- \n
- <\/a>Magna Grecia<\/a><\/b>
![\"Magna](\"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/Ressourcen\/magnagrecia_t.jpg\")
\nIt’s 2500 B.C. in southern Italy and we are Greek settlers busily trying to develop
\nMagna Grecia – the cradle of civilization as the game’s subtitle puts it. In front of
\nus lies a map of the area with a number of already established small settlements and our
\ntask is it to develop these villages to flourishing cities: cities with markets and roads
\nto other cities.<\/p>\nThe more road connections a city has to other cities the more trade its markets will
\ngenerate and hence the more valuable the markets are at the end of the game. However,
\nonly active markets can generate points. To become active, a market must be either in a
\nplayer’s own city or in a city which has a direct road to one of that player’s
\ncities. Besides markets cities themselves can generate points at the end of the game if
\nthey connect to any of the randomly placed oracles on the map.<\/p>\nPlayer sequence is determined by twelve cards, each representing a complete round of the
\ngame. Each card show the players’ turn sequence and the actions which may be
\nperformed by the players in that round. The principle actions are a) to place road tiles,
\nb) to establish or expand cities by placing city tiles and c) to re-supply tiles from
\nstock. Each card shows how many tiles of a kind a player may place or take.<\/p>\nThe card system is fair and only “semi random”: all players are three times
\neach first, second, third or fourth player in a round and the quantity of tiles available
\nis one each of high, medium and low. The cards are arranged in three sets of four with
\neach player receiving each turn sequence once per set. The cards are placed face up and
\nthe card for the current round is handed to the players in sequence. This provides some
\nlimited possibility for planning ahead as both the quantity of tiles and the players’
\nsequence of the next rounds are visible, too.<\/p>\nDevelopment of Magna Grecia starts at the edge of the board and the road and city system
\ndevelops towards the center of the map. It is obvious that cities located in the center
\nof the map will most likely end up with a lot more connections to other cities than those
\nat the edge of the map. That’s why players will quickly try to build roads towards
\nthe center and at the same time they will start to place markets in villages at the
\ncenter of the map hoping that these villages will be come proliferating cities towards
\nthe end of the game.<\/p>\n![\"Magna](\"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/Ressourcen\/magnagrecia_b.jpg\")
This sounds easier than it is because in order to
\n become an active (i.e. point generating) market it must be in the immediate vicinity
\n of one’s own city. And in order to establish a city anywhere on the map one must
\n build a road to the corresponding village. By mid-game the center of the board
\n usually becomes rather crowed and building the required road system to interconnect
\n the desired cities becomes increasingly difficult. The more so as there is ample
\n possibility of roads being cut off by other players.<\/p>\nWhile road building is free players must pay points for establishing or expanding cities
\nas well as for placing markets on villages or “foreign” cities. This makes it
\nnecessary that players “cash in” some of their markets already in mid-game by
\ndeactivating them (turning them sideways). This immediately generated the market’s
\nvalue in points for the player. Of course players will try to make sure that they only
\ncash in those markets that are in cities which will not increase their number of road
\nconnections.<\/p>\nCareful consideration is required here as not only may a possible growth in connections
\nbe overlooked but also does this allow other players to build markets in that city at a
\nlower price (the price to be paid for placing a market depends on the city size and the
\nnumber of markets active in a city).<\/p>\n“Magna Grecia” requires tough strategic and tactical decisions by its players
\nand is hardly influenced by random “luck factor”. Starting with the decision to
\neither go for a “market focused” or an “oracle focused” strategy up
\nto the decisions about which markets to establish and how to develop one’s road
\nsystem makes the game very challenging.<\/p>\nInterestingly, the final score in our game was very close for the top three scorers
\n(within 5 points) and all scores were in the 40’s and lower 50’s on a
\n“Kramer track” which ends at 49! My interpretation is that we did not play
\noffensive enough to exploit the full scope of the game’s possibilities. Only in
\nretrospect did I discover the true depth of the game.<\/p>\nAll of this suggests that “Magna Grecia” is one of the highlights of this
\nyear’s games. And in fact our score for the game suggest this, too. However, there
\nwas one low score of 5 (out of 10) and it is mine, the reason of which I want to briefly
\ndescribe:<\/p>\nPlaying “Magna Grecia” involves a lot of counting (road connections, markets,
\ncity tiles, and distances) in order to determine one’s “best possible
\nmove”. While I find this acceptable in a two player game I dislike this in
\nmulti-player games, since it tends to create a lot of idle time for the non-active
\nplayers. It took us 150 minutes to play the twelve rounds – this is 12 minutes per round
\nor 9 minutes of idle time for each player per round. However I must admit that we played
\nthe game not quite to the rules<\/a> as we accidentally did not place the turn cards face up and
\n therefore it was not possible for us to precisely plan ahead for the next round. This
\n would have provided the idle players with some food for thought but might also have
\n increased the average turn duration of the active player as this additional bit of
\n information must be taken into account as well when executing one’s turn.<\/p>\n\n
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