Game Review: Venedig, or Old Things Are Still Worth Looking At | BoardGameGeek News

by W. Eric Martin

At the start of 2025, I was looking for something to play — something that I would likely record a review video about since that’s a regular part of my work life — and I realized that I wanted a change of pace from yet another new shiny thing, a game that I would play a few times, feature in a video, then (most likely) never look at again. Why not choose an old, less shiny thing instead? One that I’ve had on my shelves for at least fifteen years waiting for its tabletop time?

That brought me to Venedig, a design by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede that AMIGO published in 2007 and that no other publisher released at the time or since.

Venedig falls smack in the middle of the Eurogame lagoon, with the design consisting of a shared gaming area in which 2-5 players will collectively drain the swamps in the northwest corner of the Adriatic Sea so that they can found buildings that will shower them with recognition in the form of (what else) points.

 

Gameboard set-up, showing one of each five card types, a few established buildings, several building sites, and swamps everywhere else

Each player starts with three cards in hand, and on a turn you:

▪️ Play 0-all of your cards.

▪️ Drain 0-2 swamp spaces.

▪️ Draw.

The first time someone plays a card type other than a casa, they become “master builder” of that building type, which means they will determine where that building is established and they will receive the most points for its construction.

If someone plays more cards of that same type, then that player becomes master builder instead, but most buildings (palazzo, ponte, and campo) are complete when only three cards of its type have been played — and a basilica is complete with four cards — so all you have to do is play two cards at a time, and your master builder status is locked in. Will someone else help you finish that building? Maybe…

“No, not you, Emmet!”

After you play cards, if one or more buildings are complete — with a casa being completed by a single card — you determine the order in which those buildings are constructed, with the master builder of each building deciding where it will be built; the master builder receives full points for the building, and everyone else who contributes receives half points.

As you score, your gondola snakes through the districts of Venice. You can imagine yourself supervising construction of this building or that, and if you contribute cards to something built in a district adjacent to your gondola, you receive a treasure bag containing 3-6 coins. Is this a consultation fee? Rent for the land occupied? A straight-up bribe for directing work to certain parties? No questions, please — it’s 3-6 coins, on top of whatever points you receive, so be happy with that.

After playing cards, you remove up to two swamp tiles, clearing land for future buildings…that will likely be erected by other players since your building phase is finished. Each swamp tile is worth 0-2 coins, payment for work done, although possibly that payment is only a pat on the back, which can be redeemed for neither food nor drink.

To end your turn, draw a card from the deck, draw from the face-up pool of cards, or discard a card from your hand into the pool, then take/draw three cards up to a maximum hand size of five. You’d prefer to draw cards, then drain, then build, of course, but you can imagine yourself embodying a teenage mental state in which you start cooking, then realize you need to clean a skillet first, and oh, yeah, you need to go to the store to buy eggs.

Early in a five-player game

Venedig was a modern design when released, but would now be considered old-school, with the gameplay being the same each turn: play, drain, draw. You have no menu of actions from which to choose…and yet you still have a menu of options: Which cards should I play? Who do I want to partner with? Where do I want to build? Where should I clear land? Which cards do I want for next time?

With a hand limit of five cards, you can rarely build anything on your own, so as in Uwe Rosenberg‘s Bohnanza (another old AMIGO title), you want to be part of as many deals as possible in order to keep your gondola moving. At least I think that’s what you want — I’ve played four times and have yet to win, so I might not know anything.

Dr. Knizia’s secret Venetian inspiration for another AMIGO title?

Gondola movement is a neat mini-game within the larger game as each space on the scoretrack can hold only one gondola, so you jump others when scoring, which means that in the right circumstances, you can score 3-5 points despite actually scoring only 2 points.

At any time on your turn, you can hand in 5 gold from swamp and treasure tokens to advance your gondola one space, which will ideally be two spaces. In practice, players leapfrog over one another constantly, with you trying not to fall off the end of that chain and be left behind. Shooting out front with a basilica score of 7 points seems ideal, yet then you can’t jump anyone, so you stockpile tokens to wait for the frogs to make their way back to you.

The ideal Venice experience: drinking a caffè latte while playing The Game: Extreme

Unlike many modern games, Venedig requires you to pay attention to what everyone else is doing because you can all affect one another’s chance of success. Sure, you are somewhat at the mercy of the card draws — as in Michael Schacht‘s Web of Power or China, when you never want three colors of cards in hand — but you also put yourself in the hands of that randomness by playing out all your cards and leaving things up to chance. You’re not forced to play out cards and help someone else; you can try to manipulate your hand to put yourself in charge.

The randomness of the swamp tiles and treasure tiles can be annoying as well, but stepping back I realize that treasure is a dangling cookie you can’t help but reach for, ignoring the cake on the counter behind you. I sometimes bend myself out of shape trying to build next to my gondola to get treasure, yet the treasure is at best worth 6 gold, i.e., 1 point (or perhaps 2) and I’ve delayed other actions that I could take for probably the same result.

In one sense, how to play Venedig seems obvious: Try to be master builder as much as possible, and do what scores you the most points.

 

The final state of a three-player game

But everyone’s trying to do this, and you’re all doing this at the same time, so you’re going to step on one another’s toes. A space you de-swamp is available for anyone to build in; you might play cards hoping to partner with someone next to you on the scoring track so that you can leapfrog together, but the player at the front of the track joins you instead; you start a basilica hoping for a big score, then someone else builds in the only available space, threatening you with a loss of cards and no points should the fourth basilica card land before space is cleared.

In short, Venedig intrigues me more than most modern games because you’re not trying to merely master the game system, but to navigate both the randomness of the system and the (seeming) randomness of other players. The feeling of the game differs wildly at varying player counts and with the nature of those players themselves, and I appreciate that type of challenge.

For more details on gameplay, examples of scoring, and a mispronunciation of the German word “Venedig”, watch this video:

Youtube Video