Game Overview

Game Name: Amsterdam
Publication Year: 2022
Designer: Stefan Feld
Artists: C. Fiore, K. Franz, P. Limberger, & A. Resch
Publisher: Queen Games
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game

Over the course of 12 rounds, actions are prepared by choosing how to use dice to build up resources on a rondel. Buildings can be activated, districts can be claimed, goods can be dropped off, and so much more! It all flows well, much like the canal that runs through the middle of the city.

A Huge Play Space

I omitted a board entirely and just kept the full insert off to the side, which saved me some time and a bit of space.

Yet, goodness! This is another huge board that doesn’t have too much empty space, but still feels like it sprawls out.

At the same time, I found this color palette to be playful and colorful. I was drawn into the game right from the start and loved seeing all of the little details in the artwork.

Everything serves a purpose, too, with city districts and adjacency meaning something. The barge spaces at the top are also useful, creating an interesting network of paths.

Goods in City Blocks

This deluxe edition includes acrylic tokens for all of the goods tokens, which are randomly distributed. Lots of pretty things to consider, and these do stand out nicely!

Claiming a city block involves spending the matching resource cubes of the right quantity, and then claiming the good. What to do with it? Save it to deliver or sell it!

There were a lot of neat decisions here, especially since adjacent blocks added more victory points at game end.

And this central canal to move along might look basic, yet it provides a neat mechanic around spending resources.

Into the Harbor

Look at that little barge! I loved moving around to drop off goods from blocks I claimed. Loading them onto my barge required being on the right space, so it wasn’t automatic.

The solo opponent delivered goods ahead of me to claim more victory points at times, thwarting some of my plans.

And this was just the main board! There were choices to make around picking up resources for future rounds.

Plus, a card draft phase at the start of each round provided a choice of something new… Although activating every card was necessary, as there were penalties for not doing so.

Around and Around

Managing a rondel of resources is a highlight to gameplay, as this is all about planning future turns. It involves choosing 2 of 6 dice to fill in spaces at the start of a round.

Then, the rondel rotates to release all of the resources that were in the 1-value space. Smaller rewards are available immediately, but saving up for huge turns is exciting!

In this round near the end, I had a number of awesome turns prepared. Lots of waiting, yet that was worth it.

Such a simple sort of way to use a rondel, but in a way that created all kinds of clever choices for me to puzzle through!

Neat Card Choices

During the card draft of each round, there are a number of choices. Not only are abilities taken into account, but the card cost is also vital to being able to activate it.

Collect too many cards that can’t be paid for, and the results are disastrous! I was lucky to end up with just a single penalty token, but negative victory points can be huge.

Although there is a lot of iconography here, I didn’t struggle with it too much. There was something more problematic…

All of the card names are in Dutch, for thematic purposes, but without a pronunciation or translation guide. Why?

Along the Canal

As if all of the gameplay layers aren;t enough, there is also a central canal to advance along. Passing bridges is worth victory points, as is reaching the end first.

I was well behind most of this play, and figured I would never reach the end. Yet with some extreme luck with the dice, the solo opponent slowed to a crawl and stopped.

So those 10 victory points became my own! In a twist, that was the point swing that ultimately determined the winner.

Unfortunately, this also meant that the solo mode relied on random dice rolls and didn’t feel like a true challenge.

Different Card Abilities

Despite not loving the randomness, I was still excited about the general gameplay and returned to play again!

This time, I picked up district maps and craftsmen cards over buildings, finding fun abilities along the way.

But the card names! I started to go through the trouble of trying to look these up to pronounce them correctly, or at least understand what was on each card. So much work.

I appreciate diverse settings and languages, yet I feel bad making up my own pronunciations. That’s not a way to learn, and I felt ashamed of my incorrect interpretations.

Selling Goods

My second play featured a final scoring card that rewarded me for having the black market filled with goods. Each space only holds one of each good, and it can fill up quickly!

I liked this decision space a lot. Holding onto a good to drop off in the harbor was worth victory points, but there was a whole process to make sure that happened by game end.

The black market offered an immediate bonus of a resource cube or coins, which might be a better choice that round.

Yet this all rolled up into choosing city blocks to claim, adding more strategy. Overall, an excellent sort of system!

Session Overview

Play Number: 1 & 2
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Outcome: 143-125 & 147-80 (2 Wins)

Don’t forget the dock workers! This was another little piece of the puzzle about picking up and dropping off meeples in the harbor. Small, but potentially very lucrative. Sadly, for as much as I enjoyed gameplay, the solo mode was severely lacking. The solo opponent made poor decisions based on dice rolls. While my first play seemed balanced, the next play showed just how random scoring could be. A shame, as I enjoyed nearly every other aspect of the game’s design.

Affordability

Price & Value

5

Functionality

Challenges & Mechanics

9

Originality

Design & Theme

4

Quality

Components & Rules

9