Anno 1800: The Board Game

I was eagerly awaiting Anno 1800: The Board Game along with my group. We really like the theme, even if the demanding videogame is not for everyone, and “Uncle” still comes up with interesting ideas. That is why the landing felt somewhat abrupt: I did not feel that I had found one of his great successes here, but rather a fairly dry worker-placement and workforce-management game.

At first, the table and everything I had to keep track of slightly overwhelmed me. Things click very quickly, though: the game has you placing and removing cubes, managing your available workforce, and arranging your actions around that process. The flow is clear and, although repetitive, has very little downtime; it is easy to get carried along by the constant placing and taking away of cubes and lose yourself in the game.

My problem is that the interaction feels limited. In practice, I experienced it mostly as multiplayer solitaire, with trading being the main process connecting you to the other players—and I did not find even that especially exciting. I did not get the sense that opponents’ decisions meaningfully alter my own game, or that there is enough friction to break up the routine.

I did not find it bad, and I do not want to condemn it on the strength of one purely exploratory first play. Its length did reach the point of mild fatigue, though, and when it ended my main thought was, “was that it?” I still struggle to see where the necessary spice could come from in later plays. At least it is reasonably priced.