Andreas Steading’s Hansa Teutonica (published in the US by Z-Man Games) is a difficult game to describe, since there is a lot going on and not a lot of thematic reasoning to help explain it.

Each player (from three to five, with additional two-player rules provided and a double-sided board accommodating either 2/3 or 4/5 players) has a board indicating his strength in five different abilities; all of the spaces on the board save the left-most in each ability begin the game with a cube or disk covering it. The rest of a player’s cubes (and one remaining disk) are split between his active supply and his stock according to player order. The abilities and supply/stock mechanic are reminiscent of another Z-man published title, Endeavor, but the similarities (and easy comparisons) end there.

On a player’s turn he has a number of actions as indicated by his current ranking in that ability. Each of those actions can be one of five different types: 1) placing a cube or disk on a route; 2) claiming a completed route and either installing an office in one of the cities (if you have the appropriate privilege level for the current office; the other cubes/disks are returned to the player’s stock) on one end or advancing in an indicated ability if applicable (the removed cube/disk is added to the player’s active supply and the ones on the route are all sent to the stock); 3) drawing a number of cubes and/or disks from your stock to your active supply (the number determined by your “money bag” income ability); 4) rearranging a number of cubes/disks on the board (equal to your current “book” ability); or 5) displacing an opponent’s cube/disk. Displacing a cube costs you one additional cube, and displacing a disk costs two cubes; the displaced player then gets to take that many cubes and/or disks from his stock and places them, along with the displaced object, on an adjacent route. Forcing other players to displace your pieces is a very strong tactic, as it costs them pieces while providing you with additional ones.

A point is scored whenever a player has control of a city (the most or, if tied, right-most offices in that city) and an adjoining route is completed. Additional points can be scored by claiming certain offices (often ones with only one adjoining path) or if a player manages to connect the two red-indicated towns (on opposite ends of the map). A player reaching twenty points will end the game, although the scores will not remain there for long. There are also two other ways to trigger the end of the game: when the supply of bonus disks is exhausted, or when ten cites on the board are completed. Bonus disks lie along certain routes and provide one of several free actions for later use; when a disk is claimed, a new disk is placed along an empty route by the active player at the end of that turn. Completing cities is such a rare and difficult task (due to privilege requirements) that a situation in which that condition is met before one of the other two seems impossible to visualize, but it must exist as a viable condition for a reason.

Regardless of how the game ends, bonus points are then scored for various categories. Each maxed-out ability (save one) is worth four points. Claimed bonus disks (used or not) are worth an increasing number of points based on how many you have collected. Each player scores one point for each office he controls in the longest chain of connected towns, which is then further multiplied by that player’s “town key” ability (the one ability that doesn’t award a bonus on its own). A player also scores two points for each city he controls. Finally, any players that have placed a disk on the “Colleen” space on the board scores the corresponding number of points (from seven to eleven). 

As you can see, there are a ton of options, which means a staggering number of choices each turn. New players can (and usually will) be overcome with a sense of having absolutely no clue what to do, and observing a game in progress doesn’t help as there is seemingly no rhyme or reason as to what is going on. The only real way to learn is to play; if one or two players have even only a couple more games’ worth of experience they will probably be destroyed. Not helping matters is the incredibly dry theme (something about 12th – 14th century Germanic merchants forming a sort of trade league… yeah) which does nothing to draw in new players. That basically just leaves a lot of wooden cube-pushing to wade through, which is decidedly not for everyone. The strategy is definitely there, and multiple apparent routes to victory provide additional depth. If the lack of theme is something you can deal with (or, in some cases, prefer), Hansa Teutonica can be picked up at a gaming store for about $50, although I’d recommend playing a game or two first if possible to make sure.

If there’s anything goblins really enjoy, it’s fighting. Kim Satô’s GoSu (published by Moonster Games) puts each player (from two to four) in the position of a goblin warlord looking to assemble an army and seize Goblin Supremacy. By combining goblins of three different levels from the five clans into a fighting force, warlords hope to achieve victory in enough Great Battles to do so.

