Die Macher

I finally got to play this monster game this Sunday. The players trying to lead their parties to the head of German politics were Todd, Alan, Joe, Neal, and myself.

WARNING: For first time players, expect this game to take 5-6 hours. Additional plays will probably run 3-4 hours.

To begin, the rules for this game seem daunting when you read them. Each rule in and of itself is not difficult, but the sheer number of things going on at anyone time does make it difficult to fully grasp until your first game.

There are 8 phases to each round of play:
1) Bid for starting player: Each player bids to get the opportunity to name the starting player.

2) Change Party platform: Each player, starting with the starting player, changes one of their 5 party platform positions. Each player has a hand of 2-3 cards, which they discard from, draw back to 3, and then play one to their platform.

3) Play Shadow Cabinet cards: Each player has 7 party members that can each be used once. They are played to a region, and can influence the election in the region. Only one Shadow Cabinet card per player can be played to a region per turn. They are all played face down, then revealed and resolved.

4) Form coalitions: As is common in European politics, it is necessary to form coalitions to win elections. Coalitions can be played between parties that have played the necessary Shadow Cabinet cards, AND if they have at least 2 platform positions in common. If they have 3 or more in common, one party can force the other party into a coalition. This can be very important, as it can let a minor party ride a larger party's coattails to victory.

5) Media Influence: Each player, in turn order, has the opportunity to purchase media influence in the regions, one marker at a time. Play continues until all players pass in turn. There are only spaces for 5 media markers in each region. If a player has more media markers than the other players in a region, he can influence the people's opinion in a region. This is accomplished by exchanging one of the region's opinion (of which there are four, which correspond to the party platform cards) cards with one from a common pool.

6) Party Markers: Each player, in turn order, can purchase party markers, that are playable to a maximum of 10 in each region. Party markers can be translated into votes later in the round. A maximum of 4 markers can be played into each region per turn, per player, however, due to marker limits, most players will not be able play all of them.

7) Opinion Polls: Opinion polls are now sold in each of the regions. Players may bid on them, and if successful, may either elect to publish the poll, or take additional party membership. If they publish the poll they can move one or two parties up or down on the region's trend, which can help or hurt that party's chances in the upcoming election.

8) Converting Party Markers into votes: Each player, in turn order can now turn their party markers into votes. In each region, in turn order, players can cash in their markers for votes. For every party platform issue that matches the region's opinion cards the party gets a +1 multiplier. For each issue that is in opposition they get a -1 multiplier. For key issues, these are doubled to +2 or -2. Finally, the party's trend in the region is added to this and applied.

For example: If the Green party, is agrees with the region's opinion of education, pollution, and security, but differs on health and genetic foods, they get a +1 multiplier for their issues. If their trend marker is at +3, it is changed to +4 (1 + 3 = 4) This is now multiplied by the number of party markers they are converting. So, if they are cashing in 5 party markers, this gives them 20 votes (5 x 4 = 20) in the region (out of a possible 50). If the party's multiplier is 0 or negative, markers are converted at a rate of 2 markers for every vote.

9) Determine the current election: This is basically step 8 in the current region. However, the results of this are final and the results are tallied. As mentioned before, coalitions are very important. The most votes a single party can get in an election is 50, but a coalition can get more votes than 50 (the votes of each party in the coalition are added together). So, if the CDU has 50 votes, but the Green and FPD parties are in a coalition and have 30 and 21 votes respectively, they win the election 51 to 50. If there is a tie, there are several ways to work this out. If the tie is between individual parties, then the party that got to that vote total last, wins by a nose. If the tie is between a single party and a coalition or two coalitions, the party (or coalition member) that has the most individual votes wins the election.

Example: CDU and PDS are in a coalition and Green and FPD are in a coalition, CDU has 50 votes, Green has 45, FPD has 20, and PDS has 15. The CDU and PDS coalition wins, because the CDU had the most votes of the individual parties. However, if the Green party had 50 votes, and had gotten to 50 votes last, and the FPD only had 15 votes, tehn the Green and FPD coalition would have won the election by a nose.

10) Determine election results: The winning party can move one of their media markers from the current region board to the national board. Additionally, up to two regional opinions can be moved from the current board to the national board to reflect the current national opinion. If the result is a win by a nose, only one issue can be moved to the party board, and the loser can move one of his media markers from the region to the national board. If it is a coalition victory, each member of the coalition can move one of their media markers (again, from the current region) and one opinion card to the national board. IMPORTANT: The party with the most votes in the coalition gets first choice of opinion cards. Also, Mandate is determined. Each region is worth a certain amount of seats in the Bundestag. Based upon the number of votes you receive, you get X number of seats.

11) Increase party membership: Party membership is increased based upon the being in line with the current national opinion. The more you agree with it, the more members you get.

