Hamlet

Having been brought up in medium sized towns in the British country side, I’ve always been familiar with the hamlets dotted around not too far outside the towns borders. It’s the idea of turning such hamlets into the medium size towns many of us live in where the game Hamlet finds it’s theme. The goal of the game is simple. Build a church, and put more work into it than anyone else. As you go the hamlet will expand becoming a village and when the church is built, a small town. As you go you will lay tiles which can mostly be used by your meeple to get further resources and jobs done.

What’s In The Box

The main draw to this game is perhaps its assortment of shaped tiles (more on these later) which for me were a decent thickness, although I was playing the founders edition so the retail copies will be a little thinner. The box also contains various wooden raw material tokens, and a large array of coloured wooden player pieces, including flags, meeple, donkey’s, bridges, refined materials and markers. There are also 2d church tiles (low quality 3d church tiles also included with the founders edition), coins and a canvas bag for your tiles to be mixed within. Of course as a competitive tile placement game a score track is also included.

All the parts seem to be of a decent quality, with the exception of the 3d cardboard church included in the founders edition. If you are buying the retail edition then there is certainly no need to weep over the absence these. The fact that many of the pieces are wooden, really adds to the durability, and makes you feel as if you are playing with a real quality product. There is absolutely nothing negative I can say for the art style, with its medieval village feel and beautifully painted features.

How Does It Play

Hamlet at first glance looks like it will be a lot to take in and learn, but once you have played a round, the game just flows and you sink into its simplistic workings. At the start of the game, you have 6 tiles already laid out for you, which act as places to place meeple to do various simple actions. Each turn, you will move your meeple to any tile accessible by a road and conduct that tiles action. This might be producing resources, or it could be a market trade, or even buying “blueprints” to build and add to the tiles already laid down. You can also accrue more donkey’s and meeple by spending some coin at the town hall. The more meeple you have the more you can do in one turn, but it’s the donkeys that add perhaps one of the games most different mechanics.

You see the resources you produce on the production tiles, don’t get added to a players own supply, but instead remain on the tile for use by any player. In order to use them, you have to have a supply line between the tile you are performing the action on and any resource tiles that have the required resource. That’s where the donkeys come in. Donkeys can move 1 tile each per turn, and form your supply line, one donkey passes the resource on to the next one on the adjacent tile and so fourth, so that with enough donkey’s you can pass resources from one end of your ever growing village to the other. This also forms the most competitive aspect of the game. I could be trying to get the resources together for the next church delivery, just for my wife to come along and grab those resources I’ve been building up for a tile she has in her hand to lay. Of course the more meeple you have the more you can get done, so the less likely this is to happen.

Resources themselves are split into different types. Raw materials, and refined materials. Raw materials give the player producing them instant monetary reward, where as refined resources only gain the reward, along with victory points, when they are used. As such refined materials are placed on the board in the players colour.

Tile placement is simple but challenging at the same time. The unique shape of each tile makes for a game akin to Tetris when placing, but there is advantage to the tile edges matching woodland to woodland or rocks to rock, as this allows for easier road building. A tiles actions are only usable if it is connected to the road network. Most tiles have roads in the design of the tile, but there are times where when placing you won’t be able to match these anywhere and you’ll have to build your own. Simply trading some raw resources (donkey placement allowing) to the place you want to build the road will allow you to place a little wooden bridge, which acts as a road between the tiles.

Once the church is completed, by transporting various resources to the churches tile, the game ends, and any victory point made along the way are counted.

My Verdict

There is something quite satisfying about watching your hamlet build into its own bustling town, but for a competitive game it feels very cooperative, especially at the early stages. It’s impossible to build the church without first expanding the village, and you find yourself willing the player with various tiles in their hand to lay them for your use, so strategically you find yourself leaving certain resources for them to use to build them.

Toward the end of the game, this changes as you are all fighting for those few victory points. You want to be the first to do that next church delivery to get the associated victory points, but then by doing so you might award a couple of victory points to your opponent which could be the difference of a win or a loss.

Personally I enjoyed the game, but it hasn’t won me over in the same way that some other games have. It will be a nice game to crack out once in a while, but hasn’t made its way into my board game staple diet.