Hansa Teutonica Board Game Review

Year Published: 2009

Players: 2-5

Playing Time: 45-90 Minutes

Somewhat infamously, well-known board game media group Shut Up & Sit Down (SU&SD) referred to Hansa Teutonica as “the best Eurogame ever!” in their video review of it, even putting it in the original title.

Nevermind that this is some obvious clickbait, though I don’t necessarily begrudge them for that. Youtube creators are under forces from the platform’s search algorithm that force them into such titles, whether they want to or not. But I digress.

The “Best” moniker followed it around, though, if only to use as commentary in forums and Reddit posts following the video’s release.

And of course it’s not “the best” Eurogame. These things are subjective. The fervor over their assertion misses the fact that SU&SD were likely giving it that title ironically. I can’t know for sure, but they undoubtedly know there are no such things as “best” board games in a holistic sense. There are only better and worse games for a particular individual or group.

Why make the assertion in the first place, though, even if it’s tongue-in-cheek? What aspects of the game appealed to them so much that they felt justified in calling attention to themselves and the game in this way?

I’d like to explore why, but to do that I first need to talk about…

Eras of Eurogames

Game genres are not monoliths. When we talk about Eurogames, most of the time we’re talking about strategy games without direct combat, no player elimination, and somewhat pacific themes. Hansa Teutonica has each of these – it’s about mercantile trading, of all things – and so it’s safely in the realm of Eurogaming.

But that glosses over some fundamental differences in types of Eurogames. If you want to skip the abbreviated history lesson below, the eventual thesis is that Hansa Teutonica blends styles of Eurogaming that offer rich rewards to a variety of gamer types but without sacrificing heavily in its various elements. It’s furiously contentious, but also rewards careful planning to leverage the game’s various levers and subsystems. And the two complement one another.

Back to history, though. Games like Catan and Carcassonne ushered Eurogames into the limelight in the 90s and 2000s. They were rules-lite, but had enough strategic depth to carry them for dozens or even hundreds of plays. They also had copious amounts of direct player interaction; not overtly combative, but still obvious.

Fast forward to the last decade or so and a new type of game has emerged. It’s still a Eurogame. But largely removed are two elements from the paragraph above: necessary and frequent player interaction, and rules-lite.

Instead, these are rules-dense and component-dense games that seem to produce infinite permutations of interlocking mechanical systems. This also necessarily drives the attention to those mechanics, rather than a shared interactive space where players jostle with each other more frequently.

Neither is good or bad on its own. But these two quite disparate styles of games both wear the same “Eurogame” genre label. This makes commentary on the genre next to impossible at times without first including this context.

Blending Board Game Styles

Hansa straddles these conceptual realms in several key ways. And it’s at this point that I’m realizing I haven’t described the game’s premise or mechanics.

Players are traders trying to build a network of trading posts in various cities, primarily by placing connected chains of cubes on the board’s spaces. Various skills such as actions per turn, number of cubes available to you, and bonus structure for scoring chains of cities, can be upgraded in certain areas of the board.

The turn-to-turn decisions are simplicity itself. Usually you’re simply placing cubes. The game sneakily incentivizes blocking others’ routes. This won’t mean you’ll eventually claim that route, but in kicking you out of a coveted space, you get a small bonus placement. Get enough of these bonuses, and you may speed ahead of your opponents, even though most of your efforts are spent blocking their plans.

It’s a cleverly organic system, because the tensions between blocking others, upgrading your actions, and simply building a lengthy network all butt up against one another. You’ll never do even half of what you might hope to. The game’s over too quickly to do them all, and so each decision is about reacting to the board state with the knowledge that no one’s actually going to be able to play a perfect game.

Blocking is incentivized enough that it’s not just about being a jerk, but about timing your blockages so that they have the maximum benefit for you and hinder your opponents the most. You can’t do it constantly if you want a coherent plan, so it becomes about calculated aggression.

So far, so old-school, yeah? Necessary and contentious interaction, simple turn structure. Sounds like this game could have come out in 1999 alongside those classics (and many others) I mentioned earlier.

