Saturday, July 30, 2016

Systems Saturday - Glass Road (2013) Revisited

I just posted about Uwe Rosenberg's Glass Road (2013) but it's been seeing the table a lot in quick succession, so let's look more closely at it.  We swiftly got to play another four player game of this gem and it proved out tremendously.  Gameplay was swift even with two new players, it was simple to teach, and scoring turned out to range about the same as the previous game.


The description from Board Game Geek is as follows:
Glass Road is a game that commemorates the 700-year-old tradition of glass-making in the Bavarian Forest. (Today the Glass Road is a route through the Bavarian Forest that takes visitors to many of the old glass houses and museums of that region.) You must skillfully manage your glass and brick production in order to build the right structures that help you to keep your business flowing. Cut the forest to keep the fires burning in the ovens, and spread and remove ponds, pits and groves to supply yourself with the items you need. Fifteen specialists are there at your side to carry out your orders...
The game consists of four building periods. Each player has an identical set of fifteen specialist cards, and each specialist comes with two abilities. At the beginning of each building period, each player needs to choose a hand of five specialists. If he then plays a specialist that no other player has remaining in his hand, he may use both abilities of that card; if two or more players play the same specialist, each of them may use only one of the two abilities. Exploiting the abilities of the specialists lets you collect resources, lay out new landscape tiles (e.g., ponds and pits), and build a variety of buildings. There are three types of buildings:
1. Processing buildings 
2. Immediate buildings with a one-time effect 
3. Buildings that provide bonus points at the end of the game for various accomplishments
Mastering the balance of knowing the best specialist card to play and being flexible about when you play it – together with assembling a clever combination of buildings – is the key to this game.

This time around I focused less on developments that gave me set points during end-of-game scoring and more on points for resources at the end.  I also dabbled a bit with the private stock of developments though I used them to fuel a blue-backed action creating a nice private engine.  I might try to do more of this next game as it helped keep me from scrambling during play for certain resources.


A look under the hood of various Games, Rules and Systems.
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