Maracaibo

The Game

Maracaibo is a game from the popular designer Alexander Pfister. He has many bestselling games, but unfortunately most of his games don't quite click for me. They are fine, but I don't find them particularly interesting. Finally in Maracaibo I found a game of his I enjoy. 

Maracaibo is a game set in the West Indies during the age of piracy. Yes, you get to captain a pirate ship. The game is played over four rounds. One round is everyone completing a circuit around the Caribbean, starting and ending in Havana. When you sail, you have much freedom to choose how far you want to sail. The further you sail, the more actions you can perform at the port. Different ports along the route offer different actions. At two places the route splits and you have to choose. Eventually the branches meet again. So far all these sound very much like Great Western Trail right? I find it a bit of a stretch that this mechanism is used in a pirate setting. We are pirates and we should be sailing wherever we want and not following a schedule. We are not running cruise ships. But the game is fun, so this thematic disjoint is forgivable. 

You have a hand of cards. These are workers you can recruit, or buildings you can buy. Each card can also be goods you can sell, or an equipment you can use for completing a quest. Certain ports have demand for goods, and these are where you can sell specific goods to upgrade your ship. Every round some quests are placed at certain ports. If you manage to complete a quest, you gain some benefit. Both goods delivery and quest completion are first come first served. Maracaibo handles cards in an interesting way. At most ports you have the option of discarding your hand to earn a little money. It's not much, but at the end of your turn you always draw back to your hand limit. So it's a bit like free money every turn. What's tricky is if you want to keep a certain card to be used for goods delivery, or quest completion, you can't decide to keep one and sell all the rest. You have to sell all. You have a reserve area where you can place up to three cards. They don't count towards your hand limit, which means after you move a card to your reserve area, you do get to draw a card to refill your hand. However cards in the reserve area can only be used as a worker or a building. They can no longer be used for goods delivery or quest completion. So you still have a dilemma. 

Recruiting is an important thing you do in this game. Your crew gives you many abilities. Some of your employees are stationed at specific ports. You need to visit them to use their powers. As players recruit and grow their crews, they will gain different combinations of abilities. They will want to stop at different ports. They will have different strategic directions. 

You also get to upgrade your ship. In the beginning many sections of your ship have two discs on them. You need to remove these discs to activate the sections on your ship. As more and more sections become activated, you become more powerful. 

Two important things you do in the game are battles and exploration. The three major powers in the Caribbean are the English, the French and the Spanish (unfortunately the Dutch are sacrificed probably for gameplay purposes). You can help them conquer towns, and even capture towns belonging to their enemies. Doing these increases your influence with them, and also grows their power in the region. At game end, you score points from each major power based on how much influence you have and how strong they are. The best scenario is you have contributed much to their success, and they are also much more successful than their competitors. 

When you do exploration, you advance your pawn on a track drawn in South America. Every time you move, you claim the reward indicated at the spot you stop. Depending on your exploration capabilities, you have a maximum movement range. You don't necessarily have to fully utilise it, because sometimes you may choose a spot with an attractive reward than the furthest spot you can reach. Generally the further you go, the better the rewards. There are landmarks which give you bonus when you pass them. The first player to pass a landmark gets more points. So there is a race element here. 

By the time you are done with the fourth round, your ship, your crew, and your influence with the major powers will be very different from when you started. You do the final scoring, and the player with the most points wins. 

The Play

Maracaibo is a development game. It is a typical Eurogame with multiple ways of scoring points. This is definitely a point salad game. There is little direct conflict between players. There are no direct attacks. You do have several aspects in which you compete, but this is not a confrontational game. If you happen to be supporting different major powers, yes, there will be some back-and-forth tug of war as you work for different masters. Competition is mostly in the form of the early bird getting the worm. You don't need to compete for port space. A port welcomes all players. So the game is more about self betterment than about bringing down others. Whoa... that's another valuable life lesson. Maybe it was because we did a two-player game. With more players, the competition should be more intense. I imagine the war between the major powers will be more interesting too. 

One thing I did not expect was that by game end, I had played 20 cards - my workers and buildings. Making money is difficult. Many workers and buildings are expensive. In the first round I probably had only two or three workers. I was surprised that my abilities grew so much by the end of the game. This was hugely satisfying. It felt like a great achievement. 

This above is a career card. In the early game, it gives you some goals and rewards. This gives you some direction and purpose from early to mid game. At first I felt the points from the career card were significant. Only by game end I realised it was not much at all. However the monetary rewards were important, because in the early game money was hard to come by. 

The Thoughts

If you ask me why I enjoy Maracaibo but not other games by Alexander Pfister, I can't explain it well. If I analyse the game honestly, it is a very typical point scoring Eurogame, the kind I love to complain about. However when I am actually playing the game, I have a great time. I'm not particularly into the pirate theme, so it's not the theme. The only reason I can think of is I enjoy the feeling of progress, of building something great bit by bit. Hey, I had helped Spain conquer half of the Caribbean. It is a rewarding experience.