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Thurn und Taxis
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By scoring a player can:

• Build one house per city that is part of his route. Either he places houses in all cities of any one region, or he places one house per region. However, all of the houses placed must be part of his current scoring route. A player may put a house in a city where another player already has a house.

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• Collect bonus counters. There are bonus points for the length of a route, the presence of all cities in a given region, or the presence in all regions on the board.

• Get a higher value postal carriage. Dependent of the length of our route we gain a new postal carriage, value 3 to 7 (containing victory points from 2 to 10). Independent of the length of his route, a player still has to start with the next higher value carriage.
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After scoring, only three cards may be kept. Note that scoring is done at the end of a turn and that it is mandatory to play at least one card in a turn. If a player cannot expand a route by playing one of the two possible city cards, he has to discard all the cards of his existing route without scoring at all, effectively having to start over all again in his next turn.
The game ends when a player puts his last house on the map or claims his ‘7’ carriage.
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After completion of the last round, all players add the total of the value of their counters, and add the value of their highest claimed carriage. A player’s undeployed houses count as minus points and are deducted from the score.

Thurn und Taxis is not ‘something completely different’.  Like many other games it is a mixture of existing ingredients. But in my opinion, Andreas Seyfahrt has mixed these to a very playable game. Together with his wife Karen he serves us an enjoyable meal which may be not as ‘heavy’ as his earlier main course ‘Puerto Rico’, but tasteful it surely is.

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Wir fahren nach...
The decision making makes it quite nice: e.g. how to divide the houses on the board in the most efficient way, and which route gives the most advantage. It could be said that there is not much interaction. That is true: everyone is dealing with his own problems, but on the other hand a player’s performance is also driven by competition for the best bonus points.
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Luck plays no crucial part because there are too many choices to be made. The fatal situation that a route cannot be expanded and has to be discarded is in fact a risk a player invoked himself because he could have chosen to draw extra cards in a previous round, thereby minimising the risk.

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As a last remark it should be mentioned that illustrator Michael Menzel has done a great job once again. The outstanding graphics contribute to the haute cuisine of the fine dish that 'Thurn und Taxis' is!
© 2006 Gerard van Tilborg

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Thurn und Taxis, Karen & Andreas Seyfarth, Hans im Glück, 2006 - 2 to 4 players, 10 years and up, 60 minutes

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