5 Hours of German Politics

Last night (includes picture) I had four people over for an epic evening of board gaming. We scheduled the time especially for one game in particular: Die Macher. It was designed in 1986 and is one of the classic euro- or German-style board games. The theme may not grab most people though: German politics. Essentially you are in control of a German political party spending money and influencing people as you try to win 7 different state elections while growing your national party base.

It is a very procedural game where you follow a set number of steps through 6 rounds (the 7th election happens immediately after the 6th one without the intermediate steps). Even though you are doing the same steps over and over the decisions you are making are completely different each time. And it doesn't get easier as the game goes on. In fact only 2 of the 5 players scored any points from the last election.

I had only played once before about a year and a half ago and the rest of the players hadn't ever played the game before so it was really a learning game for all of us. We started the game at 7:30 or so. I think the first round took us 1.5-2 hours. The second round probably took another hour. Then the final 4 rounds took another ~2 hours until we finished up at 12:20am. We all picked up what we were supposed to be doing pretty quickly after those first two rounds. Of course, that didn't mean we understood all the ramifications of our decisions, but at least we knew how.

The game is scored such that you really don't know who is going to win until the final scoring is tabulated. You get points for each of the 7 elections. You get bonus points for holding media control in an election you win. You get bonus points for your party platform matching the national public opinions. And finally you get points for the size of your national party base. All of those except the election totals are able to change right up until the final election so it is hard to really see who is winning.

Everyone said they enjoyed the game even though no one really knew what they were doing. I certainly enjoyed it as well. In fact, I enjoyed it more than when I played it over a year ago. My brain didn't quite hurt as much as last time. And lest you think my enjoyment came from the result know this: I did not win. In fact, like most of the games I played at Con of the North, I came in dead last. Even though I try to win every game it is not really important to me who wins. I just want to enjoy myself and hope that everyone else enjoys the experience as well.

Now I'm looking forward to getting this big gameto the table again and I know four other people who would be interested in playing!