Grand Austria Hotel: Vienna Calls

Set in the glamorous hotels of early 20th century Vienna, Grand Austria Hotel puts you in the role of a hotelier competing to run the most prestigious establishment. Through clever dice drafting and careful planning, you'll prepare rooms, serve guests, hire staff, and curry favor with the emperor himself.

Gameplay Overview

The core mechanism is beautifully elegant: six dice are rolled and placed on action spaces. On your turn, you draft dice and take the corresponding actions - preparing rooms, serving guests, hiring staff, or advancing on various tracks. The more dice on a space, the more powerful the action, creating a push-your-luck element around when to claim valuable actions.

Guests arrive with specific room and cake requirements. Fulfill their needs and they stay in your hotel, providing points and often cascading bonuses. The staff you hire provide permanent abilities that accelerate your engine. Meanwhile, the emperor track offers milestone bonuses for those who impress the royal court.

What Works Well

The dice drafting system is brilliant. Every turn presents meaningful decisions. Do you take the action you need most, or the one with the most dice? Do you grab multiple weaker actions or commit to one strong one? The system creates natural interaction as you compete for the same dice pool.

Guest completion chains feel satisfying. When you perfectly sequence your actions to prepare rooms, serve cakes, and welcome multiple guests in one round, it's deeply rewarding. The game rewards planning while forcing adaptation when dice don't cooperate.

Production quality is excellent. The punchboard hotel boards are gorgeous, the custom dice are tactile and readable, and the guest/staff cards feature period-appropriate artwork that enhances the theme.

Room for Improvement

The game length can drag. At 90-120 minutes, Grand Austria Hotel sometimes feels longer than its strategic depth warrants. The middle rounds can become repetitive as you execute your engine without major decisions.

Limited long-term variability. After 15-20 plays, you've seen most card combinations and strategic approaches. The game needs an expansion to inject fresh content and mechanics.

Downtime with 4 players. While the game scales to 4, turns can be lengthy as players calculate optimal dice selections. With analysis-prone players, you might wait 5 minutes between turns.

Who Should Play This?

Grand Austria Hotel is ideal for:

• Euro game enthusiasts who enjoy dice drafting mechanics
• Players who like engine building with tableau development
• Groups seeking a medium-weight game with player interaction
• Anyone who appreciates the Vienna 1900 theme

Skip it if you:

• Dislike dice randomness even with mitigation
• Prefer games under 60 minutes
• Want high player counts (plays 2-4 only)
• Need significant expansion content for long-term play

Final Thoughts

Grand Austria Hotel is a well-designed euro game that delivers engaging gameplay through its clever dice drafting system. It hits a sweet spot of accessibility with depth - easy to teach but offering meaningful decisions throughout.

However, it doesn't quite reach the heights of genre classics like Castles of Burgundy or Roll for the Galaxy. The strategic space feels mapped out after extended play, and the game length occasionally tests patience.

For groups seeking a solid dice-drafting euro with beautiful production and a charming theme, Grand Austria Hotel absolutely delivers. Just don't expect it to remain fresh for 50+ plays without new content.

Verdict: A strong 7.5/10. Highly competent and enjoyable, but not quite exceptional enough to be a desert island game.