Today I had an interview with Herrick Feinstein, a law firm that, among other things, has the fact that it is right around the corner from a fantastic boardgame store to recommend it. After my interview I stopped by The Compleat Strategist to browse around. The most intrguing game I saw today was Goldbräu, a game that revolves around investing in German breweries during the Summerfest.
The game looked interesting, but I'm risk-averse enough not to buy a $40 board game without having some idea of how good it is. Alas, according to its Board Game Geek entry, it's generally considered a decent game, but not great. Its fatal flaw appears to be that it is a highly strategic game requiring a lot of math and cunning calculations. At the same time, the theme positively invites you to drink beer while playing. This means that, while the game may be perfectly fun whilst sober, as a practical matter it tends to be played while inebriated, which makes it quite frustrating.
I'm still curious about it though; this may be a good candidate for a game to buy with the club's money so that I can see whether I like it or not before I buy it.
I was at first totally taken in by your shot of the box cover and the theme of the game. But it sounds like another of that kind of game where a clever title and a sexy premise mask the fact that it's essentially identical to every other strategy game of type X. But maybe the game's designers recognized the paradox between the game's enticement to drink beer and its demand for sober calculation, and built in humourous traps for the inebriated braumeister. Sounds worth spending someone else's money to find out.
Folks on The Geek seem to think it's fairly generic, in line with your thoughts. Though I'm led to understand that the game comes with a set of four beer mats, with one given to each player to designate their color. This may be one of those games that overcomes its middling gameplay by making a strong commitment to an interesting theme.
The grinning guy on the right side of the box looks exactly like my APES teacher.
Your APES teacher has a mustachio?
Oh yeah. He's got the chops, too. The mustache is so that he has something to twsit maniacally when he gives us super hard tests on things that we haven't covered.
Weird. I thought only math teachers had mustaches like that.