Game Preview: Hamburgum

By W. Eric Martin
October 2, 2007

Publishers: Eggertspiele / Rio Grande Games
Designer: Mac Gerdts
Players: 2-5
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: 75-90 minutes
Release Date: October 2007

With Imperial, game designer Mac Gerdts gave players the chance to run the entire European continent. In his latest game, Hamburgum—which debuts at the Spiel game fair in Essen, Germany in mid-October 2007—he’s asking players to think smaller. More importantly, he’s asking them to be generous. After all, to win this game you need prestige points, and to earn prestige you must donate to the building of Hamburg’s six churches.

Why choose Hamburg for a game setting? Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany and the second largest port city in all of Europe, but of more importance perhaps is that Mac Gerdts lives in Hamburg and has long wanted to incorporate the city’s history into a boardgame. “When researching, I decided to set it in the 17th century, which was a golden era for the city,” he says. “Hamburg was a prospering port and eventually became the biggest city of Germany at that time. It was a secure haven for Protestant refugees, and as only citizens with Lutheran beliefs were allowed to get official posts, the Church of Hamburg had to play an important role. At the same time, Hamburg was quite a modern city with many republican elements in its constitution, which was not natural in a time when absolutism was on the rise elsewhere.”

Researching city history identified three main trades—beer, sugar and cloth—and the buying and selling of those goods drives the economic engine of the game. To determine the look and layout of the city, Gerdts visited nearby Lübeck, a trade partner of Hamburg as far back as the 13th century and a town with well-preserved architecture, unlike Hamburg. Says Gerdts, “99% of the old Hamburg buildings are destroyed.”

Hamburgum fits more into the Eurogame category than Imperial or Antike as the game lacks military combat and players are traders who need to build up economic engines, along the lines of Puerto Rico or St. Petersburg. Unlike those games, though, Gerdts says, “When you feed the prestige-engine [in Hamburgum], you sacrifice your resources instead of investing them into your own economy. Players who own the most buildings/ships/goods/money often do not win because they underestimate the church donations. On the other hand, if you give everything you have to the churches, you won’t win either. You have to be balanced, and you always have to be aware of other players as there is a tough competition for buildings in the city, ships in the harbour, and donations to the churches.”

Where Hamburgum veers from the Eurogame path, however, is the absence of luck in the game, a trait it shares with Gerdts’ previous designs. “Hamburgum was luck-free from the start,” he says. “What I find so interesting about designing games without luck is that they have to be very carefully balanced: How to cope with a runaway leader? Which catch-up mechanisms are on offer? Are there different strategies, and how viable are they in comparison to each other? Does the gameplay feel scripted, are there too many repetitive turns? How to ensure that each playing is different from other ones? Can the game remain tight to the finish? Is it prone to analysis-paralysis, as there is full information about possible turns for every player? For many gamers, the obvious answer to all these questions is throwing dice. To design a satisfying boardgame without luck really is a challenge.”

Hamburgum certainly isn’t deterministic, but instead of dice or cards, uncertainty in the game results solely from player choices. Thankfully you can make assumptions about what opponents might do thanks to the return of the rondel, a game mechanism that debuted in Antike.

With the rondel, a player’s possible actions are laid out in a circle, your token rests on one of the spaces in the circle, and you can take any of the next three actions in clockwise order for no cost. You can choose to move additional spaces around the rondel, but each space past the third costs you a prestige point.

“I wouldn’t say that the rondel is better than a list of choices,” says Gerdts, “but it has advantages: The choice is limited to only a few obvious turns, and planning ahead for several turns is required and rewarded. Both of these characteristics help to speed up the game. In addition, you can see the options of the other players and take them into account. Finally, the rondel makes it very difficult to choose the same action over and over. As an example, in Hamburgum you cannot afford to produce beer in every turn; you have to take other turns in between. There is an interdependency between your own turns which a simple list of choices wouldn’t offer.”

After Antike, Imperial and the intense conflict within those games, players might be surprised to find the rondel used with the tamer topics of trade, construction and brewing, but Gerdts points out the rondel is simply a game mechanism with no inherent restriction on its use. “It can be used for a wide range of very different games and themes,” he says. “Therefore the rondel is not necessarily associated with battle and conflict.”

Again, as with Antike and Imperial, the gameboard in Hamburgum is double-sided, with the non-Hamburg side featuring London (or rather “Londinium"). The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed the homes of 90% of the city’s inhabitants, not to mention the city’s churches, and players are once again responsible for building the churches. “The theme is not the only difference,” says Gerdts, “as London has the more balanced map. In Hamburg, the biggest church district is in the West, and the smallest district in the middle of the city. In London, the big church district is located in the middle, surrounded by the other districts, all of which have the same size. This makes for a different strategic challenge, which I hope will appeal to many gamers!”

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	The cover
	The Hamburg half of the gameboard

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