OUR REVIEW

WE TRAVEL IN GROUPS

Wunderland

From Knuffingen to Skandinavien

„Oh no“, somebody is groaning in my group, „not really a travel game! Those are  prehistoric game mechanisms, taken from ‘Reise durch …’, don’t tell me that we need to reach certain destinations and might even have to collect souvenirs and answer questions to get those souvenirs?”“

„Oh yes, we must!“ - at least travel game and collecting are a fact, but there is no trace of prehistoric in the manner of roll & move, answer questions, get the card for a correct answer, and so on. We are looking at the game version of Miniatur Wunderland, the world-famous, huge model train installation in Hamburg that presents landscapes from Scandinavia to the USA on 1300 m², and we want to simulate a journey around Wunderland.

The basic mechanism really is that of all other travel games, you need to reach pre-set destinations and bring back souvenirs, in this case picture postcards. But that is already the end of similarities! Let’s start at the beginning!

We look at a map/board which shows a rather random arrangement of geographical regions; Austria, for instance is situated next to America, only separated by a narrow strip of water, and on the other side of the US and another strip of water there is Scandinavia; but travelling is hypothetical anyway and the card is an exact copy of the Wunderland installation. All in all we have eight such areas and several location in each area; for seven of those areas there are stacks of picture postcards which are placed open-faced on the corresponding storage areas on the board. Each player is dealt two destination cards which he keeps secret, but you yourself can check them anytime. One player is handed the big brown locomotive for a starting player token and all players put their eight markers on Knuffingen, the start and finish location of each trip.

In his turn the active player must move one or several of his markers, he can choose to move one or two steps, always along the lines; he can move any number of markers provided the start at the same location and end the trip on the same location; he need not move all markers that he has in location he wants to start the movement from. For instance, he can move three of the eight markers in Knuffingen two steps into Airport & Bayern; the rest remains in Knuffingen and he must place all three markers into the second location and cannot place one on the first location entered in this move. When the starting player has moved his markers, all player who have markers in the starting location of this move can decide to join the active player and move one or several markers the same distance to end in the same location as the markers of the active player. The active player may complete destination cards and/or collect picture postcards before or after his obligatory move.

Destination cards show different numbers of locations; to complete such a card you must have at least one marker in each location. If you do so and you want to complete the card you reveal it and put one marker from each location on the card back to Knuffingen; you instantly score the points from the card on the score track and you lay out the card openly. If you have one or several markers on a symbol spot during your turn, you can take a corresponding picture postcard and put a marker from this spot back to Knuffingen. Collected cards are stacked face down. You can collect any number of cards from a given spot, but will only score four cards per area.

When you complete your fifth destination card the game ends immediately. A player can also end the game as soon as he owns postcards from all seven areas and reveals them; you may do this, but need not do so.

As soon as the game ends no marker is moved anymore, but all can once final time complete destination cards and/or take postcards.

Then you score postcards as regards to numbers per area; for cards from an area where you have most cards you score 1 point per cards, for cards from the area with second most card 2 points, etc. If you achieve the highest total you are the keenest tourist in Wunderland and win.

„Oh yes, a travel game“, albeit a very modern one; the destination cards remind me a bit of Ticket to Ride, but the absolutely felicitous core of the game is the sophisticated group travel mechanism. Not noticeable at first glance but essential to the game is the exact planning of your trips for completing destination cards, as you must leave behind one marker in each location. So you must consider carefully how many markers to take along and if you want to collect post cards on the way. This group travel also introduced a certain element of chance or luck; depending on the distribution of destination cards you might be lucky to group-travel often and thus complete cards quicker or you might have to reach your destinations alone and step by step.

Despite its topic Wunderland is more of a logistic game than a travel game; the integration of the tourist attraction is very well done and especially manifests itself in the picture postcards which show details from the installation. The hypothetical winning strategy to concentrate on collecting four postcards per area and collect them en bloc without completing destination cards is possible in theory, but in practice not possible due to other travelers tagging along with the same idea. But you should collect the same number of cards from each area to realize the best possible score from the cards, which takes us back to tactics which is definitely possible but not absolutely necessary in order to have fun in Wunderland. This is a wonderful family game with enough depth to interest experienced gamers, too.

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 45+

Designer: Dirk Hillebrecht

Artist: Jarek Nocoň, Hans-Georg Schneider

Price: ca. 25 Euro

Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 2013

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Travel, placement, collecting

Users: For families

Version: multi

Rules: de en es fr it nl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Marvelous design correlated to Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg

Alluring travel mechanism

Tactic possible despite random assignation of destination cards

Excellent family game

Compares to:

All travel/logistic games

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 6

Dagmar de Cassan:

If you like logistics and tactical planning with just the right amount of luck/chance, you will be happy trundling along the tracks of Wunderland.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0