I shouldn't have been surprised, but Luch picked Die Macher once again.
What did surprise me, however, is that in the absence of the cheat sheet Bharmer uses there are a number of finer points in the rules that are really hard to keep straight. Die Macher is the definition of a game with many moving parts, and each one has it's own peculiarities that had us spending much of the game combing through the rulebook. The end result was that the pacing suffered and I enjoyed myself a little less than I usually do. I wouldn't rate Die Macher anywhere near my favorite games, but the times I've played have been fun... but we were definitely off our game this week.
Throughout the game Kozure and I had very similar... everything. Points, party membership, platform, etc. By the last quarter of the game, we were all extremely similar and efforts to use media influence to screw other players were hard to pull off because of it. Anyway, Luch won an unusually tight points race (maybe 20 points spread between the 4 of us)
Something funny happened that I was supposed to record, but I've forgotten now. Sorry.
Showing posts with label Die Macher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Die Macher. Show all posts
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Back at the polls so soon? (Die Macher)
Luch decided that he would always pick Die Macher when we played at Bharmer's place. Given that Bharmer rarely plays with us now, the odds of it being Luch's pick at Bharmer's place are pretty low. You'd think it would take a while before something like that would happen again. Well, here we are, just a month after the last time he picked it, and Die Macher graced the table once more.
It's worth noting that I wasn't at that session, and so until this week I firmly believed that Bharmer's wife was fictitious. As it turns out, she's not. I was glad to meet her, but I have to admit that I enjoyed the concept of the imaginary wife. I may choose to stick with it.
Die Macher
Although the others played last month, I haven't played in over a year... and Die Macher takes a bit of time to get the hang of when you are rusty. In the first election I tried very hard to win and wound up tied with Bharmer... but then remembered that one of the key benefits to winning an early election is to put a media cube on the victory point track. You'd think I would have placed one in the region if I was trying to win it, wouldn't you? That was 25 vps out the window.
I managed to stay in the lead for seats throughout the game, and it seemed like a decent enough strategy. Although I fumbled through most of the game, I set myself up well for the final two regions and scored a major comeback (it was the 80 region, and no one else was well setup for it). Kozure, on the other hand, had been consistently playing well throughout. Was my last big score enough to win?
No. Kozure won by 10 points. Well played, sir!
Die Macher is a good game, but I can't say I love it. For it's length, there are simply too many large swings of luck. The 80 province that came up in the last election effectively neutralized all the gains Kozure made in three whole elections (two 20s and a 40). That's 1.5 hours of playtime, folks! I was understandably irritated when it came out.
It's fascinating to watch so many interlocking mechanisms work together, and getting good at manipulating them all must surely come with a certain amount of satisfaction. For me, however, I look back fondly at the days of simple, streamlined and short euros... like (sarcasm) PowerGrid (sarcasm).
It's worth noting that I wasn't at that session, and so until this week I firmly believed that Bharmer's wife was fictitious. As it turns out, she's not. I was glad to meet her, but I have to admit that I enjoyed the concept of the imaginary wife. I may choose to stick with it.
Die Macher
Although the others played last month, I haven't played in over a year... and Die Macher takes a bit of time to get the hang of when you are rusty. In the first election I tried very hard to win and wound up tied with Bharmer... but then remembered that one of the key benefits to winning an early election is to put a media cube on the victory point track. You'd think I would have placed one in the region if I was trying to win it, wouldn't you? That was 25 vps out the window.
I managed to stay in the lead for seats throughout the game, and it seemed like a decent enough strategy. Although I fumbled through most of the game, I set myself up well for the final two regions and scored a major comeback (it was the 80 region, and no one else was well setup for it). Kozure, on the other hand, had been consistently playing well throughout. Was my last big score enough to win?
No. Kozure won by 10 points. Well played, sir!
Die Macher is a good game, but I can't say I love it. For it's length, there are simply too many large swings of luck. The 80 province that came up in the last election effectively neutralized all the gains Kozure made in three whole elections (two 20s and a 40). That's 1.5 hours of playtime, folks! I was understandably irritated when it came out.
