Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 1-2 hours
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

The Components

Anno 1503 comes with:

• 1 gameboard
• 4 home island boards
• 32 island tiles
• 27 colonist tiles
• 14 public building tiles
• 16 coat of arms markers
• 8 wooden ships
• 90 commodity cards
• 1 die
• 1 rulebook

Gameboard: A small, 2-panel gameboard printed on linen-textured cardboard. The main part of the board shows the islands that the players will explore, but there's also a gold pieces track, a clear listing of the five potential victory conditions for the game, and even a listing of the possible results when you roll an unlucky "6". It's overall a nice centerpiece, that gets the job done as a map, but also contains a lot of utilitarian info.

Home Island Boards: Each player also gets their own home island board, printed on thick cardboard. It has space for 7 colonists and 5 public buildings as well as docks for up to 4 outposts and 3 trade agreements (which cleverly are meant to abutt the edges of the board). As with the main gameboard there's a lot of utilitarian info as well, including results for a production die roll (different for each player) and a list of building costs.

The graphics on the board (and in the rest of the game) are all computerized--representations of various buildings, forests, and islands, presumably from the computer game Anno 1503. They're not spectacular, but are nice enough, and a nice tie-in to the computer game.

The Tiles: There are 3 different types of tiles in the game: island tiles; colonist tiles; and public building tiles. The island tiles are a bit bigger than the two, but otherwise they're all the same: square, full-color cardboard tiles. Each features computer artwork and various iconography that explains what the tile does.

The island tiles and public building tiles each have an additional cool feature: they're numbered with a "2", "3" or "4" on the back. If you're in a two-player game, you only use the "2" tiles, a three-player game, the "2" and the "3", etc. This is a very elegant and easy to remember mechanism that dfferentiates the game based on number of players.

Coat of Arms Markers: More cardboard markers, four for each player. Three large ones are used to mark victory conditions when a player achieves them, and one small one marks current gold supplies.

Wooden Ships: Cute and large wooden ships in the four-player colors (red, yellow, blue, and gray).

Commodity Cards: Half-sized slightly flimsy full-color cards with rounded corners. Each one depicts a building in the middle with color-coded icons representing the commodity in the four corners. The color-coding & icons, which are matched on home island boards and on various tiles, make these cards easy to use.

Die: A wooden die with black-inked pips. I have suspicions about the weighting of the die that came with my box as it was retired from two consecutive games due to an apparently bad balance of rolls. Fortunately, nice are in plentiful supply in most gaming houses.

Rulebook: A four-page rulesheet in full color with plenty of illustrations and examples. Overall, easy to follow and good for reference in game. As with other recent Klaus Teuber games, this one also features an online tutorial at www.profeasy.com which was well-done.

Box & Tray: A fairly normative medium-sized square box. The tray inside is fairly nice with spaces for just about everything.

Overall, the components are of nice quality, and also nicely utilitarian: they make the game easier to play. On the whole, Anno 1503 deserves a "4" out of "5" Style rating.

The Game Play

Generally, you spend a game of Anno 1503 exploring islands and producing commodities in order to create a solid corp of experienced colonists.

Setup: Each player is given a player game board at start which depicts most of the basic info on how the game plays and also lists what production numbers the four core commodities (stone, lumber, tools, and cloth) are produced on for that player. Each player also gets to place two colonists on his gameboard: 1 pioneer (level 1) and 1 settler (level 2).

Each player also starts off with a ship which is placed on the exploration board. (His other ship is placed near his board, ready for construction.)The rest of the main board is filled with unchartered islands. (We'll meet this tiles later, but they include outposts, which produce special commodities, and trade agreements, which make it cheaper to buy commodities.)

Finally, each player gets 7 gold--marked on the gold track.

Order of Play: Each turn each player gets to take the following actions:

• Roll for Production
• Build, Buy, and Sell
• Move Ships
• Discard Commodities

Roll for Production: The player rolls 1 six-sided die.

1-5. If the active player rolls a 1-5 each players produces one commodity and takes one of the appropriate commodity card.

Each player has, on his home island board, numbered 1-5, but in an arbitrary order: 1 "?" space (produce a commodity of his choice) and 1 each of stone, lumber, tools, and cloth. In addition he may later place outposts above each of the numbers (other than the "?") which could produce cloth, spice, or, also, one of the core commodities.

If the number rolled corresponds to a commodity building without an outpost above it, the player just takes the commodity in question; if there is a linked outpost, instead the player chooses either the core commodity or the outpost commodity to produce.

6. If the active player rolls a 6, there's a special event, which can be: pirates (each player pays gold based on how many outposts and trade agreements he has); fire (each player pays gold based on how many colonists he has); or good fortune (each player gets a commodity of their choice).

The two disasters have the potential to be devastating, because if the player doesn't have enough gold to pay, he loses either an island tile (outpost or trade) or a colonist, depending on which disaster came up.

Build, Buy, and Sell: Next a player may, in any order: build, buy commodities, or sell commodities.

Build. A chart on each home island board displays what items a player can build. Each item is built by turning in the appropriate types of commodity cards. Here's the core building costs:

Ship: cloth, wood, tool
Pioneer (1): wood, tool

In addition, the colonists can be upgraded through four levels of expertise, one level at a time:

Settler (2): cloth, stone, stone
Townsman (3): spice, spice, stone
Merchant (4): tobacco, tobacco, spice

It should be noted that there are real scarcity issues in upgrading colonists. The colonist tiles are all double-sided with 4 "1 or 2" tiles and 3 "3 or 4" tiles. This means that once you have four pioneers or settlers in play you must upgrade some of them to townsmen (or merchants) in order to have tiles available to create new settlers.

