To become master tradesman you must build market stalls in cities, collect cargoes and sell your wares. Simple. Only Abacus Spiele is another one of those great german companies that have a simple game on first looks...but after you play a few turns, thousands of little strategies suddenly appear in your mind. Especially once you realise the viscious circle that Michael Schacht has built into the game.

Allow me to explain, players have to bank goods for victory points, but these same goods have to be used to by markets, the markets in turn are also required to bank victory points. Ouch. German's also seem to have a bitter distaste for cash too, as this is yet another game in which cash is secondary. Indeed in this game cash is used as little more than an action counter. No bad thing. Especially since you can only spend one action in each city, dictated by the ship, and it costs you one coin to move the ship. This works beautifully in this game as it perhibits long pauses that are usually created in action counter games by players trying to maximise their turns. Indeed it becomes very apparent that your biggest decision in your turn is not which cities to visit, but which city to stop at!

I haven't yet had chance to play this more than two player, so I can't really say how this effects the game, however I suspect this just adds to an already amazing game. I will update this review once I have had chance to play it with more players of course.

I cant really fault this game, except perhaps that some rules become a little vague in translation from the German. Board Game Geek clarifies these well though.

SUMMARY: Hansa plays smoothly and is great fun. There is enough simplicity for the younger audience and enough complexity to keep the more experienced gamer interested. It seems that I recommend every game I review, but I guess that is because there is just a lot of good games out there right now. This should be put on the wish list of every player that enjoys trading games. It should also be on the wish list of everyone who enjoys a fast paced, short and very satisfying board game. Enjoy.
Review by Tom