Players: 3-4
Time: 60-75 minutes
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)

Goldbrau is produced by Hanser in Germany and Rio Grande Games in the United States.

The Components

Goldbrau comes with:

• 1 gameboard
• Cardboard Bits:
  • 2 chips
  • 12 brewery signs
  • 2 figures
• Wood Bits:
  • 48 fences
  • 6 bosses in the 4 player colors
  • 18 share markers in the 4 player colors
• Cards:
  • 70 play cards
  • 3 action cards in the 4 player colors
• money
• 1 rulebook

Game Board: The gameboard is a 4-panel linen-textured map of the Seehausen am See beer gardens. It's very bright & attractive. The main part of the board is a 5x8 grid which contains all the tables that will be claimed by the businesses.

Around the edges are the six beer gardens and at the diagonals the four breweries. They all have obvious icons (with the breweries being color-coded) so it's easy to see which are which.

Cardboard Bits: Linen-textured sturdy cardboard.

The 12 brewery signs are color-coded, illustrated squares which you place on the beer gardens to show what brewery they're currently contracted with; they make the connection obvious.

The pretty waitress and drunken bum chips, meanwhile, circle around the beer gardens and give them bonuses and penalty. Unfortunately these modifcations (-12 for the bum and +20 for the waitress) aren't printed on their chips, and some players inevitably confused which had the 20 and which the 12.

The stand-up figures simply mark the starting player and the next payday; they look nice.

Wood Bits: All high-quality, painted German wood. The fences are just brown lengths which Settlers of Catan players will recognise as roads. The bosses are large pawns and the share markers small cubes, each in the 4 player colors (blue, yellow, green, red).

Cards: Sturdy cardstock cards, close to regular size (they're a little less wide than normal), printed full-color without texture.

70 of the cards form the main play deck. These include 24 brewery shares, 36 beer garden shares, 5 drunken bums, and 5 pretty waitresses. The iconography of all the businesses is clear, with each showing its distinctive symbol, and the breweries marked in brown and the beer gardens in green. The drunken bum and pretty waitress each show their appropriate portrait, and are easy enough to use.

There are also 3 action cards in each of the four player colors, which show "beer garden expansion", "boss", and "acquire share" actions; I found these slightly confusing the first time I played and entirely intuitive by my second game.

Money: Flimsy paper money that at least is in different colors for the different denominations. On the good side the denominations were well-choosen; in particular there's a $2 bill, which comes up often due to the way that division is done. On the bad side, there's not enough of the lower denominations. More than once I had to ask our players to change in their low money while in the middle of a scoring round (even after changing in at the start).

Rulebook: An 8-page glossy & full color rulebook. It's nicely illustrated and has good examples. Unfortunately it notably makes a total hash of the rules concerning the drunken bum and pretty waitress rules by leaving out the fact that they can only be moved clockwise. I've been a bit frustrated with Rio Grande Games of late because so many of their releases have had notable problems in the rules translations (either due to mistranslations as here or due to ill-advised rules changes), and so I have an increasing number of games where not everyone is playing by the same rules, which is always a problem when you go to play a game with a new group. A shame.

Box & Tray: The game comse in an (overly) large box with a tray that keeps the money and cards nicely separated, though it doesn't look like it was actually made for this game.

Missing Components: First, this game really does have a "missing" component. The German copy of the game came with beer mats (coasters) for the imaginery breweries of the game. The English version doesn't, presumably due to import restrictions. I feel envious whenever I see pictures of the German game online.

More importantly, the scoring method of Goldbrau is god-awful complex, with way too much money getting divided, then divided more, then passing back and forth. The paper money just isn't adequate for this job, even if it's evocative. There's a payday table on the back of the rules, which helps out with all the division, but even with that it's all a pain. I don't really know what component could have helped with this (though for one a scoring track would have probably worked better than the money), but the system just felt so awkward that there should have been something.

Overall the components of the game are of very good quality and quite pretty. Due to minor niggling issues, annoyance over the scoring, and (childishly) annoyance over my lack of beer mats I've kept the Style at a high "4" out of "5": well above average.

The Gameplay

The object of Goldbrau is to make the most money through investment & maintenance of breweries & beer gardens during OktoberFest. Beer gardens become more profitable through expansion, and breweries share the profits of beer gardens that they have contracts with. There's also a pretty waitress and a drunken bum who can increase or decrease profits, respectively.

Setup: The game begins with each player selecting a color and taking the 3 action cards, 6 boss figures, and 16-18 share markers in that color. Each player also gets $25 starting funds.

The 12 brewery signs (3 per brewery) are shuffled and one is placed near each of the 6 beer gardens. Each beer garden also gets its initial table: one space directly in front of the garden. The pretty waitress is put at The Bear garden and the drunken bum is put at The Eagle garden.

