Review: The Taverns of the Old Town: Room for Rent!

Old Town Pubs: Room for Rent! It is an extension of the popular game Old town bars. This expansion was recently released by 999 Games and we have started working on it.

also in Old Town Pubs: Room for Rent! Run a bar and try to make as much profit as possible. Since business is going well, you decide to expand your pub and earn some extra ducats. Can you run the most profitable pub in the old town? Then you will be the winner of this versatile board game.

Old Town Pubs: Room for Rent! Consists of four new units. You can play these units separately or with units from the base game. To make more profits, you can expand your pub in different ways. For this reason, she begins with 36 nobles in the supply. The units include:

• Have wine this time: In Unit A, you will sell wine as well as beer. You can hire bartenders and store wine in the newly built wine cellar. Put wine on a guest instead of dice to activate it. Action we know from the gears in the board game Orleans†
• “A room for the lady, sir?”: In unit B, you place a guesthouse above your pub. You can make room for your nobles in the guest room so they don’t take up any tables. Additionally, you can activate bonus actions with this.
• “The pub owner sets the atmosphere”: In Unit C, the pub owner gives each player a different starting position. Each player chooses a value that gives that player, for example, a different guestbook, or debt squares with a funny perk for each round.
• “What more could the mayor want?”: In Module D, there are three additional end-goals to earn additional points. Did you achieve all the goals? Then you get the mayor’s card in your draw pile with new in-game perks.

Old Town Pubs: Room for Rent! It gives much more variety compared to the base game. This makes it quite confusing when all the units are running at the same time. Each module affects the properties of the other modules and this can be a little confusing. Also, not all of these interactions are clearly described in the manual. the beautiful thing Old Town Pubs: Room for Rent! is that each unit has its own place on the game board. Each part can be adapted to match other modules. Just like in the base game, you can play as well Old Town Pubs: Room for Rent! Everyone has their own game and you compare the number of points at the end. You don’t really bother each other, except when you steal another player’s guest. With scaling, it is very important to choose a strategy that matches the value chosen in Module C.

Photo: Janneke Ooms-Janssen

According to the manual, you can run this expansion in about 50 minutes. If we look at the discussions about the interpretation of some of the rules of the game, it is likely that this will be added to the core game. Old Town Pubs: Room for Rent! It is an entertaining board game that remains interesting using different modules: in each game you can play a different game. Because of these additional possibilities, you can turn each game into a different one. By combining units, you can increase the level of difficulty and this makes this game suitable for both beginners and advanced players. Modules put you more into a specific strategy with which you can earn more points if you apply this strategy correctly. Do not apply too many units at once, because then it will become very crowded. Overall a great addition to the base game!