Players: 3-4
Playing Time: 90 minutes
Tasty Minstrel Games is a new company; fortunately, even if you can't find Homesteaders at your local game store, you can also order it directly from them.
The Components
Homesteaders comes in a bookshelf box with the following components:
Auction Board: A small board printed on linen-textured cardstock that features places for three tiles to be auctioned, along with prices for those auctions. There's also a "railroad development track" along the bottom. It's very nicely laid out in a faux-distressed style.
I've had a few different players complain that the board is cardstock rather than cardboard. I think the board is perfectly fine for what it does, particularly since it's entirely sturdy, but I nonetheless report out the complain because I heard it more than once, in different gaming groups.
Player Screens: Each player gets their own screen, also printed on linen-textured cardstock. Whenever I look at them, I think they're very tiny, but they're plenty big for their purpose.
The screen does more than just hide your bits, however. It also includes info on the game round, the iconography of the tiles, and the layout of the building tiles.
Tiles: There are 91 tiles in the game, all printed on linen-textured cardboard. Eight are buying-and-selling reference tiles, and are entirely invaluable. Another 30 are auction tiles which tell you what you can build (or take) if you win an auction. The last 53 are building tiles.
The building tiles deserve a little bit of additional note, because they form the core of the game. Each one includes a lot of different features, including: a building name, a building type, a phase, a cost, a victory point value, an (optional) ability, and an income. The design of these tiles is generally very good. The icons in particular are excellent; they've very clear and easy to interpret. Overall, however, everything is pretty easy to assess, which is quite helpful because at the start of the game you'll be looking at something like a dozen tiles spread out on the table.
There are a few missteps, that stand out more than anything because the tiles are generally so excellent. For example, the building type isn't actually named on the front of the tile, just shown by a color--which becomes a minor issue because some end game scoring tiles refer to the building type (cue flipping of tiles, to remember which color is which type). Some players were also slightly confused on the first turn because special actions, immediate rewards, and end game scoring bonuses are all listed in the same place on the tiles (though the latter two are clearly identified as such, making it a non-issue after a turn or two of play).
I'm still surprised when a well-established company does a really good job of laying out icons on cards for easy usage; it's that much more surprising to see it done so well by a first-time publisher.
Other Cardboard Bits: Several other bits are printed on cardboard, among them rectangular debt chits, square rail lines, circular silver coins, circular trade chits, and star-shaped victory points. They're each pretty simple designs, but easy to distinguish.
Unfortunately the printer didn't do a very good job on the die cutting, resulting in some of these bits (and the tiles for that matter) being printed off-center and some of them being hard to punch without ripping. In particular, the circular bits showed their off-centerness the most (when it randomly occurred), and the victory point chits were the most likely to rip when punched. I overall didn't find this to be a real problem, but if you demand a perfect game, buyer beware.
Wooden Bits: I think the real prize in the game is the collection of meeples. It includes 25 workers, 14 wood, 14 food, 14 steel, 12 gold, 10 copper, and 10 livestock. They're overall well-produced, but there are several that I just adore. For example, the foods are little wooden apples and the steel is marked by wooden i-beams--all in just two dimensions of course. The livestock are the best, however, because they're little pied cows, with their spot painted black against the white paint of the cow. I don't think I exaggerate when I say best-cow-meeples-ever. They're really gorgeous!
Rules: The rules are printed out on an 8-page full-color sheet. They're attractively laid out and easy to follow. They also made for simple reference during play.
Overall, Homesteaders has good to great components, excellent usability, and good beauty (with the wooden bits being particular standouts). Though I'll comment on the die-cutting problems in the cardboard, I'll still award Homesteaders a full "5" out of "5" for Style: it's attractive and well-designed.
The Gameplay
The object of Homesteaders is to earn the most victory points through the construction of buildings and the sale of goods.
Setup: Each player takes a player screen, then chooses a color. When he's selected a color, he takes two player markers (placing one at the start of the railroad development track and holding the other back to use in auctions) and one homestead in his color. He also takes $6 and 1 worker to get his little economy going.
The 30 auction tiles are also laid out, in a pretty specific order, so that you get simpler and cheaper buildings early in the game, more complex stuff later, and victory-point-only stuff at the very end.
Finally, initial buildings are put out, to be available for purchase. These are only tiles from the "settlement" and "settlement/town" phases. "Town" and "city" building tiles will appear later in the game.
With all that tile-laying, Homesteaders takes a bit of time for setup, but no more than, say, Puerto Rico.
The Homestead and Other Building Tiles. As I said when discussing the Components, buildings are really the core of Homesteaders--and your Homestead is your first one.
That Homestead shows several attributes. It's residential (green). It's worth 0 VPs. It also has some income. You automatically get 2 silver each turn from your Homestead. You can also put a worker on it to earn a wood and/or a worker to earn a victory point.
Other buildings that you'll build throughout the game work much the same (but with different income and other values, of course). However, most of those also have a cost, in resources. For example a market takes a wood to build, while a Ranch takes a wood, a food, and a steel. Some buildings have special powers (such as being able to trade a wood for a food), instant effects when you build them (such as removing a debt or gaining a worker), or end-game values (such as 1 VP per residential building).
