Played some Thurn und Taxis at BSW. This time I was focused on the wagon-growing strategy, where you build five routes: three, four, five, six and seven cities. That way you’ll end the game (hopefully) faster than your opponents and will score plenty.
Based on my experiments, I’d say it works. It’s not a guaranteed winner, not by far, but a good strategy to base your game on. It feels pretty efficient, but that of course depends on the routes as well. Still, building slightly weaker routes can be justified if you’re working on a wagon goal.
In my two three-player games I won one and came second in the other. There I was one turn behind the winner, and had I had that one turn, it would’ve been a lot tighter and a possible win for me. In the game I won, there was no doubt about the winner.
I cheated a bit, though: my five-city route was a six-city route because I had to take a longer turn through Bavaria, and of course the six and seven wagons were bought with a wagon master, since it looked like time was short. But that’s part of plan, really — take the long route bonuses if you can, but if you can’t, don’t worry about it.
Thurn und Taxis is fun, there’s no question about it. It’s currently number one on my hot game list, and will probably stay there for this quarter, and maybe more, depending on how popular it remains in BSW.