It's fascinating to watch so many interlocking mechanisms work together, and getting good at manipulating them all must surely come with a certain amount of satisfaction. For me, however, I look back fondly at the days of simple, streamlined and short euros... like (sarcasm) PowerGrid (sarcasm).
Monday, October 26, 2009
Be My Cube Tomato Coalition Buddy
Let me be clear: Die Macher is a good game. It is also a loooonnnnggg game... for a Euro, anyway.
Die Macher is a game of very complex, interlinked/co-dependent strategies, with great theme and a fair amount of tension.
Why don't I look forward to it more?
Why does it fall solidly into the "daunting" category of Euro games for me?
Why does it not leap immediately to the front of the line in terms of being a Euro-masterwork?
I gave it a lot of thought this past weekend, and it suddenly occurs to me right now that it's something that I seldom talk about... because it usually isn't an issue.
It's the "detail work to payoff ratio".
You have to put a lot of fairly detailed effort into planning for and winning a State. Winning a State gets you (potentially) between 15 and 80 points (depending on the state), plus putting a media marker (between 10 and 25 points, depending on what round you're playing), plus solidifying a national issue (between 10 and 25 points, again). The national issue then nets you between 1 and 11 (? - I'm not sure) party membership points, assuming you are able to place a national issue which accords with your party platform.
When you consider the number of manoeuvres which are necessary to gain you victory, as well as the number of manoeuvres which your opponents can execute which will suddenly tank your potential votes from 4 (or more) x 10 party conferences = 40 to 5 (!)... well, it becomes a lot of headache for potentially very little gain.
Of course, someone will no doubt argue, if you plan properly, with strategically placed media control and opinion polls, as well as advance placement of conferences for conversion to votes before issues reduce opinion, you can orchestrate fairly masterful campaigns.
That's true, but what a tangle to get there.
We had what I would assume was a fairly decently played novice-level game last Thursday night. Bharmer played well and Shemp put in an excellent showing for a first time play of Die Macher, considering the complexity.
Mid game scores were very close. Bharmer and I pulled away in the late game, and Bharmer's clinching of the final state election gave him the ability to swap out a national issue and switch out the 25 point issue which I had matched, resulting in a 50 point swing in his favour +(25 points for him, -25 points for me).
It was still a satisfying game - I felt that I had played much more successfully than previous plays, paying much more attention to party membership and saving my best shadow cabinet cards for key states, as well as playing party conferences in advance on states, and converting to votes while the opinion was high.
A good game, and one we should play again soon while the ruleset is fresh in our minds.
Die Macher is a game of very complex, interlinked/co-dependent strategies, with great theme and a fair amount of tension.
Why don't I look forward to it more?
Why does it fall solidly into the "daunting" category of Euro games for me?
Why does it not leap immediately to the front of the line in terms of being a Euro-masterwork?
I gave it a lot of thought this past weekend, and it suddenly occurs to me right now that it's something that I seldom talk about... because it usually isn't an issue.
It's the "detail work to payoff ratio".
You have to put a lot of fairly detailed effort into planning for and winning a State. Winning a State gets you (potentially) between 15 and 80 points (depending on the state), plus putting a media marker (between 10 and 25 points, depending on what round you're playing), plus solidifying a national issue (between 10 and 25 points, again). The national issue then nets you between 1 and 11 (? - I'm not sure) party membership points, assuming you are able to place a national issue which accords with your party platform.
When you consider the number of manoeuvres which are necessary to gain you victory, as well as the number of manoeuvres which your opponents can execute which will suddenly tank your potential votes from 4 (or more) x 10 party conferences = 40 to 5 (!)... well, it becomes a lot of headache for potentially very little gain.
Of course, someone will no doubt argue, if you plan properly, with strategically placed media control and opinion polls, as well as advance placement of conferences for conversion to votes before issues reduce opinion, you can orchestrate fairly masterful campaigns.
That's true, but what a tangle to get there.
