New Amsterdam

About this board game

New Amsterdam is a board game for 2–5 players, with plays lasting about 90 minutes. Set in Nieuw Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, it places players in the role of European patrons shaping a developing colony along the Hudson River.

Founded by the Dutch West Indies Company to support the lucrative beaver pelt trade, Nieuw Amsterdam requires more than a trading post. Players bid on action lots to pursue the opportunities available in the colony, from establishing businesses to working land for essential food and building materials.

The game also brings the colony’s social and political structure into focus. Patrons compete in elections, ship furs to the Old World, and trade with the Lenape Indians. Each part of the colony’s development is connected to the changing relationship between settlers, land, trade, and the local population.

• Bid on action lots to determine your available opportunities.
• Build businesses and work land for food and building materials.
• Compete in elections within the developing colony.
• Ship furs to the Old World and trade with the Lenape Indians.

As players claim more land, the Lenape camps are pushed farther up the Hudson River, making trade with them increasingly complicated. This changing situation gives New Amsterdam a setting shaped by expansion and its consequences, rather than a static frontier.

With its focus on auctions, colonial development, land use, elections, and the fur trade, New Amsterdam presents a detailed game of competing patrons in a young settlement. Released in 2012, it combines the colony’s economic, political, and geographic concerns in a single historical setting.