Karen and Andreas Seyfarth designed Thurn and Taxis around the historical postal service established by the Thurn und Taxis family in the Holy Roman Empire, and the game captures the methodical, planning-intensive nature of building mail routes with surprising fidelity. It won the 2006 Spiel des Jahres, though the award generated more debate than most winners, with some critics arguing the game was too heavy for the family-oriented prize and others finding it too dry for its mechanical ambitions.
The community’s assessment has settled: Thurn and Taxis is a well-designed route-building game that offers good strategic decisions but struggles to generate excitement about its theme or create memorable gaming moments.
Building the Routes
Each turn, you draw a city card from a face-up display or the deck, then add it to your route. Routes must form a connected chain of cities on the board, and when you’re satisfied with a route’s length, you score it by placing postal offices in the cities along the route. Different scoring bonuses reward coverage of specific regions, long routes, or complete area domination.
The card drafting creates genuine tension. The face-up display offers specific cities you might need, but taking one lets opponents see your plans. Drawing blind from the deck preserves secrecy but risks getting useless cards. This information tension is the game’s most engaging element.
Route planning involves balancing efficiency with ambition. Short routes are easy to complete but score modestly. Long routes score better but require more turns and more luck in drawing the right city cards. The postal official cards offer special abilities that can extend routes, swap cards, or otherwise manipulate the system, adding a layer of tactical flexibility.
The scoring system rewards diverse strategies. You can focus on long routes for their bonus tiles, on completing specific regions for regional bonuses, or on a balanced approach that covers more ground at the cost of specialization.
The Dryness Factor
Thurn and Taxis struggles with engagement. The theme is historically interesting but doesn’t translate into exciting gameplay moments. Building postal routes across 18th-century Germany is mechanically sound but emotionally inert. You won’t tell stories about your Thurn and Taxis sessions the way you might about more dramatic games.
Player interaction is limited. You’re competing for scoring bonuses and watching what cards opponents take from the display, but you can’t directly interfere with their routes or block their plans. The competition is real but distant, operating through the shared card pool rather than through confrontation.
The game’s weight sits in an awkward spot. It’s heavier than most Spiel des Jahres winners, with enough strategic considerations to satisfy thinking players, but not heavy enough to compete with dedicated strategy games. This middle-ground positioning means it can feel too complex for casual groups and too simple for strategy enthusiasts.
A Competent Route Builder
Thurn and Taxis does what it does well. The route-building mechanics are clean, the scoring system creates interesting decisions, and the game plays in about an hour. For players who enjoy the satisfaction of building efficient networks and optimizing card draws, the experience is reliable and pleasant.
The comparison to Ticket to Ride is inevitable and informative. Both are route-building games with card drafting, but Ticket to Ride generates more tension through its hidden objectives and blocking potential. Thurn and Taxis offers a more cerebral experience with less dramatic tension, which suits certain groups and alienates others.
Should You Deliver with Thurn and Taxis?
Thurn and Taxis works for groups who enjoy medium-weight euro games with route-building mechanics, who prefer cerebral optimization over dramatic confrontation, and who don’t need exciting themes to engage with well-designed systems.
Skip it if you want games that create exciting moments, if the postal theme fails to interest you, or if you’re already well-served by other route-building games. Thurn and Taxis is competent but rarely the best option in a category with strong alternatives.
The Verdict
Thurn and Taxis earned its Spiel des Jahres through solid mechanical design rather than broad appeal, and that distinction has defined its legacy. The route-building and card-drafting systems create genuine strategic decisions, and the game rewards planning and efficiency. But the dry theme, limited interaction, and absence of dramatic tension prevent it from generating the kind of enthusiasm that the best Spiel des Jahres winners inspire. It’s a good game that doesn’t quite become a great one.