- Publisher : Funforge
- Designer : Uwe Rosenberg
- Artist(s) : Lukas Siegmon, Klemens Franz
- Players : 1–4
- Playing time : 50–140 Min
- Weight BGG : 3.31
What's this?
You are the leader of a small village in the Hallertau region: provide local artisans with the products they need, through harvests and sheep breeding, by skillfully playing your cards.
How do you play?
A game of Hallertau is played in 6 rounds.
Each round takes place in the following order:
Phase 1 – Remove the workers: A sort of cleaning of the central board
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Phase 2 – New workers: You will collect new workers for the action phase
Phase 3 – Income: Recover the income from your played cards
< br />Phase 4 – Actions:
Placement of your Workers on the Action spaces of the central board:
➡️“Gain” or “exchange” action: most action spaces provide resources.
➡️“Sowing” action, players can take a Seed token from their Field board and place it on an empty field. The row of the chosen field determines the quantity of grain obtained during the Harvest phase.
➡️First player action.
➡️Survival action for the sheep.
➡️Exchange workers for tools .
Phase 5. Draw a new card from your Stables board.
Phase 6 – Fallowing: Slide all empty fields on your Fields board one step towards the top
Phase 7 – Harvest: You harvest a quantity of grain equal to the number in the row. Immediately afterwards, slide the harvested field down one notch.
Phase 8 – Milking You gain 1 milk per sheep on your Stables board
Phase 9 – Improvement: You spend goods to improve your artisans.
Phase 10 – Rocks:Reposition your rocks on the artisans board.
You can play cards from your hand at any time. at any time, even during an opponent’s turn. When you play a card, place it face up in front of you. To play a card, you must either meet a condition or pay resources, as shown on the top half of the card.
Is it good?
In Hallertau, as is often the case in the author’s other games, we stay within the agricultural theme, but there are enough new things to arouse interest.
The mechanics of worker position is quite new for the author, with worker locations becoming more and more expensive if you wait too long.
The management of your field, with fields that become exhausted after production and others put fallow to gain quality, will force us to put certain fields to rest to optimize the harvest of resources.
But what changes the most compared to its other games, this is the importance of the cards in the game, with more than 300 different cards.
There are cards with immediate effects, permanent powers, income in each round, without forgetting all the victory point cards.
You will have to meet most of the conditions to be able to place them, and this will really not be easy.
Luck will obviously play a significant role, especially if you draw the right card, which could put off some.
As far as resources are concerned, it’s tense, because we will also have to juggle the demand for resources to keep to improve our craftsmen , and this demand is exponential the more you advance.
Personally, I find that this mechanic is a little behind in terms of theme and sensation. We are more into mathematical calculations.
But let’s not spoil our pleasure with this Hallertau which is, as is often the case with Uwe Rosenberg’s games, a very good game, original and not so complicated, and which offers a nice depth.
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Review Hallertau
Positives
- Original mechanics
- Field management
- The many cards
- A great depth of different strategies and great replayability
- Works great with 1 to 4 players
Negatives
- The chance of drawing cards
- The craftsman improvement part.
