Hamburgum

I picked up Hamburgum almost by chance, on a trip to Rome, when I simply wanted a travel souvenir and the rest of the group had already raided the boutiques. Faced with the Italian mania for translating everything, I found only one English box across about ten game bookshops: this one. I bought it without checking the designer or anything else. Luckily for me, it was by Gerdts, so instead of disappearing to the bottom of the cupboard, it immediately went onto my list of games to explore.

This is a rondel-based euro where the central idea has you, surprise, building cathedrals. A round revolves around that rondel, which organizes the available choices and the game’s flow without letting the whole process become scattered.

Interaction comes through the shared choices on the rondel and through how the flow moves around its actions, rather than through any aggressive element. What stayed with me most was the zero downtime: the game moves at a pace and keeps me constantly involved in the session.

Ten years later, its age shows a little, but it remains a very strong, tightly knit, carefully made release. I would have liked it to be a little heavier, but near-nonexistent downtime forgives a lot for me these days. It will be back on the table very soon—after we first get our teeth into the recently acquired Concordia.