We had what I would assume was a fairly decently played novice-level game last Thursday night. Bharmer played well and Shemp put in an excellent showing for a first time play of Die Macher, considering the complexity.
Mid game scores were very close. Bharmer and I pulled away in the late game, and Bharmer's clinching of the final state election gave him the ability to swap out a national issue and switch out the 25 point issue which I had matched, resulting in a 50 point swing in his favour +(25 points for him, -25 points for me).
It was still a satisfying game - I felt that I had played much more successfully than previous plays, paying much more attention to party membership and saving my best shadow cabinet cards for key states, as well as playing party conferences in advance on states, and converting to votes while the opinion was high.
A good game, and one we should play again soon while the ruleset is fresh in our minds.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Die Marathon - The War and Peace of Euros Continued (Die Macher)
Chapter I: Wherein Anna Pavlovna Greets Vasili Kuragin
Sorry, wrong tome.
Die Macher. Aside from the 18xx games, there is no other Euro that I know of (remember, I state emphatically Euro) which takes as long or as much brainpower as this monster. What do I think of it? It's long. It's involved. It's actually pretty engaging - you generally don't have your attention wander. But it is long.
That said, there is a lot of elegance to many mechanics, especially with regard to play balance and scoring. On the other hand, the Valley Games edition suffers from a number of iconic and graphic issues - to borrow a term from computing, the user interface is sometimes quite poor.
For example, two major issue icons (Nuclear Power and Economic Development) are very similar at first glance, and a third, the Global War on Terrorism, can appear similar when viewed from across a table. The coalition icon is somewhat vague, the State chits and State cards might have been consolidated better as a single item, and so on.
I could go on but it's late and there are better things to try to document.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Going First
Since bidding for first player is a distinct phase and can cost one a lot of money, I thought it best to try to remember why you would want to go first rather than last.
If you go first: You can place media markers first. This could score you the critical plurality in a State.
If you go last: You can often pick up opinion polls in upcoming states for cheap. You can see what your opponents do in terms of altering their party platform and placing party meetings. You also win ties if you get 50 votes if two or more players score 50.
Generally, unless you really, really want media dominance, you want to go last.
Don't Fall Behind in Party Membership
Party membership both gains you income and scores points at the end of the game. Do not fall behind. In both games we've played, I've lost by a fair margin, to a great degree due to not keeping up with national opinion . Party membership = important.
Key Issues (Issue Coincidence Doubling)
These are only removed by the use of the shadow cabinet. Do not try to think otherwise. I think this game this ability was used much more often than in previous games. Also, do not place Key Issue markers on a card more than a turn in advance, where they can be removed easily. I made that error, placing a key issue on a state effectively two turns in advance, the final result of which was that it was not only turned into a standard issue, but removed entirely by the time we got around to scoring it. Do not do that again!
Typical Starting Player Bid
This game, the typical winning bid for starting player was between 3,000 and 5,000 Euros. I have no idea whether this is typical or not. The highest bid, which was something like 11,000 over the next competing bid, was my bid of $18,000. It did end up netting me a 48 seat state and the resultant media marker placement, so that probably got me a lot of points.
General Game Design Note
Try not to have more than seven phases in a turn. Die Macher has 10, with several of those steps effectively having between one and three sub-steps. Yes, politics is a complex subject, but the sheer number of steps in the game cause it to seem more complex than it is. This game design might have been edited more rigorously to condense and amalgamate some of these steps, perhaps.
Opinion Polls
Poll bidding ranged from an average of 5-10,000 euros in the earlier rounds up to 20,000 in the mid-game and all the way up to 48,000 and 69,000 in the endgame. As a humorous side-note, the 48k bid was useless for the bidder (Me) and netted a one point (!) party membership increase. This exorbitant expenditure was only exceeded by Ouch's bid of 69k which resulted in a 0 point membership increase.
First Round Bidding
One of my many errors in play this time around was overbidding for pretty much everything on the first state. Although it was a high seat state (42, I think?) I bid too much on first player, I bid too much on opinion polls and a few other aspects which escape me at this hour. When you don't know what the national issues will be, it's just not worth it.
