In 2019, video game publisher Blue Byte released the award-winning “Anno 1800,” a city-building simulation that took players back to the dawn of the Industrial Age. To develop this complex system into a board game, publisher Kosmos Games unleashed a secret weapon: Martin Wallace, the heralded designer of legendary board games like “Brass: Birmingham” and “Brass: Lancashire.” The result is something well-suited to the publisher’s emphasis on educational and historical gameplay.
To win “Anno 1800,” each player must build out the capacity of their island. They do this through a standard combination of civilization-building actions: producing goods, recruiting workers, and meeting the needs of their citizens. Unlike some civilization games, a game of “Anno 1800” only ends when a player runs out of population cards, adding a subjective element to the end-game condition.
As is sometimes the case with tabletop adaptations of video games, some may prefer to experience “Anno 1800” in a digital format and save themselves some of the fiddlier bits of resource management. But for those who want communal, in-person experiences that don’t shy away from some of our favorite video game mechanics, “Anno 1800” might be the perfect blend of tabletop and laptop. With a rulebook that only (“only”) measures 16 pages in length, this might be the biggest, smallest worker placement game you get on the table anytime soon.
Purchase on Amazon.
