The Speicherstadt

MeMestremutenstar8,0

Rating: 4/5 Production value: 3/4 Is the game in my collection/Love to have?: 1/1

EvEvanstar1,6

There's a ton I dislike in this game. Everyone seems enamored by the bidding mechanism where the first player in has the opportunity to buy it, but everyone who bids after him makes the price more expensive. I dislike this, because the income per turn is so low, that forcing someone to pay more than they should for a card they need can cripple you on future turns, but choosing to not pay can mean you just don't get any cards at all, which is equally crippling. Then the mechanism of how fire resolves, where it rewards the player who was able to get the firehat card and hurts the player struggling to get any cards at all. Then, I also dislike how in the first few rounds you need to buy contracts and merchants who require resources that come into play randomly in the future, which you also then need to be able to afford, and it's not uncommon to have cards in front of you that you had to really fight for that you never get to execute. The expansion also is bad in that it adds another card row at the top that allows players to make sure some cards never see play as an aggressive move, and gives nearly free cards to whoever happens to be last in turn order. I really don't see any appeal to this game at all. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ☆ Multiple plays stay interesting ☆ Low or mitigatable luck elements ☆☆☆☆☆ Raw enjoyment