Date: 2nd November 2001
Game played: Handler, Die ( Queen ) BGG Id: 348

At Nige's request, I brought along this Kramer/Ulrich game from a couple of years ago. Die Handler is a game about maximising your prestige as a trader of commodities throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. This is achieved by purchasing goods, loading them at a particular city onto transport wagons, which then are moved to other cities to be sold. Each game turn you have to generate sufficient cash funds to maintain your current prestige or, if you feel cash rich, increase it by one or two levels. As the game goes on the cost of increased prestige rises dramatically, but you have to balance the advantage of increasing your prestige early with the subsequent strain on cash this causes.

This game took a long time to complete. Mark K started out liking the mechanics but felt that the game time was too long and the mechanics didn't really gel. I agree with him and, although I was the only one to have played before, remember having similar mixed views last time. Nige and Mark seemed to get reasonable amounts of cash early on and tended to be higher on the prestige ladder than Ben and me throughout the game. However, I had been preserving my cash and had a special card which allowed me to increase my prestige cheaply on the last turn. All of us finished at the top of the prestige ladder ( even Ben ), but my cash holding gave me the advantage and the win, to the surprise of Nige and Mark who had been concentrating on each other's position rather than mine or Ben's.

 
Player
Rating
Score
Position
Winner
Garry
7
3200
1
Nige
7
2900
2
Mark K
6
2500
3
Ben K
7
500
4

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