1500 – The New World is from Dan Verssen Games, historical exploration game. It’s basically an area control game, think Risk with cards, you are trying to control the world!
This game will be about exploring the ‘New World’ in 1500 and establish colonies. You then expand those colonies and collect victory points at the end of the game depending on your number of successful colonies.
If you have played Magic, you will feel at home here, as there are two types of card: tan cards and red cards. Tan cards are action cards, and red cards are reaction cards. You can use the effect of the card, or you can discard them to build, reduce or repair a colony, or adjust ‘Royal Support’ You want to use as many cards in your hand as possible during each turn, and expand as much as possible by the end of the game.
Components
The game board, is well made, and have great colors, the cards are good quality and again has some nice art and colors, I think they will stand up to many plays. I wish they would have taken a different approach with the tokens, as they are just boring and dull colors, that you will just punch out.
The rule book, is laid out nice with some good art, but the rules are a bit confusing at first, I had to reread a few sections a few time, and do a “sample” play while looking at the rules, once I did that it seemed to make more sense to me.
Gameplay (Here comes the bad)
The game is pretty quick to pick up, there some bit of strategy depedning on what cards you get, but with the luck aspect this is a mute point really. You just have to play with you have, and hope your points stay and not get taken away as soon as the next players plays.
A typical turn consists of playing out your hand to maximize your presence on the board and counting up your points. Then your opponent will play and as you might have guessed, they’ll then completely wipe you off the map, forcing you to almost start afresh each and every turn. This makes the game pretty frusting at times, as you are at the mercy of your draw, and what your oppent might have drawn.
I hope your a fan of luck and the randomness luck of cards draws, as this is what you are going to get here, the whole game is based around this, if your hand at the start of the game is crap, then well your out of luck, as your opponents are going to wipe you within a 1 turn and your not going to have a good time at all,
If you would like to play solo, you can do with the expansions, and this works really well, with the above problems aside. These will add five more countries to the game, England, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain. Each of these expansions includes another 112 nation-specific cards and rules for a manual AI player for solo play.
I like how the expansions will add some variety to the gameplay and introduces solo play with the “AI” deck. I felt that game did play a bit better solo. it still has the luck issue, but it did not seem to be as bad to me, with solo play. It might have just been I get better luck with my card draw, but I seemed to take a good lead and the AI, could not catch up in the few games I played solo.
Final Thoughts
I really wanted to like this game, I really did but there is too much luck and unbalanced gameplay to make this fun to play. I suppose if your playing with right people, you could set up agreements to help with some of the unbalanced gameplay and luck.
If you like games that are totaly based on luck and have a very big “Take that” play then you might enjoy 1500, as for me I hope they can tweak the rules and gamplay a bit, as this was just not fun, I did enjoy solo play some, but not enough to reccomnd this game.
The MSRP of 1500 The New World, is 49.99 and the five exansions are at a 24.99 MSRP.
For more information and to order 1500: The New World head over to the DVG Website.
A special thanks to DVG for sending us the review copy of 1500 The New World and expansions for this review, This had no effect on the outcome of the review.
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