Chapter II: Wherein Kozure Questions His Own Deep Strategy Skills
Playing this game again has reminded me that I tend to do poorly at games which require deep strategy and branching path computational skills. Tigris and Euphates, El Grande, Chess, Taj Mahal, Maharaja and a number of others fall into this category. These games also happen to be ones I tend to not like much. Notable exceptions are Tikal (which I tend to do fairly well with) and Power Grid (which I usually score in the middle to high end, but not win), so I'm not sure what distinguishes the play of these games from the others.
All in all, though, I am just poor at strategy. This weakness extends to strategic-level wargames as well, so it's not a Euro thing - it's strategy in general.
This confuses me somewhat, as I don't do badly at tactical wargames, and there are many Euros which I'm pretty good at. I have noticed a definite trend in that I do well at games which are introduced for the first time and then slip in the scores with additional plays as the other players become familiar with the game. It seems that my own particular dash for gaming is dealing with the unexpected or the unfamiliar. Most of the time.
Anyhow - at some point in the future I'll have to try to piece together what it is about these specific games which make me a poor opponent vs. other games where I hold my own. It'll probably give me some insight into my own personality.
For the moment, though, I'll just buck up and adopt a fatalistically optimistic approach to deep strategy games - yeah, I may have a poor track record, but this time, I'll do better.
Attitude is everything, right?
"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.
*cough cough*Sorry, wrong tome.
Die Macher. Aside from the 18xx games, there is no other Euro that I know of (remember, I state emphatically Euro) which takes as long or as much brainpower as this monster. What do I think of it? It's long. It's involved. It's actually pretty engaging - you generally don't have your attention wander. But it is long.
That said, there is a lot of elegance to many mechanics, especially with regard to play balance and scoring. On the other hand, the Valley Games edition suffers from a number of iconic and graphic issues - to borrow a term from computing, the user interface is sometimes quite poor.
For example, two major issue icons (Nuclear Power and Economic Development) are very similar at first glance, and a third, the Global War on Terrorism, can appear similar when viewed from across a table. The coalition icon is somewhat vague, the State chits and State cards might have been consolidated better as a single item, and so on.
I could go on but it's late and there are better things to try to document.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Going First
Since bidding for first player is a distinct phase and can cost one a lot of money, I thought it best to try to remember why you would want to go first rather than last.
If you go first: You can place media markers first. This could score you the critical plurality in a State.
If you go last: You can often pick up opinion polls in upcoming states for cheap. You can see what your opponents do in terms of altering their party platform and placing party meetings. You also win ties if you get 50 votes if two or more players score 50.
Generally, unless you really, really want media dominance, you want to go last.
Don't Fall Behind in Party Membership
Party membership both gains you income and scores points at the end of the game. Do not fall behind. In both games we've played, I've lost by a fair margin, to a great degree due to not keeping up with national opinion . Party membership = important.
Key Issues (Issue Coincidence Doubling)
These are only removed by the use of the shadow cabinet. Do not try to think otherwise. I think this game this ability was used much more often than in previous games. Also, do not place Key Issue markers on a card more than a turn in advance, where they can be removed easily. I made that error, placing a key issue on a state effectively two turns in advance, the final result of which was that it was not only turned into a standard issue, but removed entirely by the time we got around to scoring it. Do not do that again!
Typical Starting Player Bid
This game, the typical winning bid for starting player was between 3,000 and 5,000 Euros. I have no idea whether this is typical or not. The highest bid, which was something like 11,000 over the next competing bid, was my bid of $18,000. It did end up netting me a 48 seat state and the resultant media marker placement, so that probably got me a lot of points.
General Game Design Note
Try not to have more than seven phases in a turn. Die Macher has 10, with several of those steps effectively having between one and three sub-steps. Yes, politics is a complex subject, but the sheer number of steps in the game cause it to seem more complex than it is. This game design might have been edited more rigorously to condense and amalgamate some of these steps, perhaps.