Of course, goblins need structure or they’ll just run amok. Each player is dealt a starting hand of seven cards from the communal 100-card deck: fifty level-1 (“Bakuto”) goblins, five each from each of the five clans (colors), duplicated; thirty-five level-2 (“Hero”) goblins, seven from each clan; and fifteen level-3 (“Okzeki”), three from each clan. The clans themselves are Ancient Globan (white), Alpha Goblins (green), Dark Goblins (black), Meka Goblins (blue), and Fire Goblins (red); the colors and general feel of the clans generally correspond to their equivalents from Magic: the Gathering, as does the overall look of the cards themselves, but there’s really no tie between the games. Using these cards, players will assemble an array that maxes out at five columns wide and three rows high. But as with anything goblin-related, it’s not quite as simple as that.

On a player’s turn, they can take one of five actions: 1) play a goblin from his hand to his army; 2) mutate a goblin in his army into another one from his hand (or in the case of some Dark Goblins, the discard pile); 3) play one of their two activation tokens on a goblin with an activated ability (no goblin can have two tokens on it); 4) spend an activation token to draw a card — or both tokens to draw three; or 5) pass, ending their participation in the round. It is important to note that you cannot reclaim a spent activation token within a round unless a goblin’s ability allows it; otherwise you have to wait until the round ends, so use them carefully.

Playing your first bakuto into your army is free; if your army is later reduced to no goblins (generally this happens early on) any subsequent “first” goblin(s) is also free. Any additional bakuto is free if it is the same clan as a bakuto already in your clan, otherwise you have to discard two cards from your hand. In order to play a hero you need to have 1) at least one bakuto of that hero’s clan in your army and 2) a bakuto without a hero already “above” it in your ranks; there are no other costs. Ozekis have similar requirements, except you need both a matching bakuto and a matching hero and the empty space needs to be above a hero. Any goblin with a mutation cost (indicated on the card next to a yin-yang symbol) can be replaced by another one of equivalent rank by discarding that number of cards; unlike playing a goblin, there are no clan requirements, so you can use this ability to add a goblin of an unrepresented clan to either your bakutos or heroes (ozekis don’t mutate). The only restriction is that a given bakuto cannot mutate into the other copy of himself.

Once all players have passed for the round, the Great Battle for that round begins. Each level of goblin is worth a set amount of strength: two for bakutos, three for heroes, and five for ozekis. This makes math quick, as each full column (one of each) is worth ten, each two-thirds column is worth five, and each lone bakuto two; often a casual glance at each army can determine the winner without any real math being done. Whoever has the highest strength wins the Great Battle and earns a Victory Point, three of which are required to win the game. Certain ozekis have abilities that can grant victory to any player who meets their alternate requirements, so keep track of what’s going on in the upper ranks. If nobody has claimed victory at the conclusion of a Great Battle, everyone reclaims their spent advantage tokens and a new round begins.

What does not happen, however, is any drawing of cards. All card drawing after the initial hands are dealt is done via the abilities of various goblins (or spending activation tokens as an action). There are all kinds of abilities, so it helps to be aware of the options available to you. Some Dark Goblins have the ability to “trap” other goblins; a trapped goblin is turned face down, counting for neither clan nor strength, until the end of the Great Battle — although it can still be used as a support card when placing a goblin of a higher level. Other goblins interact with “free” cards; a card with no card on its right or above it is considered “free”, so there are only from one to three free cards in each army at any given time. Finally, the abilities of some goblins increase in strength if you are not leading in Victory Points.

A game of GoSu can vary wildly in time, as certain abilities can result in everyone drawing additional cards and potentially quite lengthy rounds. This can be especially annoying if those abilities happen after you’ve passed for the round and thus you have to just sit and watch everyone else play — and then you get crushed in the Great Battle since you had to stop developing your army. On the other extreme, a couple of timely destruction effects can quickly reduce a player to no legal plays and an easy victory in the Great Battle; this problem is especially prevalent in two-player games. Further adding to the fluctuating time requirement are the Dark Goblins who have the “zombie mutation” ability, as they allow players to dig through the entire discard pile to find a replacement; I recommend keeping the discards sorted by level to cut down on that issue. 

The cards are sturdy enough to play without sleeves, and are wonderfully illustrated, but there are only 100 of them. That is a very tiny amount for the size of the $30 box that contains them (which is about 4″x6″x2″); even with any potential future expansions (the first should arrive in March 2011) there’s still a bunch of room in there. Overall I find GoSu to be a fun experience, but not one I personally want to play with any regularity. There’s just too much variance that can tilt the game towards one player without any real chance of the other(s) catching up, and later rounds are often forgone conclusions. Still, it captures its theme well and enjoyable enough when I’m in the mood for some chaotic fun with just enough strategy to keep things interesting.