Who’s Gonna Drive You Home... Tonight? (Kraftwagen)

Cars! Dry euro cars! Ah, theme.

Kraftwagen (2015)

Designed by Matthias Cramer

Art by Harald Lieske

Published by Stronghold Games

In 1885, the first “production” automobile was created by Karl Benz. It was a three-wheeled carriage-looking thing creatively called the Benz Patent-Motorwagen. The name Benz should sound rather familiar as many a fancy automobile bears his name.  While he may have invented the Patent-Motorwagen, I’m sure he is even prouder to exists in portraiture on a mini-sized research card in this game.

If you’ve ever wanted to take your own shot at customizing, racing, and selling your own German automobiles in the early to mid 20th century, then boy do I have a boring looking euro game for you!

Lowdown (How to Play–in a Nutshell)

The object of Kraftwagen is to score the most amount of points by racing and selling cars. The entire engine (sorry, pun) of the game is built around an action selection variable rondel made up of tokens denoting all game actions. On this rondel, you move your disc as far along as you’d like before taking the action upon which you decide to stop. Once you take your action, you move that token to the end of the track, thereby reordering the action spaces with each turn. There are five unique basic action tokens, and then five further tokens with either two or three different icons collected on them. There’s a picture of the track up above.

The basic actions are: 1. Take a worker; 2. Build a car body; 3. Build an engine; 4. Drive your car in the Grand Prix; and 5. Take a research card. What level car body or engine you can take on your turn is dictated by your research level, a number you can raise by taking–you guessed it–research cards. You can’t activate these cards unless you put a worker on them, hence the ‘take a worker’ action. What about the ‘drive your car in the grand prix’ action? If you select this action, you essentially drive your test car around a small track on the board, one other way of garnering points.

At any point during your turn, you can choose to take one car body, one engine, and at least one worker, and put it up for sale by placing all these pieces together on a for-sale space along with a price of your choosing. When all the for-sale spaces have been filled by cars, or a little track counts down to 0, the selling phase begins (aka the end of the round).

The selling phase is probably the most interesting part of Kraftwagen. During the normal player round, two multi-action tokens let you do a basic action and select a buyer. There are four different buyers, each interested in different facet of cars, like the body or engine. Once the selling phase begins, these buyers will each purchase a car in order, starting with the first buyer selected and moving down from there. A buyer interested in car body, for example, will purchase whatever car has the highest level body, garnering the seller points equal to the price set. If two cars have the same level body, the car with the lower price will sell. In this way, the selling phase is a bit like an order-of-operations auction. It manages to be remarkably nuanced for how simple it is.

After three rounds, the player with the most points wins.

Tea for Two (Scaling for Two Players)

To scale for player count, Kraftwagen reduces the available number of for-sale spaces, as well as the number of buyers who come out each round. The track that counts down to the end of the round is also shorter in a two-player game. Finally, two NPC cars are parked on the race track in a two player game, essentially to function as leap-frog spaces to help shorten the track.

The game plays well with two, and given the low level chaos that can shake down during the sales portion of the game, I’d be curious if I’d like that during a 3 or 4 player game. It may frustrate me to see all of my plans go up in flames even more often, but I also may enjoy the feeling of The Steal.

It’s also worth touching on how quick a game of Kraftwagen plays with two. You can have a full and satisfying game in under an hour with two.

If anything bugs me about scaling, it’s that there are no reminders on the board as to what is available/not available based on player count. Many games will put a dim “3P or 4P” on the board to delineate spaces that are closed off in a two player game. Kraftwagen has nothing like this, so you’ll have to reference the 2 Player section of the rules the first few times. This is a minor quibble, at best.

The Lemon Song (The Bad Stuff)

Theme. Boy, howdy. This is a euro, and it isn’t terribly surprising to say that the theme here is bone dry. Like, bone dry. I think it’s exasperated by the art, which, to be fair, I enjoy. But I admit it’s pretty low-key and sedate. On paper, the color and graphic design were probably pitched as minimalist and vaguely art deco, which I understand, but when you take it all in it is a bit underwhelming.

Theme in a euro is a very slippery slope, and sometimes it’s easy to feel like Goldilocks. Too much theme and it feels like I’m destined to complain about the mechanics, like “They worked so hard on the theme to the detriment of the actual game,” (see: Evil High Priest). On the flip side is Kraftwagen, a very solid game mechanically that has Las-Vegas-in-June dry theming. That being said, it really doesn’t bother me, but I know it will bother some people, and I think that’s a fair criticism. This is a fast playing, well-designed game, but if you are looking for anything showy–like, at all–you’ve come to the wrong place. A Cars 3-themed Toys ‘R Us version of SORRY would probably look better on the table.