Opinion Polls
Poll bidding ranged from an average of 5-10,000 euros in the earlier rounds up to 20,000 in the mid-game and all the way up to 48,000 and 69,000 in the endgame. As a humorous side-note, the 48k bid was useless for the bidder (Me) and netted a one point (!) party membership increase. This exorbitant expenditure was only exceeded by Ouch's bid of 69k which resulted in a 0 point membership increase.
First Round Bidding
One of my many errors in play this time around was overbidding for pretty much everything on the first state. Although it was a high seat state (42, I think?) I bid too much on first player, I bid too much on opinion polls and a few other aspects which escape me at this hour. When you don't know what the national issues will be, it's just not worth it.
Chapter II: Wherein Kozure Questions His Own Deep Strategy Skills
Playing this game again has reminded me that I tend to do poorly at games which require deep strategy and branching path computational skills. Tigris and Euphates, El Grande, Chess, Taj Mahal, Maharaja and a number of others fall into this category. These games also happen to be ones I tend to not like much. Notable exceptions are Tikal (which I tend to do fairly well with) and Power Grid (which I usually score in the middle to high end, but not win), so I'm not sure what distinguishes the play of these games from the others.
All in all, though, I am just poor at strategy. This weakness extends to strategic-level wargames as well, so it's not a Euro thing - it's strategy in general.
This confuses me somewhat, as I don't do badly at tactical wargames, and there are many Euros which I'm pretty good at. I have noticed a definite trend in that I do well at games which are introduced for the first time and then slip in the scores with additional plays as the other players become familiar with the game. It seems that my own particular dash for gaming is dealing with the unexpected or the unfamiliar. Most of the time.
Anyhow - at some point in the future I'll have to try to piece together what it is about these specific games which make me a poor opponent vs. other games where I hold my own. It'll probably give me some insight into my own personality.
For the moment, though, I'll just buck up and adopt a fatalistically optimistic approach to deep strategy games - yeah, I may have a poor track record, but this time, I'll do better.
Attitude is everything, right?
(But good opinion polls don't hurt, either)
Friday, July 20, 2007
The "War and Peace" of Eurogames (Die Macher) 8098
Die Macher has a certain notoriety at BoardGameGeek for a few reasons. It's the first game entered in the database, 20 years after it's release it's still in the top 10 highest rated games and it's one of the longest and most complicated eurogames ever. Despite it's high praise and legendary status, I was never under the impression I would actually PLAY it...
Well, Valley Games recently reprinted this classic as a very nice language independent version and Bharmer decided he wanted it. There you go.
Die Macher
The Idea
Each player represents a german political party trying to win a series of local elections in an effort to win the national one.
How it works
The game consists of 7 local elections played more or less sequentially. Each election consists of several short phases, where players engage in various activities meant to further their campaign. They will modify their party's platform to more closely match local opinion, purchase media support, plan local parties to drum up support, use special members of the party (termed the "shadow cabinet") to lock votes, create/ sway key issues, improve public opinion for their party or damage the reputation of others, etc, etc. Finally, Opinion Polls are commissioned and the results are manipulated by the commissioning party in order to achieve the desired effect (to boost their party or hurt others), or they simply do not publish the results if they can't be salvaged. When all is said and done, votes are tallied and a winner of the local election is declared. Players then move on to the next regional election, and the cycle begins again.
This being a game about politics, it only makes sense that the central concern revolves around opinions. Each player's party has a position on five issues (such as being "pro nuclear energy"). Each region, similarly, has a position on four issues. As the elections progress, the national opinion is slowly formed and/or changed. Parties with platforms which closely match the position of the region get more votes. Parties with platforms which closely match the national position gain party membership as the game progresses, and gain victory points at the endgame.
I said earlier that the elections are played more or less sequentially. In fact, while players are competing in the current local election, the next 3 are also visible and can be influenced by all the tools at the party's disposal in advance of those elections actually occuring. Certainly, a player who has layed the foundation for a successful election ahead of time stands to get greater rewards with less work. On the other hand, nothing is etched in stone, and effort/ money/ resources played too early can easily be reversed before that election starts.
