Hopping on to a new Uwe game
Hallertau is a 1-4 player worker placement game by Uwe Rosenberg in which you cultivate crops (mainly hop) and develop your village in 19th century Bavaria. It will be released by Lookout Games during Spiel Digital in the last week of October, and will become available in European shops right after. US distribution will follow.
The game is played over 6 rounds with 10 phases each. The solo mode is exactly the same as the multiplayer mode, and you are trying to score at least 100 points to win. I am not going to explain all 10 phases, as most of them are maintenance (removing workers, receiving income, harvesting), and will instead highlight the Actions phase and the Progress phase, since it's during these that you will be making the most decisions. At the start of the game, you will receive 4 cards that you will be able to use when their requirement is met (e.g. a card that says 'move the planted fields one row up' can be played when you have met its condition, that is having 'exactly 2 planted fields').
In the Actions phase, you will either place your workers or exchange workers for tools. You will choose an action space (e.g. Weekly Market, Small Trade, Cultivation, Land Sale) on the action board, place the shown number of workers, and immediately perform the action (e.g. in the Weekly Market you receive 1 meat and 1 sheep). Alternatively, you may return one or more of your workers to the supply to take that number of tools. The phase ends when you have used all your workers.
In the Progress phase, you will be spending goods to advance (move them one space to the right) the Craft Buildings in the Community Centre. To do this, you must spend as many goods as the current round, e.g. pay 2 barley in round 2 to advance the Brewhouse. These advancements will allow you to gain more workers in subsequent rounds. If you have jewelry, you can spend it to substitute any other goods to advance a building by one space. Some building spaces have boulders that prevent their advancement: you can push these boulders to the right by using your tools.
At the end of round 6, you proceed to scoring. You will calculate points from the Community Centre, the sheep you have, jewelry, fields, goods and tools, plus any cards you were able to play, and see if you are the best village chief in the Hallertau region.
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