The 60 share cards (6 per beer garden and brewery) are shuffled and each player is dealt six. Then, each player selects four of those, reveals them, puts one share marker in the appropriate locale for each share, and discards the cards.

Finally, the players one at a time place 2 of their boss figures, each in a beer garden or brewery which doesn't already have a figure.

So, at the start of the game: each beer garden is associated with a brewery and has one table; each player has 4 share markers on the board showing majority control of either beer gardens or breweries; and each player has 2 bosses on the board, which allow for certain actions.

Now the bum & waitress cards are also shuffled into the share cards so that they'll be available for the regular play.

Order of Play: During each round the following actions are taken:

1. Reveal Share Cards
2. Play Action Cards
3. Take Actions
4. End Round

Reveal Share Cards: Two new cards are flipped up from the share pile; they'll be available for purchase this round.

Play Action Cards: Now each player secretly chooses one of the three action cards (expansion, boss, share) and places it face-down; then all are simultaneously revealed. The catch here is that you'll be rewarded if you were the only player to take a specific action.

Take Actions: The actions are now taken in the following order: expansion, boss; share. If multiple players selected the same action, they go in order starting from the starting player (who rotates every turn).

Beer Garden Expansion. You get to expand a beer garden where you are the boss by one space, laying out new fences as required. You can steal a space from another beer garden, possibly cutting it off, only if you are the boss of both gardens.

If you were the only player to take this action, you get to expand by two spaces!

Name Boss/Beer Contract. You have your choice between two actions here, naming a boss or making a beer contract.

To name a boss you choose a brewery or beer garden where you have at least one share marker. You become the new boss unless the current boss can show an absolute majority of the share markers currently in the business (either because he already has that many shares there, or because he plays additional shares from his hand to put out more markers). You get to play additional shares too, to help counteract that majority. (In either case, you reveal your card, place your share marker, and discard the card.)

This only counts as your action if you succeed, so you get to keep trying if you fail.

To make a beer contract you must be the boss of both a beer garden, and a brewery. You then get to remove the beer garden's old brewery sign & put in a new contract for the brewery you control.

If you were the only player to take this action, you get to do it twice, which can mean two bosses, two contracts, or one of each.

Acquire Share. You get to either take one of the face-up shares or draw one from the face-down pile. The cost is $2 if only you took this action, $5 if two players did, or $8 if three or more did.

If you take a face-up card you immediately place a share marker and discard the card.

If you take a face-down card you keep it in your hand to use later.

Bums or Waitresses purchased must be used immediately. Each lets you move the appropriate chip 0-2 spaces clockwise around the beer gardens, skipping over a space with the other chip.

End Round: At the end of a day, you discard any unpurchased shares to the bottom of the deck.

Getting Knocked Out of a Business: Toward the end of the game a special rule can come up: if the sixth share of a business is ever revealed, all singleton shares of that business are eliminated. Ouch.

Ending a Week: At the end of every seventh day, it's payday! This is where the game gets (in my opinion) too complex. Before payday you can play any share cards that you want, to get your shares in the various businesses and thus earn a larger share of the profits. (Oddly, this can sometimes cause you to lose money as I note in the Game Design section.)

Each beer garden earns $4 per table and $8 per shaded table. A garden also gets +$20 if it has the pretty waitress or -$12 (to $0 minimum) if it has the drunken bum.

You sum that up, then you divide it in two and give half the money to the brewery that the beer garden currently has a contract with.

You then divide the money in the beer garden by the number of shares, with any remainder going to the boss; you then hand out the appropriate amount of money to each player, based on who controls the shares & the boss.

You continue through all the beer gardens, creating piles of money in the breweries as you go. Then you divide out the money in all the breweries in the same manner, with each share getting an equal amount and the remainder going to the boss.

Ending the Game: The game ends after three weeks; following the final scoring round, the player with the most money wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Goldbrau is by Franz-Benno Delonge, and that always catches my eyes. For one thing, he's a judge, and I always think that's incredibly cool, a judge designing games. In addition, he tends to produce innovative games that aren't like anything else on the market; I don't think they always pans out, but it's still a great start from the design perspective.

It's funny to talk about uniqueness, because I've seen some people say that Goldbrau just rehashes a bunch of old systems, and to a certain extent it does, but it also puts together a lot of well-designed systems together into a cohesive and unique whole. To be more specific, Goldbrau is a share-based majority-control game with expansionistic area control, simultaneous action, and a pure logistical scoring system. Whew.

Share-based majority-control games go back to American classic Acquire (1962). A more recent game that I've actually reviewed is Alan Moon's Union Pacific (1999). Like most recent share-based majority control games this one involves a sort of set collection of the various types of shares. The mechanism by which you get shares in Goldbrau, selecting face-up cards in order or blindly taking face-down cards, unfortunately doesn't allow a lot of control, but being able to hide some of your shares for a time does allow for some cleverness. The fact that singleton shares can eventually lose out is also neat. (There's a similar mechanic in area-based majority control game, Mammoth Hunters (2003).)

