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Main Catalogue |  Board Games & Card Games |  Rio Grande Games |  Thurn & Taxis Thurn & Taxis Price: £27.99 Board Game; 2-4 Players; Ages 10+ by Rio Grande Games In 1490, Kaiser Maximilian I awarded Franz von Taxis the contract to deliver mail between the Kaiser’s residences in Innsbruck and Brussels. He did such a good job, that postal services in the country continue to be connected with the name Thurn and Taxis. With the introduction of postal carriages in the middle of the 17th century, members of the family were raised to Count status and given the hereditary title of Postmaster General. The game begins at this point in history. Can you emulate the achievements of this family and build a successful postal network? Do you have the talent to connect the right cities to create an effective network and not lose sight of the need to acquire new carriages when they are needed? Plan your moves carefully and watch your opponents’ moves carefully, so you are prepared to respond to them. The game takes you back in time and gives you challenges that will bring you back to the game over and over. Time: 60 minutes; Authors: Karen & Andreas Seyfarth. ++++++++++++++++++++ Counter magazine review ++++++++++++++++++++ 2-4 players, 45-60 minutes designed by Karen & Andreas Seyfarth reviewed by Alan How Games designing partnerships have prevailed over the last 10 years such as Kramer and Ulrich, Moon and Weissblum, so perhaps it should not be a surprise that the latest Seyfarth game sees Andreas accompanied by Karen. When I first saw news of it on the internet I thought that the game looked simple, possibly family fare. This was also my impression having had a quick view of a translation. In the frenzy to play new games released from Nuremberg it is easy to seize upon the only piece of information and I know only too well that early snippets or even translations can have errors in them which can adversely affect your longer term opinion of a game. Thurn and Taxis is a game of connecting different cities in Europe, in much the same way as Ticket to Ride. The board shows a map of European cities, centred on Germany, with routes connecting nearby cities. It also shares several points with Ticket to Ride, as the turns are quick, you have plans to achieve goals and each turn you carry out a limited number of actions. Unlike Ticket to Ride though, there is no limit on routes as rather than complete a route, you are extending links by placing a wooden house (representing the expansion of the postal system) on a city. As you link up cities in various ways you can earn victory points, which when added to the victory points raised from the size of your wagon less the number of unused houses, determines the winner. Each turn you can select cards from a set of six face-up cards or may draw blindly from the deck. Initially you have no cards, so this is easy to do as there are few decisions to take. A further action in your turn is to play a card to begin or extend a route. These two actions are mandatory and a single bonus action can be selected from four options: Take another card from the draw deck (Postmaster) Play two cards as part of a route (Coachman) Discard the face-up cards and replace with a fresh set (Bailiff) Improve the wagon rating of a route (Wainwright) The first two provide sufficient options at various stages in the game to collect or play cards faster. The third option lets you get rid of the face-up cards so that you might draw a better set. This is important as once you have laid your first card out you are committed to extending your route from that location and subsequently from the ends of your current route. Many cities have several routes out, so the range of cards that could be played is quite reasonable. If you cannot play a card to extend your route, your old route is discarded. I felt that his might happen quite regularly during the game (and this could be a sizable disadvantage) but in fact in the games that I have played no-one has had to do this. Score one for the designers and playtesters. When you complete a route (at least 3 cities in length) you can place the houses on the board. There are 22 cities in 9 regions, with the largest one being Bavaria and smallest one of only 1 city. The brilliant rule in the game is this: when you place your houses on the board from your route you can either place houses in one region or one in each region that your route goes through. This single rule transforms the game from a potential interesting family game to one on the same level as Ticket to Ride. This is because your planning is increased significantly as you try to combine finding routes through cities where you haven\'t yet placed a house, with scoring opportunities limited by the restrictions on the cards that are visible. As there are 3 copies of each city in the deck, you can sometimes know that a specific city won\'t be up until the discard deck is re-used, so you also need to consider which cards to hold in your hand to play for later routes. Also the board is cleverly designed. Some routes on the edge of the board have a limited number of connections while the bonuses that you earn are from different sources. More on the bonuses later. I mentioned that the wagons contribute to the victory points. You score your first wagon when you play a route of at least 3 in length and claim a 3 wagon card. This is also worth 3 victory points. Subsequent wagons (up to size 7, worth 10 victory points) are claimed in order by completing a route of that length or more. There is a way to skip this, which you can do by using the fourth extra option - the wainwright. This option allows you to claim the next wagon card by using a route with two less cards. So if you have the 4 wagon already, you would normally need to play a route with 5 or more cards to claim the 5 wagon, but by using the wainwright as your extra action, you can claim the 5 wagon by only playing a route of 3 cards. Since the game ends on the complete round when one person obtains the 7 wagon, this is a way of getting to this goal more quickly. The alternative ending condition is when one person plays all their postal offices on the board. The bonuses can be earned from playing a route of specific length (for example 6 cities); placing houses in specific areas such as Bavaria, with the first person to earn each of the bonuses receiving the most victory points. Later bonuses in a stack reduce in victory points, but no bonus dominates the game. (Score two for the designers.) The game is well produced - I wondered whether to mention this as anyone playing a game from Rio Grande / Hans im Glück takes this as read - and fun to play. Each game lasts about 45 minutes and this to me represents the archetypal ``German\'\' game for 2006. Perhaps it will win awards in the future though its deviation from Ticket to Ride is not so great, yet there is a different feel to the game and it is one that most players will enjoy playing. I have so far. Now for Andreas Seyfarth to turn to that expansion for Puerto Rico! 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