Macao, MaCOW, My Cow, Mike OW!
Plot: You are an Italian trading company. I think.
The theme doesn't really work. And in fact, occasionally gets in the way of the game. For example, there are commodities to deliver, but the pictures of the commodities aren't intuitive or easily decipherable. A specific example is "Get double points when you deliver tea".
Ok.
Great.
What the hell does tea look like?
You can match pictures to pictures for deliveries but there is not key/guide or whatever saying what the pictures actually represent.
Goal: Its a game about victory points. There's quite a few ways to get victory points. Buying commodity tiles, delivering commodity tiles, acquiring money and grinding that into VP, or acquire buildings that give VP. There's also punishment tokens, if you screw up along the way you get -3 VP.
Mechanics: There are 3 phases per turn and 12 turns.
Phase 1: Draft a building. There are 2 generic style buildings, titled 'offices' for each turn. Those plus one for each player in the game are dealt. Draft order is determined by a track called "The wall". Furthest up on the wall goes first, and in case of ties, who ever reached the wall most recently wins. This is represented by stacking tokens, and you go top to bottom for turn order. More on buildings during the action phase.
Phase 2: Influence acquisition. Every player has a 7 sided wheel. One side has an arrow, and the rest have a number from 1-6, matching the results of D6 roll. Duh.
There are 6 currencies of influence, or in game terms Action Cubes (AC). Each cube has a colored D6 corresponding to it. So roll 6D6. Lets say the results are
1, 2,
3,
5, 5,and
6.
Each player then gets to select 2 dies worth of influence. If you select the yellow one and the purple five, you get 1 yellow cube place at slot #1 and 5 purple cubes placed at slot #5. A
red 2 (standing by) and a
blue 3 gets you 2 red cubes at slot 2 and 3 blue cubes at slot 3. Clear as mud?
After selecting, you rotate the wheel clockwise, so the cubes previously placed at turn 1 now align with the arrow. These are this turns action cubes. So by delaying your use of these cubes you can take huge monster 15 cube turns in the future.
(aside, during set up you do get to select cubes for the #1 slot and #2 slot. don't worry about having nothing to do turn 1 or 2).
Phase 3: Actions.
You can do these in any order. Oh yeah, this is important. You can not bank influence cubes. You must spend all of them. That's what makes the game interesting!
"Activate a building" - ok this is a FTG misnomer. It's activate a drafted card. Why the difference? Because the cards are typed, and one of the types is buildings (design flaw?). Activate means to grab from your reserve and place into play, there is always an influence cost associated with them. It turns out that 4 same color cubes is easier to play than 3 different cubes. Not sure yet if its harder than two different cubes. The toughest to play require 4 different colors. In theory, the multicolored dudes are better. You can activate as many buildings as you have cubes for, there is no cap.
"Utilize a building" - each activated building can typically be used once a turn. There are exceptions but those are listed specifically on the card. The basic cards available every turn read something like "Turn a grey cube into 1 gold".
The buildings deck is basically a deck full of exceptions. Get a card in play and buying this costs one less, or you can perform this action twice, or get free gold/cube/VP a turn.
"Buy a commodity/city block" - pay the influence cost and remove the commodity tile from city block and replace it with an ownership tile. Commodities are Tea, China, Silk and some other sh!t I will never remember. That art isn't intuitive at all. Fortunately there are matching pictures on the delivery site. Commodity costs run from 1-4 in matching cube colors. You can also buy jokers, for the cost of 4 cubes in two different currencies you get a token that can be used as an "any color cube" or "+3 gold". You can only buy one city block. It is also advantageous to get city blocks next to each other, those count for end game scoring.
"You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall" - advance your turn order token up the wall. Doing this once costs one generic cube. Each additional spot costs 2. So to move 2 spots costs 3 cubes, and to advance 3 spots costs 5.
"I'm on a boat" - move your cargo ship towards a delivery location. Costs 1 generic cube.
"Spend gold on prestige" - the VP grind takes two steps. First you have to grind influence into gold, then once a turn you have the opportunity to turn gold into VP. During the draft, each card at the bottom had two numbers, a gold count and a VP count. The sum of the gold is how much it costs to activate this turn, and the sum of the VP is how much you get. I've only played twice but the best ratio so far was 3 gold for 8 VP, and the worst was 6 gold for 7 VP.
Punishment Tokens:
There are two times during a turn that you can earn a punishment token, which is worth -3 VP and you feel shame.
#1: You have a limit of 5 buildings that you can keep in reserve. If you draw a 6th, you must discard a building and lose 3 VP.
#2: Any time you spin the wheel and it shows up on a slot devoid of any influence cubes you lose 3 VP.
Winning the Game:
First, avoid punishments. In that regard, each building is worth 3 VP, because you get docked for any buildings still in reserve at the end of the game.
Delivering cargo gets you VP. First one to a spot gets 5VP, second place gets 3VP and 3rd place gets 2. (There are never more than 3 deliveries).
Grinding cash for VP.
Specific building cards may earn you VP during the action phase.
-- "If you have less than 2 goods on your boat, get a VP"
-- "If you move your boat 2 squares, get a VP"
Other building cards may earn points at end game.
-- "Get 1 VP for each person typed card in play"
-- "Get 2 VP for each different office card in play"
Blobs of city blocks earn you 2 VP for your biggest connected section. In other words, if you own 9 city blocks and 7 are adjacent to one another you get 14 points. The two hanging out by themselves count for jack.
Tactics and Tips:
Preliminary based on two games played....
Going first is somewhat important. In some instances it might actually be key. Getting the right buildings or the easy to activate buildings is kind of a deal. I am not sure if you need to be first for most of the game, but certainly you are handicapped if you go last often. Invest in the wall, at least a little bit.
Early game and mid-game avoid the 1 or 2 cube rolls. Or better stated, have a compelling reason to not get 3 or more. Getting a 1 cost commodity isn't a compelling reason. At end game, the higher die rolls are reset to 1's so there will be no avoiding 1 cube grabs eventually. I'm not sure, but I think I would prefer to take a punishment token instead of grabbing one cube for a probably lame turn.
I think 3's and 4's are the most important numbers on the early rolls. Yes 6's look pretty, but the truth is there is not a lot you can do with 6 of a kind until you are ready to move your boat.
The best buildings early are the ones that give you free stuff. Like there are several cards that give you a free influence token, which everyone loves. But underrated are the the money ones. Since typically you grind influence into cash, free money is free influence. Similarly, there's a building that advances you up the wall for free. That's also a free generic token.
There are so many permutations for getting VPs that I can't tell you any optimum way to win.
My first game Juan won with a grind deck. He had multiple cards that earned a few VP every turn and multiple cards that turned influence into cash. He was able to use the cash for VP nearly every turn. Yeah he delivered stuff too, and had some end game cards, but mostly the bulk of his points came on the grind.
My second game Ryan won with a combination of deliveries and city blocks. He had 2 cards that gave bonus points for delivering stuff, and and got about half his points from bringing commodities to ports.
That second game I finished ONE point behind Ryan and I had a balanced strategy. I ground for about 1/4 of my points, delivered for 1/4, city blocked for 1/4 and had end game scoring cards for about 1/4.
Review:
So far so good. I do want to replay this game more, and I don't see any obvious flaws. End game pacing is pretty bad, but that's expected, there's a lot going on.
