Die, Macher

(Image courtesy gamephotos @ BGG)

I don't care much for politics. I've always avoided it in real life and I think from now on I'll be avoiding it in board games whenever I can.

BoardGameGeek seems hold Die Macher on a pedestal. It's the first game in the database and the recent reprint by Valley Games was considered to be some sort of immaculate conception. A four hours game about the German political system? I found it hard to believe it could be that good.

That's because it turns out the game isn't very good.

Let me rephrase that: I don't think the game is very good. You may enjoy it.

Die Macher is a strange beast. It has a lot going on. There are local elections, national opinions, party platforms, public opinion polls... and don't forget that a game turn is broken down into 18 easy steps. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for complex games. Twilight Imperium is my new love and I find much enjoyment from Descent, Tide of Iron, Caylus and others. The complexity itself isn't what I dislike about the game but the way the mechanics contradict each other.

The game takes place over seven rounds. Each round players are vying for majority control of the state so their agendas will get passed. You can see upcoming agendas in the next three rounds but the amount of information visible is less the further away the round is. On top of that players will have the ability (through various means) to swap out the current visible agendas in all visible rounds. You need to match agendas and really avoid conflicting ones or else you'll fall behind in points. The problem is that you need to match current agendas, plan for upcoming agendas all while players keep changing these agendas and you only get a few random agenda card pulls at the start of a round to try and change your own.

Then there are the opinion polls, one per visible state. Usually this means there will be four opinion polls at any given time (fewer in later rounds). Players blind bid to win each poll which allows you to either use two of the four abilities on the card or roll dice to randomly increase your national standings. Let me run that past you again: you are blind bidding four times per round for unknown cards.

In case you couldn't tell, Die Macher is complex. There's a lot going on; you need to plan ahead if you want to do well and the game encourages you to plan ahead by allowing you to play on future states, see upcoming agendas, etc. I find it nearly impossible to actually plan, though, as there are far too many random elements. It wants you to do one thing but the mechanics make that nearly impossible.

I can see why people may enjoy it. There is some interesting player interaction with coalitions that may be formed, jockeying for spaces on the board, bidding on public opinion polls, using card abilities to knock your opponents down and the ability to plan ahead for future rounds. It's also an older game (first appeared in 1986) so a lot of the concepts were quite innovative at the time.

I hesitate to call Die Macher a bad game. Nearly everyone else in my gaming group has enjoyed it... some more than others but they've all found something to like in the game; I'm alone in having a very strong negative feeling for it. It's ranked #13 at BoardGameGeek and has a user rating of 8.0 over 1600+ ratings so clearly people enjoy it. I'm just not convinced I'll ever be able to see what others find so appealing.