important victory points. Supply chain management is what we’re dealing with here, it’s what all the cool kids are into.
The core of the game revolves around a concept of creating resources on your player board, and using them to upgrade and build new buildings (tiles) on that same board.īy the time you’ve played a few games, you could probably get a job in logistics somewhere. There are a lot of tiles in the game, but more on that in a bit.
The game could easily have been called ‘Here’s a massive box of tiles’, because that’s what it is. Not only that, but it feels like Anno 1800, which is a game I’ve played a lot of on the PC. The first thing I should tell you is that it really does feel like an Anno game. The exploration and expansion, not so much.ĭespite my misgivings, I went out and bought it as soon as it was released. Some of the things you do in the Anno games seem like a natural fit for a board game, like generating resources, and building. Having Martin Wallace’s name on the box helped ease that worry though, as he’s responsible for some of the greatest games ever made ( Brass: Birmingham, London, A Few Acres of Snow among others).
I’ve see far too many terrible adaptations from one form of media to another to not assume the worst. When I first heard that there was going to be a cardboard version of Anno 1800, I was equal parts excited and sceptical. Each game is set in a different historical period, and sometimes even the future! Anno 1800 has made the transition across the ethereal planes between digital and physical, and thanks to Martin Wallace and Kosmos Games, we can now play it on a table. They’re delightful city-building games in the style of others like The Settlers, and Age of Empires.
Anyone who has played PC games in the last twenty years will probably have heard of the Anno series of games.