Hacienda is about as generic you can get. An tile-laying game with card drafting and a farming theme. Wow, how exciting. But don't judge it by its cover: while it isn't the most original game ever, it's still pretty fun, and manages to allow some interesting strategic thinking and unexpected turn-arounds during a match, even with its lack of originality.

 

Players are farmers in Argentina trying to secure land and cattle for Vps. Yes, money is not what farmers are after; victory points is where it's at. You get victory points by owning huge... tracts of land (well, not really that huge, just 3 spaces or more is enough, but I couldn't resist the reference), connecting to different markets on the board, building haciendas on your land or and having stuff (animals or land tiles) adjacent to water hexes. If it sounds abstract, then it's because it essentially is, even if the art and production values are nice.

 

Hacienda is basically a connection game. One wouldn't be wrong to compare it to Knizia's Through the Desert, only with more elements thrown in (namely, an economic system). You connect your animals and your land pieces to different important parts of the board, while trying . The main strategy here is blocking. Being nasty is definitely not merely an option, but a necessity, if you want to be competitive. Otherwise, the game is solved through mere luck of the draw. Not only do you have access the important parts of the board, you also have to do it in a way that keeps other players from doing this as well.

 

Rules are simple: you get three actions per turn, which can be either to buy cards (open cards costing more money than closed ones) buy haciendas or water hexes (which strangely cost the same regardless of size, but after playing you find out that it's balanced this way) or play cards, placing your animals or land hexes. As you can probably tell, the game has that classic dilemma between “buying more and wait to see what others will do” and “acting right now, before others do”. In a way, this game reminds me a bit of Ticket to Ride, but without the specific destinations: everyone wants to connect to the same spots all over the board, and know that it's impossible, so they must choose which spots they think they can reach.

 

 

The game comes with a double-sided board, with a symetrical bone-shaped map on one side and an entirely asymetrical map on the other. While the symetrical side is probably more fair, I definitely prefer unfairness that is more interesting. Sure, the game usually clumps around the same spots, but the matches are far more interesting on the crooked side of things. On an online boardgaming website (yucata, I think), you can play on several different maps, and if you do an extensive search on the internet, you can find a way to print out these different maps for more variety. Although the game is essentially the same, some variety in the tile placement adds a bit of replayability to the game.

 

 

Production values of the game are nice. Tiles are eurogame-standard thick, and the art is nice, and even manages to hide the abstract nature of the gameplay from most eyes. All the tiles are double-sided, probably to save money in production, and while it may be somewhat bothersome to flip tiles looking for the one you're looking for, it's hardly a big deal. A game this simple and so lacking in original charm probably couldn't afford a bigger price tag. I do like the art for the animals, for some reason that smiling pig creeps me out in a funny way. The sheep is not too far behind, either.

 

The game lasts between 70 and 90 minutes, and rules explanation is mighty quick. Although the experienced player will definitely have the advantage (knowledge of the good spots on the map, knowing the dynamics of blocking and so on) and the game can get quite nasty, I think this game is good for newbies and non-gamers. The advantage of the experienced player can be clearly shown in his plays, and it's not hard to pick up on the different strategies of the game after just one play. While players that are prone to getting frustrated at being attacked would probably be better off not playing this in a competitive environment (I wouldn't play it with kids younger than 10, for an example), the clarity of the rules make this game quite accessible even to non-gamers. The box says it's for 2 to 5 players, but the 2-player game is clearly lacking (being a game exclusively of hurting your opponent) and with five there's too little board space for you to plan anything, with downtime becoming more annoying with more players between your turns and more things changing until you can act again.

 

The game comes with two variant scoring rules, in case the base game is too light for you. Me, being the heavy-games fan, gave these a go and I can tell you they don't make that much of a difference. The changes are deep, but even with the extra thinking I end up having pretty much the same amount of fun as I do with the basic rules. Go figure. If I'm in a more serious-gamer-like environment, I'd probably put the complex rule for earning money in there, but then again, I'd probably pick a different game.

 

 

Hacienda is one of those cases where it's hard to explain why I like it as much as I do. It has zero originality: it does nothing that I haven't seen before. Most of the thinking involved deals with luck-of-the-draw in the card drafting. But I enjoy the defensive thinking the game forces you into doing, as in “how to take the least chances when playing my stuff on the board”? There's a strange charm to the game, a sort of appeal that can't be really described with its mechanisms and competitive dynamics. It's not enough for me to love the game or put it among my favorites, but it secures a 7/10 and a place in my collection for those moments where I don't want to scare off a non-gamer with a more daunting game like Imperial or Chicago Express. Nothing you can't miss, but you'll probably have a good time when you play this economic cousin of Through the Desert.