If the active player rolls a 1-5 each players produces one commodity and takes one of the appropriate commodity card.Įach player has, on his home island board, numbered 1-5, but in an arbitrary order: 1 "?" space (produce a commodity of his choice) and 1 each of stone, lumber, tools, and cloth. Roll for Production: The player rolls 1 six-sided die.ġ-5. Order of Play: Each turn each player gets to take the following actions: (We'll meet this tiles later, but they include outposts, which produce special commodities, and trade agreements, which make it cheaper to buy commodities.)įinally, each player gets 7 gold-marked on the gold track. (His other ship is placed near his board, ready for construction.)The rest of the main board is filled with unchartered islands. Each player also gets to place two colonists on his gameboard: 1 pioneer (level 1) and 1 settler (level 2).Įach player also starts off with a ship which is placed on the exploration board.
Setup: Each player is given a player game board at start which depicts most of the basic info on how the game plays and also lists what production numbers the four core commodities (stone, lumber, tools, and cloth) are produced on for that player. Generally, you spend a game of Anno 1503 exploring islands and producing commodities in order to create a solid corp of experienced colonists. On the whole, Anno 1503 deserves a "4" out of "5" Style rating. Overall, the components are of nice quality, and also nicely utilitarian: they make the game easier to play. The tray inside is fairly nice with spaces for just about everything.
As with other recent Klaus Teuber games, this one also features an online tutorial at which was well-done.īox & Tray: A fairly normative medium-sized square box. Overall, easy to follow and good for reference in game.
Rulebook: A four-page rulesheet in full color with plenty of illustrations and examples. Fortunately, nice are in plentiful supply in most gaming houses. I have suspicions about the weighting of the die that came with my box as it was retired from two consecutive games due to an apparently bad balance of rolls. The color-coding & icons, which are matched on home island boards and on various tiles, make these cards easy to use.ĭie: A wooden die with black-inked pips. Each one depicts a building in the middle with color-coded icons representing the commodity in the four corners. Wooden Ships: Cute and large wooden ships in the four-player colors (red, yellow, blue, and gray).Ĭommodity Cards: Half-sized slightly flimsy full-color cards with rounded corners. Three large ones are used to mark victory conditions when a player achieves them, and one small one marks current gold supplies. This is a very elegant and easy to remember mechanism that dfferentiates the game based on number of players.Ĭoat of Arms Markers: More cardboard markers, four for each player. If you're in a two-player game, you only use the "2" tiles, a three-player game, the "2" and the "3", etc. The island tiles and public building tiles each have an additional cool feature: they're numbered with a "2", "3" or "4" on the back. Each features computer artwork and various iconography that explains what the tile does. The island tiles are a bit bigger than the two, but otherwise they're all the same: square, full-color cardboard tiles. The Tiles: There are 3 different types of tiles in the game: island tiles colonist tiles and public building tiles. They're not spectacular, but are nice enough, and a nice tie-in to the computer game. The graphics on the board (and in the rest of the game) are all computerized-representations of various buildings, forests, and islands, presumably from the computer game Anno 1503. As with the main gameboard there's a lot of utilitarian info as well, including results for a production die roll (different for each player) and a list of building costs. It has space for 7 colonists and 5 public buildings as well as docks for up to 4 outposts and 3 trade agreements (which cleverly are meant to abutt the edges of the board). Home Island Boards: Each player also gets their own home island board, printed on thick cardboard. It's overall a nice centerpiece, that gets the job done as a map, but also contains a lot of utilitarian info. The main part of the board shows the islands that the players will explore, but there's also a gold pieces track, a clear listing of the five potential victory conditions for the game, and even a listing of the possible results when you roll an unlucky "6". Gameboard: A small, 2-panel gameboard printed on linen-textured cardboard. Anno 1503 Is a board game by Settlers of Catan designer Klaus Teuber, based on a computer game.