Hansa Teutonica Expansions: Which One Should You Play First?

A Quick History: From 2009 Original to Big Box

Hansa Teutonica was designed by Andreas Steding and first published in 2009 by Argentum Verlag. It went on to win the Golden Geek Board Game of the Year and Golden Geek Best Strategy Board Game awards in 2010, placed in the Deutscher Spiele Preis top 10, and took home the Nederlandse Spellenprijs in 2011 — a rare sweep for a game with no dice, no cards to draw luck from, and a rule sheet you can read in five minutes.

That original release only shipped with one map: the base Hanseatic League board. Everything else — three more maps' worth of variety and two gameplay modules — arrived gradually over the following seven years, before Pegasus Spiele finally compiled the whole lot into a single Big Box edition in 2020.

Every Hansa Teutonica Expansion, in Order

East Expansion (2010) — A Second Map, Reached by Sea

The East Expansion was the first content ever released for Hansa Teutonica, and it's still considered close to essential by long-time fans. It adds an entirely new map covering the Eastern Hanseatic League, built around two mechanics the base map doesn't have: maritime trade routes that let you skip across water instead of chaining overland connections, and permanent bonus markers that stay in play and keep paying off turn after turn instead of being used once.

The result plays noticeably differently from the base map even though the core turn structure is untouched — routes open up in different shapes, and the permanent markers reward a more patient, infrastructure-first style of play.

Mission Cards (2010) — Secret Objectives

Released alongside the East Expansion, Mission Cards add nine cards to the base map, each listing three specific cities. Build trading posts (Kontors) in all three named on your card, and you bank extra victory points on top of whatever else you've scored. It's a small addition, but it changes a famously perfect-information game into one with a sliver of hidden strategy — you can no longer be completely sure what your opponents are actually optimizing for.

Britannia (2014) — A Whole New Country, With Its Own Rules

Britannia is the biggest single expansion Hansa Teutonica ever received: a full alternate map of Britain, playable with 3 to 5 players (or 2, using the expansion's revised two-player rules). It introduces a mechanic the other maps don't have at all — country permissions. Establishing a trading post in Carlisle, Cardiff, or London grants special permission to place or displace in Wales or Scotland respectively, regions that are otherwise off-limits without it. It adds a genuine new layer of route-planning on top of the base game's already-tight action economy, and reviewers generally agree it's the most demanding map in the series.

Emperor's Favour (2016) — Buy Your Own Advantages

The newest and smallest of the four, Emperor's Favour adds a set of purchasable tiles players can acquire during their turn by spending bonus markers. Each one grants a different lasting effect for the rest of the game — an extra action every turn, bonus prestige points at game end, or the ability to move a trader straight back into your personal supply after an opponent displaces you. It's a compact module that layers cleanly on top of any map, base or expansion.

The Big Box: Everything in One Package

If you've ever tried to track down the individual East Expansion or Britannia box on the secondary market, you'll know they were notoriously hard to find for years. Pegasus Spiele solved that in 2020 with the Hansa Teutonica: Big Box — a single retail release bundling the base game, both extra maps, and both gameplay modules together. It's the easiest way to own the complete physical game today, and it's the version most new players are buying into.

Which Expansion Should You Try First?

If you only add one thing to your regular games, make it the East Expansion map — it's the closest in spirit and difficulty to the base game, so it won't throw off a group that already knows the rules, but it isn't just a reskin. The maritime routes open up route-planning options the base map doesn't have — you can skip across water instead of chaining connections overland — and the permanent bonus markers reward a slower, infrastructure-first game instead of the base map's more immediate payoffs. Same core rules, genuinely different puzzle.

Mission Cards are the lowest-commitment addition of all, but they only work on the base map — each card names specific base-map cities, so they can't layer onto East, Britannia, or any other alternate board. Save Britannia for once your group is comfortable with the base rules; the country-permission system is a real step up in complexity. Emperor's Favour is worth adding once you want a bit more tactical texture in the mid-game, on any map.

Online, you can mix and match instantly from the game-creation screen — no need to physically own or sort through extra boxes and cards to try a combination.