In typical german game fashion, all this theme is represented rather dryly by hordes of wooden cubes being manipulated on a large abstract board (in this case, the board looks like a giant illustration of a circle divided into many little rings). Luckily (and also in typical german game fashion), the mechanics are quite interesting and work well together to make a very challenging and clever game with little or no downtime, despite it's length.
Thoughts
I actually didn't feel that Die Macher was the monster it's made out to be. Maybe it's because we've played lots of games, or maybe it's because I also play wargames on occasion (or maybe it's because I took the time to watch the introductory video by "Boardgames with Scott"). It's certainly the heaviest pure german game I've played, but despite the long playtime, many phases in the game and myriad interlocking mechanics, the end result did not feel overwhelming or overlong. In fact, our first game, including rules explanation, took only 4.5 hours! I suspect our next game would be roughly 3.5 hours. Die Macher remained engrossing throughout and was quite fun. My only (minor) gripe with the game as a system would be that no matter how cleverly the game mechanics represent real life politics the experience feels alot more like pushing cubes around for victory points that blazing the campaign trail. The theme is so strongly embodied in the rules that it's a bit of a shame that it comes off as abstracted as it does. From a components point of view, most things are quite functional and of high quality, but a few unfortunate icon choices has led to difficulty differentiating between certain political stances. It's really unfortunate, too, because you find yourself doing that quite commonly over the course of a game. Also, there is a mechanic for forming coalitions which doesn't seem to work that well. While coalitions are an integral part of german politics (I'm told), their impact on the game is a little underwhelming considering how many stars need to align to make it happen (congruent stances on at least 2 issues + the play of certain shadow cabinet cards in the current election). I won't pretend to have a good understanding of how all the scoring opportunities come together, though, so that comment might be very premature.
Kozure mentioned that he liked the fact that this was a german game which managed to combine passive-agressive play with aggressive-aggressive play successfully, a rare feat (most shy away from direct conflict). I agree with him. Off the top of my head, the only other one I can think of which tries to do the same is Kramer's Wildlife.
Session Report
This has been long enough, so I'll keep it short.
I came out strong at the beginning, locking a few high scoring media cubes and winning many votes in the local elections. Problem was, I pushed my shadow cabinet to hard at the beginning and was left without their support in the last few regions. The fact that the local and national position on most issues went from positive to negative over the course of the game without a similar shift in my party's ideals led me to a score of 0 in the final three regions!
I'll have to be more careful about that in the future.
The game was characterized by enormous bids for opinion polls (I beleive $26 000 was pegged as a "ridiculously high" price for those cards, but commonly surpassed none-the-less). In the first few rounds, I overbid drastically for turn order (though aside from the wasted money I think the turn order advantage was worth it). We were all quite aggressive on the media front, typically filling the 5 cube limit well in advance of any local elections.
Anyway, Luch was the decisive winner, with Bharmer and Kozure nearly tied for the 2nd prize. As for me, the three 0s put me out of the running to win. I was too absorbed trying to make things go my way to really notice what Luch did to come out ahead, but he DID have the largest national party at the end along with a couple of high scoring media cubes.
Next time, I will crush him.
Well, Valley Games recently reprinted this classic as a very nice language independent version and Bharmer decided he wanted it. There you go.
Die Macher
The Idea
Each player represents a german political party trying to win a series of local elections in an effort to win the national one.
How it works
The game consists of 7 local elections played more or less sequentially. Each election consists of several short phases, where players engage in various activities meant to further their campaign. They will modify their party's platform to more closely match local opinion, purchase media support, plan local parties to drum up support, use special members of the party (termed the "shadow cabinet") to lock votes, create/ sway key issues, improve public opinion for their party or damage the reputation of others, etc, etc. Finally, Opinion Polls are commissioned and the results are manipulated by the commissioning party in order to achieve the desired effect (to boost their party or hurt others), or they simply do not publish the results if they can't be salvaged. When all is said and done, votes are tallied and a winner of the local election is declared. Players then move on to the next regional election, and the cycle begins again.