But then there’s the modern side. That most obvious of modern touches – the personal player board – is here, tracking your action upgrades and remaining upgrade options. The action is still on the main board, but your personal incentives are constantly informed by the information on this board.

And the various smaller subsystems in the game – the interrelation of city post order, the various little bonuses for doing random actions in the corner, the extra action tokens dotting various routes, or for building a particularly long chain between certain cities – all add to the game’s overhead in ways that make it more complicated than something like Catan ever aspired to.

Finding the Sweet Spot

It’s amusing, because I know people who will say without irony that this is the meanest game they’ve ever played. And others who will say the action is too nebulous and tied up in victory point manipulation and the ever-present action economy, rather than focusing enough on the tactical battle between players.

Both are right…in their own way, because their statements are informed by their previous experiences with games.

There is a line past which my own enjoyment falls off a cliff, for example, when a game’s rules systems weigh it down under its own weight, figurative and/or literal. But I’ll occasionally excuse such excess when these additions are in service of commensurate amounts of direct interaction or narrative depth.

Hansa Teutonica isn’t a game that tells an epic story. It’s a bit too abstract for that, and leaning into the theme of trading goods in Europe isn’t going to inspire many epic tales anyway.

However, it does justify itself for me along that interactive spectrum. Turns can fly around the table in under a minute, and the game’s breathless pace and constantly shifting board state leave me wanting more when I’m done. This is the better problem compared to games that overstay their welcome. I always wanted to get 1-2 more things done in sessions of Hansa. And I want to immediately play again to go after that ultimately unattainable feeling of completion, because the journey is so amusing and fraught with intrigue.

This isn’t the same reaction I’ve universally seen. “It’s too petty” and “It’s too convoluted for the interaction it delivers” are both semi-frequent refrains among the game’s detractors. Gauge your interest accordingly, because I can’t say that either is entirely right or wrong.

Tipping the Balance Too Far

Where I do agree with the latter of those two hypothetical detractor statements is in the game’s expansion boards. I think it shows what a precarious line some of these games walk when I can play on a map that presents perhaps 15-20% more rules fiddle in the form of one-off rules about routes, bonuses, and actions, and suddenly it’s a significantly worse game for me.

Make no mistake, I adore Hansa Teutonica. But it’s also a game that isn’t far from me joining those less enthusiastic gamers on the picket line, demanding more streamlined gameplay.

Any time I’ve played with options outside the base game, the experience has been demonstrably worse. Which then lends some credibility to those decrying the game’s subsystems in the base game as well. My individual tolerance for those elements is slightly different than theirs, allowing me to love the game. But we’re also ultimately not that far from one another. It’s a matter of degrees, not entirely different perspectives.

Is There A Super-Action?

Gaining extra actions in the game seems really good. Like…really good. And claiming an outpost in a city next to the “get more actions” route also seems extremely powerful.

I have seen a group meta that didn’t overly prioritize this action exactly once, and I’m assured by napkin-math strategic assessments that there are multiple paths to victory.

This does seem to be the case to me, so I don’t think the game’s actual balance is off in ways that bottleneck the proceedings.

However, the perception that this is the case can be just as damning to some groups, and it can be hard to break up a group’s tendencies once they believe they’ve established a “correct” way to play the strategic side of the game.

This is the only slightly sour thing I’ve seen in one of my groups. I suspect other avenues are closed off to me because of the absolute race for action bonuses, and how this speeds up the game clock in our sessions. One might think this would leave me free for other pursuits, and it does to an extent, but every action you take is informed by the play of others, so building off in the corner is not going to be as beneficial oftentimes when everyone else is piled up and it pays to block 1-2 players from quick access to more and more upgrades.

Hansa Teutonica – Conclusions

If it strikes the balance well for you, as it did for me and Shut Up & Sit Down, Hansa Teutonica is a magnificent game, and a fine example of the various points of interest of Eurogames as a genre from any era. It combines contentious, shared route building, a catty fight for city supremacy, and several interrelated action types and bonuses to consider to maximize your efforts in relation to your opponents.

I always want to play it more than I seem to get to, and that feeling doesn’t go away for a while after playing it. That response alone puts it in rare company for me among my favorites, and it may become one of yours as well.