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Autobahn, a game about shipping goods around Germany in the 20th century. There are a more than few people who would read that and run a mile. I’m here to try and tell you not to.
On the road again
Autobahn is one of the games that I picked up from the UK Games Expo last year. It’s a game that I’d had my eye on when it was on kickstarter but I never did feel enough of a pull to mash that pledge button. But in that heady expo air when purse strings feel just that little bit lighter, I decided to add it to my collection. We actually cracked it out and played it the same evening in one of the gaming halls. It had me hooked but I didn’t get to play it for a while for one reason or another. About a month ago it made it back to my table and it hasn’t been off it much since then.
The premise of the game is simple. Each player starts with an identical hand of different coloured cards. You can play one card a turn to do one of a few actions. These actions will let you build roads, ship goods, upgrade highways, do some research or build service stations all over the autobahn. The cards colour dictates where you can perform that action; Play a green card onto the build road slot, build a green road. That sort of stuff.
All this building and shipping goods is a lot of fun, but it’s not necessarily how you end up winning the game. In fact, if that is all you did you would likely end up dead last. To win you need points and your end game points are determined by how many executives you have and which offices they are in. But you don’t have any executives at first, you need to promote them into the C-suite. That can be done by building or upgrading roads. Also, those offices are only unlocked through research, so you better do that too.
That last paragraph is as tough as the game gets. Now, you’re either leaning forward with an interested look on your face or you’ve decided that this game is a convoluted mess, and you don’t want anything to do with it. But perhaps you can see the puzzle here. You need to build roads to get your executives. But you’ll get a lot of points for delivering things. You’ll also get points for building your service stations, so you should do that too. And money can also be worth points. These pillars will get you points, but neglecting any one could see you with an impressive road network but not many points to show for it.
I love trucking
The game takes place over three phases. Each phase of the game will end when a certain number of roads have been built. When a phase ends some money is handed out depending on which sections of the autobahn have been built and how well upgraded the roads are. Then you do it all again. In the last phase of the game, East Germany is reunified, and that section of the map is now in play.
These three phases give the game an interesting cadence. The early game is dominated by road building. But, as the external cities get connected, shipping goods becomes more of a focus. And as these trucks move around the map, any service stations they pass give out some bonuses so getting a few of these down by now is also a good idea. The last round is sort of a free for all where people are trying to ship goods out of the newly available Berlin. But to ship these goods you need to connect it to the network. Lots of fun.
There is also an element of deck building at play here. As the game progresses, you’ll unlock the ability to switch out your cards for better cards. And they don’t have to be cards of the same colour. Meaning you can specialise in certain colours and leave some parts of the map to the other players. This can backfire badly though. You may end up not being able to move your trucks on certain roads. Bad times.
Each of your actions can only be done a certain number of times before you pick up your cards, but this too can be modified. As the game goes by, you’ll get the chance to increase the limit of some of these actions, further allowing you to specialise as you wish. There are some ways you can manipulate the cards you’ve played too. Building certain roads or delivering to cities will get you some special action tiles. Some of these will let you switch played cards with ones in your hand; Letting you play certain colours again sooner than you would normally.
Shipped to your door
As somebody who likes a heavy Eurogame, this sort of ‘systems within systems’ all linked together gives me a massive smile. It took me a few games to get a good handle on it, but once I did Autobahn became one of my favourite puzzles to solve. I enjoy how I can adapt my playstyle to my opponents. If everybody is shipping stuff left right and centre, I like to push service stations hard. This can mean each round I get a few bonuses before my turn begins again. You can focus on your research to unlock more executive offices. You may not ship as much stuff, but what you do ship is now worth a lot more. It’s all about finding that niche and making yourself at home in it.
For a Eurogame it is also very pretty. The board is bright and clear, and the cards are nicely illustrated. No beige here. It’s not going to win any prizes for being a looker, but it at least makes and effort and I’m all for that. There is some variability in set up as well. The goods each city wants is randomised as are the bonuses placed all over the board. This gives each game of Autobahn a slightly different feel to it.
It’s not as deep as some of the Vital Lacerda designed games I like to play, (On Mars, you are wonderful), but it scratches a similar itch. The playtime is much shorter than those games. I’ve managed to get a game with 4 players done in about 2 hours which would be near possible for a game of On Mars. Would I rather play On Mars? Yeah, probably. But Autobahn would be on my mind by the time we hit hour 3 and I’d be wondering if I’d made the right call.
I would never crack this out for somebody who is new to the world of boardgames. I’ve been playing these things for over 15 years at this point, and it took a few games to get my head around it to the point where I was comfortable with it. If you’ve got a few years of board game toy sporting under your belt I’d definitely consider Autobahn. The way each system is subtly influenced by the actions of the players is fantastic and twists the game in a slightly different direction each play.
And that’s about where I land on Autobahn. It’s a game with pick up and deliver, deckbuilding and other interlinked systems that give you a lot to get your teeth into. It may give you brain burnout if you’re not used to playing heavier games. You might find it frustrating that after neglecting the executives board you end up scoring poorly for your first game. But after you’ve got your head around it, you’re rewarded with a very interesting game that only gets better after multiple plays.
