Holy 'cao

The newest board game in my collection is the newest in the esteemed "Alea Large-Box series" line of games, Macao. Designed by Stefan Feld, the same designer as the recent games in that series (including Notre Dame and In the Year of the Dragon), it's a clever game that's driven by a unique "currency" system.

Anyone familiar with German board games has probably seen a game where you have a certain number of "action points" to spend on your turn, on a variety of possible actions. Well, Macao has that too, but the number of action points you have each turn varies. And more importantly, they're color-coded. Action cubes are available in six colors, and it's the way you acquire them that makes Macao unique among board games I've played.

Each round, six different dice, each one corresponding to one of the cube colors, is rolled. Each player then chooses any two of those dice to go into his action cube supply -- the color indicates the ones you get; the number indicated how many you get. But the number also indicates how many turns from now you get them. You are thus faced with the sophisticated and interesting choice whether to get a small number of cubes for a turn coming up very soon in the game, or a large number of cubes that you won't get until the game is literally half over. And leftover cubes each round are lost -- you don't get to save them for future turns. Thus, part of your planning for a future "super turn" involves you getting the right numbers and colors of cubes set up over the course of multiple rolls. Fascinating stuff.

What's really clever about this whole system is that even though dice are involved, the "random element" is seldom a factor in the game -- not, at least, in the games I've played so far. Much more at issue is how you decide to allocate your two dice picks per round. You can pretty much always find two that will help you, no matter how the rolls come out; the question is, which two will be best?

In fact, the dice aren't nearly as much a random factor in the game as one other element in the game -- a deck of cards. The ample deck of cards represent different buildings you can construct and people you can recruit, each one asking for different numbers and colors of action cubes to start working for you. Only a few are revealed every round, and this is where the greatest element of randomness comes into the game. In fact, there are so many cards in the deck that fully 1/3 aren't used in any given game, so you have no guarantee of pursuing any one strategy based on a card you liked well in a previous game. The dice, you can control; this element, not so much.

Note that I haven't really explained what the game is about. Honestly, this is sort of unimportant next to the great dice-and-cards mechanics of the game. Basically, you're picking up goods in the city of Macao, then transporting them by ship to other cities across the globe, earning victory points in the process. After exactly 12 rounds, the player with the most points wins. (With there being a few other ways to earn victory points along the way -- including by some of those cards in that deck I mentioned.)

As I've said (probably a few times by now), it's quite a clever game. The only real problem I can say about it now, after having played it a few times, is that some players seem to become crippled with analysis paralysis while playing it. It's an especially frustrating problem here, as compared to other games I've played with a high AP factor, because for some reason I can't quite identify yet, the "spread" seems greater here. That is, when it comes to picking two dice for the round (and one new card for the round, from the six available for "drafting"), there seems to be an enormous gap of time between players who can consider their options and choose quickly and those who agonize about it for a long time. I think myself in the former category on this, which annoys me a few times every game. Perhaps this game needs a "shot clock." Or experienced players.

In either case, I do very much want to become an "experienced player." Every game I've played thus far has been great, barring those few times per game spent waiting on an AP victim. Here's hoping that problem shrinks over time, and here's me recommending the game for German board game fans. It's kind of a strange hybrid of Tikal and Puerto Rico (both of which I love), with unique ideas all its own.