I'm only aware of one other expansionistic area-control game of this sort, and that's Domaine (1997, 2003). In both games you can push out the boundaries of your empires one or more spaces at a time. This one is a little less interesting, because there's only the rare opportunity to gobble up other people's territories, but there's still some strategy with blocking off other beer gardens and grabbed the all-powerful shaded tables.

Simultaneous action just means that players all choose an action at once and reveal. Rock-scissors-papers is such a game. However, I suspect this game's simultaneous ancestor is Basari (1998). In both games you have three actions, marked by cards; when you reveal them you're punished if you match other peoples' actions.

Finally we come to the logistical core of the game, which just means that you're spending money to make money, which is the ultimate goal of the game. There are countless examples of the genre from Monopoly (1903) to Power Grid (2004). Recent logistical games that I've reviewed include San Juan (2004) and Saint Petersburg (2004). However, I find the logistical system in Goldbrau quite original. There's a level of indirection, in that you never totally own something, and in fact might lose control of businesses that you're trying to improve, then there's a further level of indirection because of the split between the breweries and the beer gardens.

As I said, Goldbrau does recycle some mechanics, but the way it puts so many old systems into a single game makes it original and new in my mind.

The Game Design

Though I've spoken highly both of Franz-Benno Delonge and the elements that make up this game, as a whole it still doesn't work for me. (Dos Rios was another very innovative Delonge design that never became more than average for me.)

Nonetheless, here's some of the good parts of the design:

Nice Systems: As I've said, I think there are a lot of nice systems in this game and they're all put together into a solid cohesive whole.

Some Good Strategy & Tactics: There's definitely nice tactics & strategy in the game. Some of my favorites are the "knock outs" (which you can work against by trying to grab a second share; or which you can try and force to get rid of annoying opponents horning in on your business) and the tactics made possible by the hidden shares (namely letting someone else expand a business, and then revealing your interest in it at the last moment).

Simultaneous Action Works Well: I think simultaneous action, as seen here, in Basari and others, is somewhat underutilized in gaming. As with Basari this is another game where it works well. You constantly have to balance taking the action you really want to take versus getting a bonus for going with the "road less taken".

Here's some of the elements I didn't like in the game:

Too Much Math: I'm good at math; I can easily do all the calculations required for this game in my head. But I don't find it fun. The end-week scoring just drags on and on and takes a lot of effort. For each beer garden you have to do a sum, then half your total, then divide that, holding on to the remainder, then sum up those divisions (and possibly that remainder) for each of the colors represented. For the breweries you just divide once, then sum for each color. Call it 16 divisions, 10 remainders, and about 30 sums every scoring round.

Beyond the fact that it's long and tedious, the math just isn't that obvious either. Without a fair amount of work, it's never clear what action will have what result. How much does buying a share earn you? Who exactly does an expansion benefit? There's a lot of calculation required if you want to make an informed decision. This is made worse by the fact that some edge cases are totally non-intuitive. I've seen multiple cases where a player adding a share actually decreased the amount of money he earned.

(The simplest is this: if a beer garden is earning $8 and there are four shares in it. The beer garden would retain $4, and that would go $1/share. However, if one share is added, now the $4 can't be divided among the 5 shares, and so it all goes to the boss; unless the player adding the 5th share controls the boss, he loses out on all his profits.)

I should comment that I do fall into a funny place on logistics games of this sort. I'm unable to ignore the math and play it casually. However I also don't have fun if I have to do that much math. Less or more casual players than me might not mind, except for the edge conditions which I still think would be awkward. I'll add that I liked the game a little better when someone else did all the scoring math than when I did.

High Random Factor: However, even if a serious player likes the logistical system, he will probably be annoyed by the fact that there's a lot of randomness in the game. The draw of the cards is all powerful, and sometimes you just won't be able to gain control of, or defend, a business that you want to, because the cards never come up, or come up when other people will be able to grab them before you. The bum and the waitress also add to this randomness through a high chaos factor. The +$20 or -$12 swing can be a big deal (and unfortunately allows other players to king-make if they get these cards late in a week).

On the whole I really wanted to like Goldbrau, but I found the math excessive and beyond that a bad match for the randomness and chaos that comes out of the cards. I still think it's a neat design, but not a particularly notable one. I thus give it a slightly above-average, high "3" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

In Goldbrau Franz-Benno Delonge puts together a number of classic systems, including majority-control, shares, expansionism, and simultaneous action, into a logistical framework. In some ways the gestalt works very well, but unfortunately an overly mathematical scoring system combined with an overly random card-based share system drag the game down, leaving the final design no more than average.