Review: 1500 expansion: The Netherlands

This review assumes that the reader is familiar with the boardgame 1500: The New World by Dan Verssen Games. If not, you can read about it here.

As this review will look at two of the expansions for the 1500: The New World, there can be overlap between the individual reviews. The first part will explain how AI works, which can be skipped if the other review is also read, the second features the Dutch deck. 

A copy of this expansion was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

The backs of the Netherlands AI and player deck

In general:

The set gives everything necessary to play as a specific country during this historical time period. Included are 56 cards for a player deck, 56 cards for an AI deck and rules to incorporate AI-decks. The deck allows the player to include an extra artificial player to the game. So instead of having just two players, they can be boosted by an artificial one. This means that the player and the AI can play as the same nation at the same time.

The deck includes unique cards and a special mix of cards, as you no longer draw from the same deck as other players. The AI cards are marked as such, with a special background and ‘AI’ on the front. They are easily identified and separated.

In this boardgame AI always goes last in player order. The AI draws cards as normal, but no one looks at them yet. Instead they are placed in a row and first the cards marked ‘Start’ are played, from left to right. Then the other cards are played, going from left to right again. Cards that can’t be played or would make no sense to play are used to advance the AI along the Royal Support Track or minimizing the Royal Support of the human players. Any remaining cards are used for building or reducing colonies (from the highest scoring player).

Normal rules for losing points for struggling colonies apply to the AI and they are removed afterwards. The AI targets the player with the most points, which could be a human player, or another AI. If the AI is the highest-scoring player, it takes on the player in the second position. If there are equals, the target is randomly decided.

Interesting is that some cards feature a minimum condition, so that for example up to 6 colonies may be struggled, but at least four must be chosen in order to trigger the card’s condition. This is of course to help the flow of the game and ensure that cards are left over for the Royal Support track.

The AI and player deck are almost identical, except for some nation cards. The AI contributes to the game as it allows you to play solo, provide a different challenge and adds to the replay ability of the game.

The Dutch nation-powers in the player and AI deck

Regarding The Netherlands Expansion set:

The Netherlands Expansion features a deck of 56 cards for a human player or 56 cards for an AI deck. In the player deck there are 10 cards devoted to special Dutch powers. These include ‘Late Arrival’, allowing the player to remove one colony in each region and replace them with their own. Another one is ‘Appropriation’, where up to 4 colonies can be replaced with your own if all areas have colonies. The last one is ‘Dutch Antilles’, where if you have a successful spice colony, you can take over the other spice colonies from other players.

The deck is good and features several interesting mechanics. The Dutch Antilles and the Late Arrival cards provide a historical note to the game, although the downside of the Antilles cards is that it only targets spice colonies and not other export products. The appropriation card can be useful, but only if all areas are full. This is not likely to happen early-game, but can be useful later on when the map is full and players are struggling over resources.The cards assume that the player deck is used. Only the Dutch Antilles card works a little different in the AI/Player deck, as can be seen in the image.

Overall, the Dutch expansion provides new mechanisms, through the nation cards as well as a whole new mode of playing, through the AI or through the nations deck. It’s a good expansion that adds to the game and provides a bit of historical background. Does it radically change the game? Not really, it’s more of the same, gearing towards a specific challenge, but with a different (historical) flavor. It will certainly be interesting for people that play a lot of solo games.