I would be remiss not to speak about the Grand Prix portion of the game. Euros often will have multiple paths to scoring points, but I’ve noticed it’s rare for them to be perfectly balanced, and maybe that’s the point. In Kraftwagen, like plenty of other games, selling cars is really the game, so if you get lost in racing your car repeatedly–rather than take it as a supplementary point bonus of sorts–you will pay the price. I’d appreciate it more if you could rely on racing as a true path to victory, but I don’t think this is ultimately a viable option.

Fast Car (The Good Stuff)

The variable rondel, also appearing in designer Matthias Cramer’s far more well-known Glen More (2010), is, at first blush, the most interesting part of this game. It’s good, I’ll admit, and I like it much better here than the other game we have with something very similar, Shipyard (2009). You really need to weigh what action you choose with what you’ll be leaving your opponent. Whoever is farther behind on the action track goes next, even if that means one player gets multiple turns in a row. 

That being said, the actual building of cars loses some of the strategic excitement the more you play, and what becomes more interesting turns out to be the selection/ordering of the buyers and the very unassuming action of putting a car onto the market. Your choices in what cars you put out and especially how you price them become more difficult with more plays, because there will be times where you will essentially choose poorly and knock yourself out. If you don’t keep an eye on price, you can get scooped by another player who builds a comparable car with a lower price after you. For example, if two cars are available with #4 engines, the car with the lower price will sell to the buyers looking for a car with the best engine. But price the car too low and the car will get grabbed by buyers looking for the cheapest car.

Even more interestingly, you can also scoop yourself if you’re in a hurry–or if your opponent is playing smarter than you. For example, let’s say you played a #1 body with a #4 engine for 10 bucks while there is a buyer looking for good bodies and good engines on the board. This car is obviously geared toward the buyers looking for a good engine. If later in the round, your opponent plays those buyers looking for a good price, your jaw may drop when you see that your #4 engine car actually has the lowest price. When scoring finally happens, you’ll be crestfallen to see your #4 engine car sell to the price-conscious buyers, as your crappy engine car with a better body just sits there, now unsellable. Your opponent, who did manage to get a better body out there, steals those buyers from you, leaving only your crappy #1 engine left when the buyers looking for a car with a good engine. I know what you’re thinking: you must not be paying attention, dummy. Well, maybe. But the fact that the buyers are selected, at times, by your opponents after you’ve already put cars out into the market, you can get undermined by another player who is simply more clever–or more patient.

If this sounds confusing, it’s not, but it’s tough to describe with any real brevity. The sales process is simple, and very unassuming in how puzzly it is. The buyers resolve in order, sometimes meaning that if you aren’t thinking ahead and planning for contingencies, or if you’re racing to get as many of your cars out as possible before there are many buyers chosen, the resolution will boil down different than you expected it. The fact that there are limited prices from which to choose only complicates that puzzle.

I hesitate to call Kraftwagen a points salad game, although it looks like one, because the bulk of your points are really going to come from one place: selling cars. Yes, you can lean into racing and try to grab points that way, but as I said above, if you neglect the market and just race, you are going to get majorly hosed. In our last game, I completed four laps in the Grand Prix, and I lead every round, while Player Two only completed one lap and never lead. She won the game handily. So as a caution once more, don’t get too wrapped up in doing your laps, this is not a racing game.

The End (Final Thoughts)

I was delighted by Kraftwagen. This game is available on Miniature Market in their clearance section for $14, and I think that’s a great deal. For two players, it’s a fast, fun, and unassuming game that really does present you with plenty of interesting choices. As frustrating as it is to realize you’ve made a strategic mistake in a game, I really appreciate a game that is nuanced enough to allow you to make these kind of mistakes. Kraftwagen doesn’t always present you with patently obvious decisions, and that is nothing to pass by.

Well worth a spot on your shelf.

Kraftwagen
by Matthias Cramer

Don’t be put off by the dry as a bone theming or art, this game is excellent (hey, this guy designed Watergate and Glenn More!). This skinny box contains a handful of excellent mechanics, like the Glen More style action selection to the delightful selling mechanic. When add-in the many other things you can focus on, this turns out to be a really great Euro game.

Find a copy, you won’t regret it.

Recommended. Hidden gem.

Player One

Eric