Hansa Teutonica came into my awareness during a board game discussion with a few friends in the last 6 months. I went searching for a copy only to come up short. Interesting that in that time the company behind it Pegasus Spiele would decide to re-release it in a “Big Box form. I’ll say this the term big box is definitely a misnomer, I have regular board game editions that are larger than this big box, that contain far less than this, and are much less of a value than what is contained here.

Hansa Teutonica was released in 2009 to much acclaim, and in the decade since received 2 expansion maps, both of which are included here. The game in its base form (which is what I am covering here). Each player starts with being able to perform 2 actions in their respective turns. As the game progresses players will be able to do more with their turns and possibly take more actions per turn. The actions include adding their pieces on empty spaces, moving pieces, establishing routes once you occupy all the spaces between two cities, and getting back used pieces.

Points are scored by establishing routes, and then claiming the cities connected to them. When you finish a route, you can claim one of the two cities that flows between the route. When someone next adds a route next to that city you accumulate a point, and so it goes. There are other things like bonus markers attached to certain routes that have additional abilities.

The game STOPS, when a player gets 20 points. That player is not necessarily the winner, gameplay just ENDS. That is pretty great actually, nothing else can happen after that and points are accumulated. The player with the most points wins. Now I’ll have to be honest. I’ve had to sort of rig together a 3 player game of Hansa Teutonica with myself at this point due to the pandemic my friends and I are not gaming in person, but watching the mechanics play out, this feels like it will be a very tight action-packed game once I bring it out to the table. It feels like there is a lot of strategy and suspense here, every decision matters, and there are multiple ways to get a player the most points. Just soloing it from multiple perspectives I got excited for what appears to be as good of a game as everything I’ve seen and read about it.

Hansa Teutonica comes HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.