BOARD GAME OVERVIEW 2004

BOARD GAME OVERVIEW 2003

BOARD GAME OVERVIEW 2002

Building Roads to Greek Temples

Well it has been a while, hasn't it? I hope a good holiday season was had by all. You would think that having been gone and having 2 months to think about it, coming up with a game to look at this month would be easy, wouldn't you?

It wasn't! "Epic Campaigns"?? What is it with these topics? Actually I can think of a couple of games that I would put into the category for this - unfortunately I've either already spotlighted them (Age of Renaissance), don't like them based on games I had played years ago (Diplomacy), and/or are very difficult to find (Advanced Civilization). So where does that leave me? I debated going completely off theme for a while.. and had thought I was going to have to do it until something else came to mind. What do people think of when they say things like "Epic" - at least for me, my mind turns to the ancient Greek myths - especially the epic poetry of Homer. With Greece in mind, it was a quick leap for me to choose Magna Grecia. While the game really has little to do with Greece, other than the name, and is not an `epic game' in the sense of the time it takes to play, I think it is a very intriguing strategy game, and so worthy of a look or two.

And so - on with the game!!

At first glance, Magna Grecia may appear to be just another standard tile-laying game. The game however is from Michael Schacht and Leo Colvini, both of whom have developed easy to learn games, on their own, that still possess a deep element of strategy. Therefore I would expect nothing less from these two designers teaming up to work together, and I was not disappointed.

The basic concept of the game is that you are trying to create a merchant network between cities. You do this buy building towns up to cities, building roads, and buying markets. Markets are the primary scoring mechanism in the game.

One of the most unique elements of the game is the turn sequence. There are twelve turns in the game, represented by cards. Each card indicates two critical aspects for that game turn. First it indicates the player order for that turn. In the deck, the turn positions will even out (i.e. each player will be first the same number of times, etc). In addition, each card indicates how many cities may be placed, how many roads may be placed and/or how many tiles can be taken from supply and added to their available tiles. Each turn a player gets to choose two of these actions to perform.

After placing their tiles, players may also purchase or sell a market. Markets are used to score points, but these same points are also used to purchase markets and cities - so it is a delicate balance of how many points to spend where. Markets are the primary way of getting points, and so placement of markets is critical. In order to be of value, a market must be no more than one "jump" away from a city of the market's owner - this is called an active market. Active markets are worth one point for every town, city or oracle that is connected to the city that the market is in. That is to say, the more trade roads going into a city, the more valuable it is to be located in that city. Of course, the larger the city and the more opposition already in a city, the more expensive it is to get a market in that city.

Markets are not the only scoring mechanism though. There will also be nine oracles on the map. When a city first connects to an Oracle, the oracle is turned to face towards that city. Oracles favor the cities with the most influence however, i.e. the city with the greatest number of connections to other cities, towns and oracles. Each oracle can only favor one city. At the end of the game, four points are awarded to each city that is pointed to by an oracle.

All in all, the rules are simple, and the game can easily be played as a light quick game just placing tiles and markets and seeing how the game flows. But after a few plays, the depth of strategy becomes clear. Are you better building more cities, or larger cities? Do you play for oracles, which can then be lost, or just build for cities and markets? When is it worth paying to move a market into another player's city? When do you need to sell markets so that you can have more points to spend on future builds? It is a very rich game, that I thoroughly enjoy even though I still have not come up with a solid strategy for it. But I enjoy all of the choices and the different paths to victory that this game can provide.

Until next month, fare thee well my friends.

-- C'ur A'lduin