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Michael Longdin
England
Crawley
West Sussex
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Neuland is a construction / resource production game set up on a abstract map of hexes (settlers style) representing fields, forests and mountains. On this players build different "buildings" (farms, lumberjack huts, mines, gold mints, abbeys, theatres etc) all of which either produce a raw material or turn that raw material into another product. Thus the Hunting Lodge produces food which can be used to feed the lumberjack in his hut who produces timber which can be used to build more buildings or to fuel the charcoal burner, which produces coal which can be used to fuel the smelter.... etc etc). The production tree is quite complex with the goods at the top of the tree being worth VP's. The player who first claims goods worth 9/12/18 VP's (depending on the number of players) wins. As there are only 36 available in total this can be quite tight and tense at the end.
Each turn a player has a maximum of 10 actions used to build and produce goods. Buildings are common to all players. That is, if you build a quarry then anyone can use that quarry. The only restriction on this is that if a building already has a good on it then it cannot be used. Thus it is possible to prevent others from using buildings albeit this is only temporary as you must use any left over goods on your next turn otherwise they are destroyed. There is a very clever little turn order track which means that the fewer action points you use then the more turns you will get. Clever manipulation of this can allow you to use in excess of 10 points before anyone else gets to go - quite powerful.
Understanding the production tree is key to doing well at the game. You need to plan ahead both to make sure you have all the goods you need to produce that final product to get you vp's and to ensure that you get there before your opponents. There is nothing worse than having spent a significant number of actions producing a sword only to find that there is nothing left to use it on.
We set off in our own little corners of the board but it soon became apparent that we were going to have to muscle in on other players turf in order to get all the resources we need. This meant that me and Grant were constantly ending our turns by producing food in all the remaining farms and hunting lodges to prevent anyone else from claiming them. This is fine but it is costly in terms of action points if you want to avoid waste. Alan was much more conservative in this manner and, as a result, ended up getting far more, smaller, turns then us two. Gradually the VP's got ticked off and the board became much more crowded which meant that we all had further to travel to produce the required goods - this too is much more expensive. Eventually there were two VP scoring products left and whoever got the first one would win the game. This required paper and with only two paper mills on the board I monopolised the output. However, I also needed coal so Alan and Grant shut me out of the coal producing buildings. Unfortunately for them this was much more difficult to sustain and they couldn't keep it up for as long as I could keep the paper hoarding up and in the end I was able to get the 2 vp's needed to win.
Michael - 12, Alan - 11, Grant - 10
I've seen Neuland described as 'Roads and Boats lite'. The comparison to R&B is obvious and well made as both games involve constructing 'buildings' which produce raw materials or turn those materials into other products via a reasonably complicated 'production' tree. What it isn't though is Roads & Boats lite. A light game this is not. If anything it is more intense than Roads & Boats which has a longer, more gradual ramp up of resources and where player interaction doesn't occur for a while (if at all). In Neuland, you can get to the top of the production chain fairly quickly and the limited space means that you are always competing for resources with the other players. One of the advantages of this is that the game plays much more quickly than R&B. I probably prefer the earlier game with it's much less 'in your face' style but the game length makes Neuland more likely to get to the table. The sequence at the end was slightly worrisome and may cause the game to lock up but the rest of the features make it well worth playing - you need to be prepared to have your brains fried though! Rating 8.
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