inconsequential ruminations

Yesterday, my brother and a friend separately suggested an afternoon of gaming. Another friend was available, so I jumped at the chance to try out Die Macher. It cost around £10, including postage from Germany, when it was on sale, about six months ago. It took us this long to play, because we never normally play on weekends and it is far too long for our normal weeknight slot. After this first playing, I think I got a real bargain.

For once, the summary section at the Geek does its job well:

Die Macher is a game about seven sequential political races in different regions of Germany. Players are in charge of national political parties, and must manage limited resources to help their party to victory. The winning party will have the most victory points after all the regional elections. But there are four different ways of scoring victory points. First, each regional election can supply ten to eighty victory points, depending on the size of the region and how well your party does in it. Second, if a party wins a regional election and has some media influence in the region, then the party will receive some media-control victory points. Third, each party has a national party membership which will grow as the game progresses and this will supply a fair number of victory points. Lastly, parties score some victory points if their party platform matches the national opinions at the end of the game.

What this does not tell you is how excellently the theme fits the game mechanics. Even though the theme sounds dull (I hate party politics), it helps players understand the mechanics and is always believable. The theme is definitely not fraudulent.

Die Macher is also very interactive. It was interesting playing this so soon after playing Antiquity. Both are deep, layered games, but Die Macher is a rollercoaster ride of trying to manage your opponents, which is only fitting in a game about politics. Maybe because of this interaction, it also feels like a much more conventional German game than Antiquity.

Die Macher is a long game. The rules explanation and setup (admittedly with lots of talk about windsurfing and kite boarding) took an hour. We played for another three hours and only managed four out of seven regional elections. Having said that, the first region took almost as long as the rest combined, as we were learning the game flow. Happily, everybody enjoyed it and wanted to play again another time. Die Macher may be the gateway game for my group into longer games and weekend games sessions.

There are a few rules ambiguities. I may markup my rules with the clarifications in the FAQ. There were no serious language issues, but English language score sheets are a good idea. Unfortunately, the recent Board Game Geek upgrade disabled files this weekend, so I could not print any. I hope it is fixed soon. Rick Heli’s turn reference sheet is excellent.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 3rd, 2005 at 22:49 and is filed under boardgames.