This being a game about politics, it only makes sense that the central concern revolves around opinions. Each player's party has a position on five issues (such as being "pro nuclear energy"). Each region, similarly, has a position on four issues. As the elections progress, the national opinion is slowly formed and/or changed. Parties with platforms which closely match the position of the region get more votes. Parties with platforms which closely match the national position gain party membership as the game progresses, and gain victory points at the endgame.
I said earlier that the elections are played more or less sequentially. In fact, while players are competing in the current local election, the next 3 are also visible and can be influenced by all the tools at the party's disposal in advance of those elections actually occuring. Certainly, a player who has layed the foundation for a successful election ahead of time stands to get greater rewards with less work. On the other hand, nothing is etched in stone, and effort/ money/ resources played too early can easily be reversed before that election starts.
In typical german game fashion, all this theme is represented rather dryly by hordes of wooden cubes being manipulated on a large abstract board (in this case, the board looks like a giant illustration of a circle divided into many little rings). Luckily (and also in typical german game fashion), the mechanics are quite interesting and work well together to make a very challenging and clever game with little or no downtime, despite it's length.
Thoughts
I actually didn't feel that Die Macher was the monster it's made out to be. Maybe it's because we've played lots of games, or maybe it's because I also play wargames on occasion (or maybe it's because I took the time to watch the introductory video by "Boardgames with Scott"). It's certainly the heaviest pure german game I've played, but despite the long playtime, many phases in the game and myriad interlocking mechanics, the end result did not feel overwhelming or overlong. In fact, our first game, including rules explanation, took only 4.5 hours! I suspect our next game would be roughly 3.5 hours. Die Macher remained engrossing throughout and was quite fun. My only (minor) gripe with the game as a system would be that no matter how cleverly the game mechanics represent real life politics the experience feels alot more like pushing cubes around for victory points that blazing the campaign trail. The theme is so strongly embodied in the rules that it's a bit of a shame that it comes off as abstracted as it does. From a components point of view, most things are quite functional and of high quality, but a few unfortunate icon choices has led to difficulty differentiating between certain political stances. It's really unfortunate, too, because you find yourself doing that quite commonly over the course of a game. Also, there is a mechanic for forming coalitions which doesn't seem to work that well. While coalitions are an integral part of german politics (I'm told), their impact on the game is a little underwhelming considering how many stars need to align to make it happen (congruent stances on at least 2 issues + the play of certain shadow cabinet cards in the current election). I won't pretend to have a good understanding of how all the scoring opportunities come together, though, so that comment might be very premature.
Kozure mentioned that he liked the fact that this was a german game which managed to combine passive-agressive play with aggressive-aggressive play successfully, a rare feat (most shy away from direct conflict). I agree with him. Off the top of my head, the only other one I can think of which tries to do the same is Kramer's Wildlife.
Session Report
This has been long enough, so I'll keep it short.
I came out strong at the beginning, locking a few high scoring media cubes and winning many votes in the local elections. Problem was, I pushed my shadow cabinet to hard at the beginning and was left without their support in the last few regions. The fact that the local and national position on most issues went from positive to negative over the course of the game without a similar shift in my party's ideals led me to a score of 0 in the final three regions!
I'll have to be more careful about that in the future.
The game was characterized by enormous bids for opinion polls (I beleive $26 000 was pegged as a "ridiculously high" price for those cards, but commonly surpassed none-the-less). In the first few rounds, I overbid drastically for turn order (though aside from the wasted money I think the turn order advantage was worth it). We were all quite aggressive on the media front, typically filling the 5 cube limit well in advance of any local elections.
Anyway, Luch was the decisive winner, with Bharmer and Kozure nearly tied for the 2nd prize. As for me, the three 0s put me out of the running to win. I was too absorbed trying to make things go my way to really notice what Luch did to come out ahead, but he DID have the largest national party at the end along with a couple of high scoring media cubes.
Next time, I will crush him.
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