I finally had the chance to play this beautiful game. Back in 2021 I saw pictures all over the instagram, facebook, discord servers,but no one had the game here in Romania.
But 2 weeks ago we had this beauty on the table.

So, let’s go back in the 15h century, where Gutenberg, was first person to introduce mass-producing mechanical movable type printing to Europe.
In the game, players are printing pioneers and they are trying to be the best in their job, by running their printing houses.
The game have 6 rounds and players will have to develop their workshops, try to get orders and fulfill them, develop their printing workshop, gain support of patrons and build up their wealth and fame.

At the beginning of each round, players will secretly bid, using an interesting system. Each player has several cubes and will place these cubes on a board with specific actions. This board is actually an initiative board and who has the most cubes for a specific actions goes first for that action.
These actions are: create and take new orders, purchase ink, develop specialities, improve the printing house and last one, allows to take patronage cards (if they meet some requirements) or choose some extra actions.

If the bidding system is special (in my opinion) well, the system with rotating gears is unique.
On the player board, is a system of 3 rotating gears. On each gear are some bonuses that can be combined in order to earn more points. There are a lot of gears so in each game you will have a different system of gears and a different “bonus machine”.

Also special in this game are the 3d wooden letters . Never seen so good looking simple components in a board game.

Gutenberg is a light-medium eurogame with a very streamlined gameplay. Once the game is learned, it can be played very fast.
Beside the special bidding system and the unique system of gears, in this game we can also see other known mechanisms: resource management, card drafting, simultaneous action selection, variable player powers, worker placement, fulfilling orders, tracks advancement.
All of these are mixed in a very fancy way and even if it is a light game it is also a very elegant eurogame.
Having this game on the table, I can tell you that it feels sooo good, it have such a good table presence.

And more than this, there is also a solo mode. And it’s gooood.

So, I would give it a 9 maybe (hard not to with this good production), but since is a light game, I would go with an 8-8.5. For now.
And highly recommend you all to at least play once this awesome game !