Grand Austria Hotel: Let's Waltz!

Grand Austria Hotel already asks you to arrange a demanding little table in your head. Let's Waltz! arrives as the long-awaited expansion, using the familiar pick-and-mix approach of several modules: add the parts you want, without the sense that a second box has merely been strapped to the first. The material feels considered and, more importantly, at home in the original design.

We did not use every module, but the cards, ballrooms and milestones were enough to shift the landscape properly. They do not replace the game's core; they create more things to pursue, more routes through the turn, and more small strategic corners in which a decision can breathe.

The dancers are the most immediately felt addition. They offer more options and make planning a broader strategy more manageable, especially with four players, where the base game can leave you studying the board with the quiet despair of a Tuesday after work. The pressure remains, naturally, but there is now room to repair an error rather than paying for it all game.

A small part of my more obsessive self is mildly sorry that the game is kinder. Still, it needed that helping hand, and the expansion gives it without losing the flavour of Grand Austria Hotel. If you own the base game, this is a must-buy; if you do not, it may be time to ask yourself why.