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Lowell Kempf
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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While I have been trying to curb my impulse purchasing with Tanga, when the Spiecherstadt showed up a couple weeks ago, I decided to hit the purchase button. While it had not really been on my radar (since I had no idea what the name meant
 ), I saw it was by Stefan Feld, who had given me a lot of fun with Notre Dame, Roma and Macao and that was enough to make me make me say those magic words “It must be mine!”
As it turns out, the name of the game (which means something like Warehouse) is the name of the dock district in Hamburg. While I respect and enjoy the work of both Zed of Z-Man and Stefen Feld, I honestly don’t think that was the best name for the broader international audience. I’m the target audience for a game like this and the name made me almost miss it.
At any rate, the Spiecherstadt arrived and it hit the table last night.
Before I talk about the actual mechanics and what we thought about the game (short version for those of you who are bored, we liked it), I want to gripe about the rule book.
There were a few odd sentences in the rules that made me go “hmmmm” but nothing as bad as Macao. However, the set-up was at the very end. In fact, the rules had a quick start page you were supposed to cut out so, strictly speaking, the set-up and the rules were designed to be on two completely different documents.
I respect and appreciate quick-start rules. However, when vital information can only be found on them, I think that that’s a ding on the rule book. Honestly, when the set-up isn’t the first part of the rules, after maybe a flavor paragraph and a list of components, I think it’s a bad choice.
That said, the rules weren’t too difficult so, after insulting the editor’s ancestors, we had no problem getting into the game.
The core mechanic of the Spiecherstadt is a nifty auction system. Every round, a group of cards gets laid out. One at a time, the players place one of their three meeples over a card as a bid for that card. More than one bid can be placed on any given card. In fact, that’s kind of the point.
Then, in the order of placement, people have a chance to buy those cards. Whoever placed the first meeple on a given card gets the right of first refusal. They get the first crack at buying the card but it costs as many meeples as have been bid on it. If they pass, they take their meeple off. So, the more people that pass, the cheaper the card gets but sometimes hoping for a cheap card means you don’t get any cards at all.
Money is brutally tight in the game. There is just enough money for the starting cash for a five-person game but we were convinced after two games that you will almost never need more money than that. We played it with open money and every coin counted. The difference of one coin was the difference between getting a kiss and a kick in the balls.
However, while the auction is the real moving part of the game, the cards that you are bidding on and the order that they come out also play a big role why we liked the game. The cards are broken down into four sub-decks so that, while the absolute order of the cards is unknown, there is a definite pattern to how the cards come out. In fact, that’s why we needed to immediately play the game again. Knowing the cards and how they come out is a big part of learning to play the game.
Fortunately, it’s not too hard to learn. At the beginning of the game, you get the tools to use goods, be it contracts to be fulfilled or traders to sell them or the like. Later on in the game, ships start coming in and you get the goods to use with those earlier cards. Near the end, cards that are just straight up points show up.
As I already said, we all enjoyed the game quite a bit. It plays out in an hour or less, which meant that it was easy to play it again and we all wanted to play it again. It is a game that left us talking about strategy and planning on having it hit the table again soon.
I do have two concerns about the Spiecherstadt.
The main one is a question of how replayable it is. Since you know the cards that will come out and have an idea of when they will come out, will every game start to feel the same? While there seem to be multiple paths to victory, is there going to turn out to be one that is better than all the rest?
On the bright side, it will take some more plays to answer those concerns. If nothing else, I will get my money’s worth out of the game even if we burn it out relatively quickly. I also understand that there is an expansion of 60 more cards so that could spice the game up quite a bit.
My other complaint is that this game can bring out the analysis paralysis something fierce. After the cards and the good are laid out, all the information in each round is open. That leads some players to reliving the poison cup scene in Princess Bride. Every single turn.
So far, all of my experiences with Stefan Feld have been good ones and the Spiecherstadt does not change that. It is a solid game that offers some tough choices and plenty of meat, particularly for a game that is easy to squeeze in on a work night.
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