Grand Austria Hotel is a dice drafting, action selection game.

Title: Grand Austria Hotel

Year Published: 2015

Designer: Virginio Gigli, Simone Luciani

Publisher: Mayfair Games

Players: 2-4

Game Time: ~120 minutes

Set-up Time: ~5 minutes

Ages: 12+

Theme: 1800’s Austria

Mechanisms: Action Selection, Dice Rolling, Set Collection

How to win: Score the most points by serving guests, providing them with a room and pleasing the Emporer.

Game Description

In the thick of the Viennese modern age, exquisite cafés are competing for customers. Inspiring artists, important politicians, and tourists from all over the world are populating Vienna and in need of a hotel room. This is your opportunity to turn your little café into a world famous hotel. Hire staff, fulfill the wishes of your guests, and gain the emperor’s favor. Only then will your café become the Grand Austria Hotel.

Set Up, Game Play & Game End

Grand Austria Hotel Round-Up

The most important thing here is downtime. There is a LOT. Almost as much as Codenames 🙂

Now, it depends on who you play with and if they’re paying attention, if they plan ahead or if their table banter is distracting enough that time goes quicker. But, in a 4 player game, you go 1st and 8th and that can easily be 15+ minutes between taking your two actions.

The game itself is really fun though.

You’ll be gathering food and drink, dishing them out, preparing rooms and moving guests into them which all makes thematic sense.

It’s all done with the dice which is a really neat mechanism.

The fact that you not only choose your action but the power of that action is determined by the number of dice there is very cool. It provides an unbalance that you have to deal with giving you plenty to think about.

You also need to think about the Emporer, the penalty can be brutal.

Passing is also very tactical, skip your turn so you can reroll the dice and cross your fingers 🙂

Overall it’s really good and even though you only take 14 ‘proper’ actions throughout the game, it feels like a lot more.

Rating

A very nice game, depending on who you play with 😉

I give it 7/10

Grand Austria Hotel First Impressions February 2017

Positives

Everything feels really nice and all the mechanisms play very well. It all makes sense.

Differing Politics cards, Emperor tiles and Staff cards add a little randomness and replayability.

Very simple yet challenging play. You want to do EVERYTHING, EVERY TURN but how you go about doing it is very straightforward.

Negatives

Needing to do EVERYTHING, EVERY TURN can lead to analysis paralysis.

Turns can be a bit long, even in a 2 player game.

Was warned over and over by people that have played it that 3 and 4 players have a lot of downtime. In a 4 player game you pick 1st, and 8th so yes, I can see that being an issue.

Summary

Really enjoyed this first play but I want to see if 3-4 player games are bearable before I decide if I keep it or not.

Jesta ThaRogue