There's one other special thing about townsmen: when place your fourth through seventh colonist you also get to, for free, build a special public building. These buildings give you special powers during play. There's one that protects against fire (the Fire Brigade), one that protects against pirates (the Smith) and one that increases the boon of good fortune (the Church). There are three that increase the value of commodities sold (the School, the Bathhouse, and the Pub), one that lets you steal cards from an opponent by paying them money (the Trade Center), and one that increases the speed of your ships (the Shipyard). There public buildings are each in short supply and thus a chief point of contention among players.

Buy Commodities. You may buy a commodity card from the bank by paying 6 gold, minus one for each trade agreement you have, to a minimum of 3. You can buy at most two commodities a turn.

Sell Commodities. You can sell commoditiescards to your colonists. Each individual colonist will only buy 1 commodity a turn and each will buy only certain types. Finally, each will pay an amount specified by their colonist level (so: pioneers pay 1 gold for a tool, wood, or stone; settlers pay 2 for a cloth; townsmen pay 3 for a spice; and merchants pay 4 for a tobacco). As already noted, some public buildings can increase these purchase prices.

(Besides getting commodities you need by selling and buying, it's also possible to set up internal trade loops among your holdings, for example buying tobacco for three and selling it for 6 if you have the right combination of public buildings and trade agreements.)

Move Ships: Now we come to the exploration phase. Each player may move each of his ships 2-4 spaces, depending on the number of players in the game. In addition, when a ship is adjacent to an island the player may look at it for a cost of 1 movement.

If they like the island, they keep it, removing their ship from the board. Else, they move on. There are three types of islands:

• Outposts: put above commodity production numbers, these islands produce spice, tobacco and other commodities.
• Trade Agreements: put at the three docks to the right of the board, these islands decrease the cost of buying commodities.
• Treasure Chests: played immediately, these tiles give you free gold or a free upgrade of a colonist.

Discard Commodities: There's a hand limit of 5 commodity cards. If a player foolishly hasn't spent or sold enough cards to reduce himself to this limit, he must discard the extras at the end of his turn.

Winning the Game: The game immediately ends when a player accomplishes 3 of the 5 victory conditions. The victory conditions are:

• 3 level 4 colonists (merchants)
• 4 public buildings (and thus 7 colonists)
• 3 trade agreements
• 4 outposts
• 30 gold

It's a nice manner for allowing some varied paths to victory.

Relationships to Other Games

Klaus Teuber is best known for his best-selling The Settlers of Catan (1995). Like Settlers, Anno 1503 centers on the production of goods and the use of those goods in specific formulae to produce certain items. Unlike Settlers, Anno 1503 bases its goods production on a flat roll of one die, rather than a curved roll of two dice, and it also makes things more "fair" by only allowing each player to produce one good at a time--both features of another Teuber game, Starship Catan (2001).

Beside resource production, Settlers also features exploration, a popular topic in German games, among them Teuber's own Entdecker (2002). The exploration in Anno 1503 is very simplistic, but allows for some level of strategy and control.

Finally, Anno 1503 features one other main area of gameplay: unique buildings. Beyond the common, formulaic items that can be produced, the public buildings offer players the ability to expand in unique ways, that can't be duplicated by all their opponents. This was, of course, a feature of Puerto Rico (2002).

Which is all to say that there's not a lot original in Anno 1503, but there is a lot of repetition and combination of good elements, done skillfully. Of all the games noted, it's the most like the lesser known Starship Catan, but in general level of skill and thought required, it's right around the level of The Settlers of Catan--perhaps less elegant, but a more thoughtful game.

The Game Design

Anno 1503 is a good, casual game. Here's some of the high points:

Nice Strategy: The multiple paths to victory create a surprising amount of strategy in the game. Depending on which routes you want to go, you can explore or not, build colonists or not, and generally select public buildings to help you out. (Overall the victory point mechanism is quite clever in its setup and the way it allows this type of strategic play.)

Good Exploring: The exploration is well-designed in that there's a real cost for claiming an island (your ship), but at the same time you have the option to do so or not, adding more strategy to the game.

Good Power Curve: The power curve in the game is slow: as you advance you make real gains, by being able to produce different types of commodities and/or buy commodities more cheaply. However, a lead is never insurmountable because everyone always produces the same amount of commodities.

Here's some of the game's issues:

A Little Long: The game feels a little long for the strategic variety it offers. In addition the last couple of turns can involve just sitting around, waiting for the end to come. The length is at most 30 minutes or so over, however, and that'll probably even out through repeated play.

Minimal Player Interaction: Some players won't mind this, but the player interaction is fairly minimal in the game, mostly related to grabbing resources before opponents can.

Two-Player Game Not as Good: The two-player game is a little more frustrating than games with more players because there's a lot more sitting around waiting to get enough resources. It's still OK, just not as much fun.

Overall, Anno 1503 is a well-designed strategic game that's still fairly simple and casual. If you don't mind issues of player interactivity, it deserves a "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Anno 1503 feels like a next-generation The Settlers of Catan with an exploration element thrown in. It's not as elegant as the original Catan design, but thanks to a simpler production system, it's a better balanced game. If you're looking for a casual strategy game as an occasional alternative to Settlers or its kin, this is a good choice.

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