About the Economy: Homesteaders has a unique economic system. Basically you can get money and/or exchange resources whenever you want--usually just as you win an auction or build a building.
Debt. Getting money (beyond what you earn from income) is simple: you take a debt token and $2. You can later repay your debt for $5, but if you still have it at the end of the game it's worth negative victory points.
Trade. Trading goods, exchanged via the "market place", depend upon "trade tokens" which you'll earn during the game . You can use those to buy or sell. What you can buy is all carefully laid out:
- trade $1 = wood
- trade $2 = food
- trade $3 = iron
- trade $4 = gold
- trade gold = copper
- trade gold = livestock
You can also recruit a worker using a trade token and an apple (though you can't later sell him!).
Gold. There's one last economic element of note. Though you can sell gold at the marketplace, as described above, you can also use it directly when paying workers or buying auctions as if it were $5--the catch is that you don't get change.
This economic engine, described in this section, is really what makes the whole game go round. When you're trying to build a building, you'll usually be thinking about sells that might help you raise the money that you need for buys of specific goods. Similarly, as you get near the end of the game, you might be thinking about turning your goods into money for the victory points.
Order of Play: The game is played out over 10 rounds. In each round the following phases occur:
- Setup
- Income
- Auction
Setup: This is just when everything is put in order. New auctions are revealed and the available building tiles may change if the game enters the town (round 5) or city (round 9) stage of development.
Income: Now each player decides which workers to allocate to which buildings. Usually a player will have more buildings that could produce something if a worker was used than actual workers, so some tough decisions are required.
Once that's done, each player may collect his income (which will include money, trade tokens, and resources) then must pay all of his workers ($1 per worker).
Auction: Finally, the auction phase occurs. In a 4-player game there are three items available for auction each turn. These auctions usually give the right to build certain types of building (e.g., commercial, industrial, residential, or special), though some give workers, advancements on the railroad development track, or additional victory points.
There's an auction track for each of the three auctions, running from $3 to $21. On his turn a player must either put his bidding marker on a track, ahead of any other players, or else pass. When each player (other than the player who passed) is on a track by himself, the bidding ends and players can collect their winnings.
The Railroad Development Track. When a player passes, he drops out of bidding and instead advances his piece on the railroad development track. This gives him a free ... something (initially a trade token, but with additional advances, a player may choose between that, a rail line [which is worth $1 income each turn], a worker, the various goods, and victory points).
Winning & Building. When you win an auction, you typically get the opportunity to build a certain type of building. You get to take a building of the appropriate type from the supply by spending the required resources (probably taking some of them from the market place). You must build a building immediately. There's no holding onto your claim!
Ending the Game: The game ends after 10 rounds of play. There's then a final income phase which gives you a chance to pay off debts and/or buy the more valuable goods.
You then add up your points, as follows:
- VP gained during the game (mostly from building "income").
- The VP value of your buildings.
- Any bonus VPs earned from special buildings.
- 2 VPs per gold, livestock, or copper piece.
- -1 VP for the first debt, -2 for the second, -3 for the third, etc.
Relationships to Other Games
Homesteaders is a resource-management game, where you climb up a ladder of different good types to get what you actually need. Its auction is reminiscent of Amun-Re and the large set of buildings is reminiscent of Puerto Rico (or maybe La Havre). I suspect other people might be reminded of other dense Euro-classics.
However, through all of that, Homesteaders is very much its own game, thanks primarily to its very tactical marketplace system.
The Game Design
I managed to get in two plays of Homesteaders before writing this review, and I'm quite confident to categorize it as an excellent game. Not only is it great design from a new publishing house, but I think it can hold its own against some of the classics.
To start off with, you have a nice resource-management game centered on scarcity. It never feels like you have enough workers, trade tokens, or resources; you constantly have to give one up to get another.
The trade-token backed marketplace offers for enjoyable tactical puzzles. The exchange of goods for money and money for goods works well, thanks in large part to the scarce trade tokens. As a result, it can be quite exhilirating when you figure out the path to get a certain building that you want.
Beyond all of that, there's a good amount of serious strategy. You can try and plan a few turns ahead for what you'll need to move toward a certain building. And, as you move toward the end of the game, collecting certain types of buildings can be extra valuable, depending on what bonus buildings you've built.
There's some neat brinkmanship too, partially supported by the auctions. Because buildings are in short supply, you sometimes have to balance winning a later auction against the fact that what you want might be gone.
The only caveats that I have to offer in this design are the ones that naturally arise from a more complex design like this. First, it can lead to analysis paralysis among players prone to that (though in my two games there was very little problem). Second, it can get mathy, particularly in the last round or two as you can more directly calculate your returns.
Despite those warnings, Homesteaders remains an excellent game and one of the best medium-dense Eurogames I've seen in years. I've given it a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Homesteaders is a great new game in the serious Eurogame style. Its best and most unique point is its very tactical marketplace trading system. Combined with plenty of strategy, Homesteaders has the depth of many classics in the genre.