12) Receive money: You receive money equal to the amount of Mandate (or seats) you gained in the current election x 1000. Also, on rounds 1-5, each party can accept outside contributions. However, there is a risk associated with this. The larger the amount you accept, the more likely your party members are to leave due to the party being corrupted by outside influences. Finally, after rounds 1, 3, and 5, your party members contribute 1000 x your party membership to the cause.

WHEW! My fingers are getting tired. All in all, I feel this is a great game. However, this is not a game you introduce non-gamers to. This is definitely a gamer's game. The rules may seem like a lot, but once you sit down to play they flow together rather well. Our first turn took 2-1/2 hours, turns 3-4 took another 2-1/2, and turns 5-7 took 1 hour.

A couple of nice twists to the game are the following:
1) The regions, only four regions are visible at a time. The current region all 4 opinion cards are displayed. In region 2, only three are visible, region 3, only two, and region 4 only has one card displayed. Additionally, there are 16 regions in the game, only 7 of which are used, and the last three you do not know until other elections are completed and boards are freed up. This means that you need to carefully plan which regions you are going to make you biggest efforts in.

2) You need to win some elections, but cannot win them all. Due to card distibution, and your inability to make radical changes to your party platform, and limited party markers, you must carefully determine whether you try for the smaller region with opinions that closely match your platform, or do you try to go for the monster region with very little in common with you, but is worth more?

3) The scoring system, although it is math intensive, it rewards you for early wins, and less for late wins. However, later wins mean you get more party membership as those issues are more current. Scoring is determined by:

Mandate (seats won)
National Party Membership
Platform compared to National Opinion (The longer the opinion has been on the national
scene, the greater the bonus)
Media Influence +
-------------------------------------------
Total score

4) Little downtime between players. The most downtime I saw in the game is during party platform selection. Even then, it was at most 2 minutes before we embarked on the next round.

5) Coalitions: These ensure that even a minor party in a region can still ride their way to victory. So even if you find yourself behind early, you can still comeback and win.

Negatives:
1) The lack of a visible scoreboard. However, you can easily tell by looking at the various boards how a player is doing at a given time. So it is not as bad as Puerto Rico, but not as nice as Princes of Florence. On the other hand, visible scoring could lead to Analysis Paralysis for every decision as players try to min/max everything.

2) Coalition victories: I like the mechanic, but the rules state the player with the most votes gets first pick of opinion to place on the national board. Unfortunately, the lesser player in the coalition could choose to take that issue off the national board and replace it with another opinion. I think a better rule would be to allow the first player in the coalition his choice of first or second pick.

Overall rating: 9 (this could go up with additional plays) It is incredible how many decisions you need to make, and how everything ties together. This is definitely a great game.

Other opinions: Joe definitely enjoyed the game but had to leave early.
Alan and Todd were willing to give the game another go. I think Todd had some issues early with the rules, but picked then up and enjoyed the game more as it went on. Neal disliked the game, but I think much of this was due to his getting saddled with two coalitions he did not want to be part of. Plus, he got hosed with what I described above with the national opinion cards.
 
EDIT:  Rating - 9 of 10, could increase to a perfect 10.

Princes of Florence

(This is a repost from May 15 from my other blog, Signifying Nothing.)

I played two games of Princes of Florence this afternoon at Cafe Francisco downtown.

The theme of the game is Medici-era Florence, and the goal of the game is to gain the most prestige, which you get by building a magnificent Palazzo, with lots of buildings and landscapes, and by commissioning works from artisans, artists, and scholars.

Turns in the game consist of two phases, an auction phase and an action phase. In the auction phase, players bid to add landscapes to their Palazzo and hire architects and jesters. In the action phase, players build buildings and commission works. Each artisan, artist, and scholar has a preferred type of building to work in, a preferred type of landscape for recretation, and a preferred freedom (travel, opinion, or religion), which makes the works they produce more valuable.

There are three things about this game that make it one of my favorites.
First, the auction mechanic acts as a natural balancing mechanism for the game. There can be no consistent winning strategy for the game. If there were a winning strategy, everyone would pursue it in the auction phase, bidding up the value of the items. This would give an advantage to anyone not pursuing that strategy, since they could buy the items they need cheaply.

Second, the game appeals to the amateur economist in me, since it illustrates so well the concept of opportunity cost. Each player can only buy one item in each turn’s auction, so even if you get a good deal on, e.g., hiring a jester, you might have gotten a better deal on hiring an architect. The game is won by getting a better deal than everyone else at the auction.

Third, the goal of the game illustrates Aristotle’s virtue of magnificence. It’s good to earn money, but only because it lets you do great things with it.

If you live in the Memphis area and would like to play Princes of Florence or other strategy board games, you should sign up for the Memphis Strategy Board Gaming Community Yahoo group. We meet to play games at least twice a month.