Kraftwagen

2015 · Economic

Kraftwagen

Players run early automotive start-ups, researching technologies and designing improved chassis and engines to advance production in the 1920s. Companies build cars to meet buyer preferences and price points while managing resources and manufacturing capacity. Early Grand Prix races offer opportunities to earn prestige and income, and technological advances (including V6 engines) provide new design options and tactical choices.

Players
2–4 best 4
Playing time
75 min
Age
10+
Complexity
2.9 / 5
6.3 on Ludoyafrom $28.65Industry / ManufacturingWorker PlacementRondelSet Collection

About the game

On Ludoya's tables

Full stats in Ludoya
47
Plays logged
53
Players
1h 39m
Average play
14
In collections
7
On wishlists

6.3/10

from 11 Ludoya reviews

  • Evan5.9

    This game uses the Glen More action selection method where the player in last in line goes first, and moves their marker ahead as far as they want and resolves the action on the tile they land on, then they move that tile to the front of the line. Then the new last player goes, so on and so forth. What you are doing in this game is making car body tokens, car engine tokens, selecting which buyer token will buy a car, moving your race car around the track or taking a technology card. In addition to your basic action, if you have a car body and engine free, you can send them along with some player discs to the market, and set a price, which then may or may not be bought during the next evaluation process. This can be uncertain because again, players drive which buyer tokens will be in the mix, each looking for a different quality in the car, and then additionally, each will break ties in their criteria to the player who put down the car with the cheaper price. Really though, the heart and failing of this game is the technology action. There are always two random tech cards on display, and they can be wildly different in usefulness. Some might give 1 to body, some give 2 to body. Others have a powerful named engineer personality with a special effect you'll have to keep looking in the rulebook for unless you print out special player aids (do this). You ned these techs to be competitive in the racetrack action, and in 2 of the four different buyer tokens, so the luck of how these cards flip can be frustrating if due to the flips you get locked out of an entire scoring criteria, although in theory the mitigation to not being able to get any engine upgrades for example, is to go down a different path, particularly with the selection of buyers action. The new edition of the game comes with a mini expansion that looks like it might even the luck out a little bit by adding a new special action marker that gets placed at the very end of the action tile chain, and swaps out for a totally new one each round. I'm interested to try it, but even as is I find the luck of the draw in technology tiles to be a forgivable flaw in an otherwise very enjoyable game. :star: Art, Iconography and components functional :star: Clever or interesting mechanisms :star: Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players :star: Multiple plays stay interesting :nostar: Low or mitigatable luck elements :star::star::star::nostar::nostar: Raw enjoyment

  • Mitchell C5.9

    Fun eurogame with an interesting market mechanic.

  • Juan Manuel Nuñez9.0

    +EXP 2 EUR

Read the reviews and rate it

Game facts (players, playing time, age, credits) from BoardGameGeek.