This is a remaster of an older classic and I want to be upfront that I hadn’t played the original before this edition, so I can’t do the direct comparison a lot of reviewers reach for. What I can say is the core loop is close to perfect on its own terms, roll dice, use them to claim hexes matching those numbers, place them onto your personal county board to complete regions for points, and every single roll forces a real decision instead of an obvious one. It’s not a pure dice-luck game even though dice drive it, you can spend workers to adjust a die by one, and that little bit of control is exactly enough to keep bad rolls from feeling like a wasted turn.
The player-aid situation here is genuinely excellent, which I don’t say often. Every phase of a turn has its own printed reference, and I never once had to flip through the rulebook mid-game hunting for an edge case, which after other heavier Euros has become the thing I actually judge a rulebook by. Teachability is strong too, first game moves a little slow while everyone’s checking their board layout, but by round two the whole table has the rhythm down.
Production on this special edition is lavish, full acrylic hex sets, a recessed personal board so nothing slides during play, and I’ll admit the entry price is steep for what’s fundamentally still an abstract points-optimization game underneath the presentation. A couple reviewers online said they missed the leaner, cheaper original once the novelty of the deluxe bits wore off, and I get that complaint even though it hasn’t hit me yet. At two players it’s tight and fast. At four it stretches longer than I’d like on a work night, but it never once felt like it was wasting my time getting there.