I backed the deluxe crowdfunded edition of this, and I want to lead with the confession that I have complicated feelings about that decision. The base game underneath all the acrylic is over a decade old and still holds up completely, roll dice, place hexagonal tiles onto your own province board, chain matching goods for bonus actions, classic Feld style efficiency puzzle with just enough luck mitigation that a bad roll rarely sinks you outright. At two players it’s tight and fast, under an hour once you both know your player boards, which for a euro this dense in decision space is genuinely impressive.

The deluxe upgrades themselves are where I have to be honest about diminishing returns. The acrylic hex tiles do look and feel wonderful on the table, genuinely elevate the physical experience of placing them, but the acrylic tokens add less, mostly just heft, and the playmat I backed has mostly sat unused because our actual table doesn’t have room for it alongside the province boards. Setup for the deluxe version runs a few minutes longer than the base game purely from sorting more component types, which sounds trivial until you’re doing it on a Tuesday and just want to play.

For a new player specifically, and I’ve taught this to a couple of people now, the iconography and the sheer number of moving parts, different starting positions, different player boards, staggered dice results, front-load a real learning curve, closer to an hour of teaching than the box suggests, though repeat plays go much faster once the shorthand sinks in. Cost per hour has been solid for us since it’s stayed in regular rotation, but I’d tell someone new to the game to try the base edition first and only chase the deluxe version once they know they love what’s underneath it.

Four stars for the game itself, with an honest shrug about whether the acrylic was worth what I paid for it.