See my Die Macher session reports thread here:
http://www.tabletopwars.com/bb/index.php/topic,3962.0.htmlI haven’t actually played this game yet but I’m posting this overview in anticipation of playing my first game at the NGGM on Saturday. I’ll update it after the game.
Overview of gameplayDie Macher is a classic German game, the one gem that I kept reading about but could not get a copy of several years ago when I got hooked on euro games. In fact, it’s game number 1 on the Boardgamegeek database. Then Valley Games showed up and reprinted it. On my first trip to Hong Kong, I picked this up immediately even though I hadn’t been gaming in almost a year. But I knew, somehow, someday, I would want to play it.
Die Macher is an election game for 3-5 players. Each player controls a political party trying to win seats in the German parliament. The game has seven rounds. In each round, a state election takes place. After the seven state elections, total victory points are added up and whoever has the most points wins.
At game start, on the table are four state election boards. A state tile and card are randomly drawn for each board. These four will be the first four states to hold elections in sequence. So parties can try to win the current election (the first state of the four) and also plan for and influence the next three elections. There is also a national board, which earns points at the end of the game. Winning a state election allows you to influence what’s on the national board.
Each state board has a track showing each party’s votes. There are three factors that determine the number of votes your party gains. The first is party meetings (these are like political conventions). You can spend cash to increase the number of meetings you hold in the four states.
The second factor is popularity, measured from -3 to +3. Each round an opinion poll comes up for bids. If you win the bid, you look at the poll results and then decide whether to publish it, thereby affecting the popularity of two parties, or bury it and gain party membership (which is tracked on the national board).
The third factor is coincidence. Each state board has four face-up public opinion cards. Each party also has four face-up policy cards which form its platform. Each policy card that matches an opinion card increases your party’s coincidence rating, while a contradictory policy decreases it. Before an election, you have the opportunity to change your party’s policies. You can also spend on state media influence. Controlling the media in a state allows you to change the public opinion cards in that state.
The votes you gain are equal to your popularity plus coincidence rating multiplied by your party meeting markers. So increasing any number of these factors will increase your votes.
Each party also has a set of shadow cabinet cards, which represent influential members of your party. Each card can affect different elements on a state board but it costs cash to play and can only be used once per game. Some of these cards also allow coalitions to be formed.
If you and another party both have coalition tiles on a board, and you have at least two party policies in common, you can form a coalition. This means both your votes are counted together to determine the winner of an election.
When an election takes place, all parties’ votes are counted and they translate into parliament seats. Each seat is worth 1 victory point. The party or coalition that gains the most votes wins the election.
If you win a state election, you can elevate public opinion cards in that state to the national board, making them national opinions. If your party policies coincide with national opinions, your party membership increases. If you had a media marker in that state, you gain influence in the national media.
After a state election, the state board is cleared and a new state is drawn and prepared. A new round begins. This goes on until seven state elections take place. The last election is different however. The sixth and seventh elections are resolved one after the other.
Then victory points are tallied. Aside from the total number of seats won, you also earn points for party membership size (you also earn bonus points for having the most and second most members), national media influence, and party policy coincidence with the national opinions. Whoever has the highest total of all these becomes the new governing party of Germany and wins the game!
My takeJust by reading (and re-reading the rules – there’s a lot to digest), you can see that there’s a lot going on in this game. Obviously there are many ways to earn victory points and multiple ways to increase your votes. There’s planning and timing, as you can try to win elections up to three rounds in advance. There’s also resource management as you have limited party funds, party meeting markers, media markers, and shadow cabinet cards to use.
This also looks like a challenge to teach but once you understand the central mechanics, it should be easy to focus on those. It took me several readings of the rules to get a good grasp of them.
I’m also concerned about the game length. Four to five hours is not unheard of. But if the game is engaging and deep, the length should not be too bad. Good thing there is a short game variant (only five rounds instead of seven) which you can play for your first learning game.
I’m really looking forward to playing this.
My tentative rating is 7.
Pros: Brain burner; nice theme and mechanics seem to capture it well
Cons: Long; steep learning curve; some luck elements in the opinion and poll cards
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