Die Macher is a "grabber." When you are playing a "grabber" kind of game, you are fully involved, and time passes quickly. And when you finish playing such a game, you are pretty well guaranteed to find yourself in post-game analysis mode, where you and your fellow gamers happily discuss the game and what happened in it. And then when you go home and go to bed, you find yourself unable to sleep, as you lie in bed wide awake with your brain still a-racing, and still thinking about the game.

Die Macher is such a game. It grabs you and insinuates itself into your head. It is a superb, wonderful, deep game with many, many interlocking, tightly woven mechanisms that produce a marvellous gaming experience.

That said, however, it is not a game you will be pulling off the shelf to play with Grandma and Grandpa. This is not Apples to Apples. (Not that there’s anything wrong with Apples to Apples - that happens to be a great game to play with Grandma and Grandpa - it’s just that Apples to Apples and Die Macher are simply two games at opposite ends of the gaming spectrum.)

This is definitely a game to play with “gamers.” Die Macher has a serious learning curve. Nothing in and of itself in regards the gameplay is particularly daunting, but there’s LOTS of stuff going on, and trying to get a competent handle on how everything interacts with everything else will take a good game or two or three before you start to feel like you really know what you’re doing.

Die Macher is a game about the German election process. Which in and of itself doesn’t sound like it would be particularly attractive, especially to a non-German. But the key is, it is a GAME; it is not a simulation. And the game captures the flavor of its theme very well. It pulls you in and grabs you. You are simply INVOLVED the whole time. And that’s a very good thing when you consider that a game of Die Macher is going to take you 4 hours to play, considerably longer than the typical “German” game.

The game has a lot of boards and a lot of bits. And it takes awhile to get everything set up. But the time spent doing that is well worth it.

As with many of the best games, you are constantly faced with many tough decisions to make. You only have limited resources. You simply can’t be the best in every election. You simply can’t do everything you’d like to do, no matter how much you’d like to do so. You have to focus! You have to pick and choose.

There are 4 election boards. Each board is identical. The 4 boards fit together in a kind of offset windmill fashion. One board is the current region’s election, the next board is for the 2nd region’s election, the next for the 3rd, and the last one for the 4th region.

Each board is comprised of 6 sections.

1) In the corner of each board is placed a region card and it’s corresponding region tile. These are randomly chosen. In all, there are 7 region-elections in the game. But there are a lot more regions than just 7 to choose from. So every game will always be different because of the different random regions that might come up in any given game. The first election might be worth 80 seats, or it might be worth 15. Or just about any number in-between. You might get 2 or 3 big elections in a row, or 2 or 3 small elections in a row, or some other combination of region-cards coming up. That alone can have a big effect on players’ strategies. Do you fight over the big-value regions (which will probably attract a lot of attention from the other players too), or do you try to quietly win the smaller elections? Or if a big region is coming up in 2 elections, do you conserve your resources for that election and give up some good points now in earlier elections? That may cost you, too, in the final end-game tally, since seats won are not the only victory points available.

2) The next section of the board is a quarter-circle, divided into the 5 possible players’ colors. And each color is further divided into 5 sections. This area represents your party’s current trend in the polls. A wooden cube indicates just what your actual trend is in that region. The trends range from plus 3 to minus 3. Basically, positive trend is good, and negative trend is bad. Just like real life.

If you have a good positive trend, it makes it easier to get votes, which in turn makes it easier to take more seats (and thus more points) in that region’s election. And of course, if your party has a negative trend, then that makes it a lot tougher, if not impossible, to get many votes at all. And no votes means no seats. And that is not a happy thing.

3) Next area is Party Meeting Markers, again represented by small colored wooden cubes. In game terms, each little cube represents a rally, or political party meeting that your party held in the region. The maximum number of meetings any political party is allowed to hold in any given region is 10. In general, again, the more meetings you hold the better your chances are in doing well in the election. And the fewer you have in any region, the worse you will generally do. Not always, however....

You only have 18 party meeting markers total. That’s the limit. And each region always starts off with one party meeting marker in position. So now you only have 14 left over. You can only place 4 maximum in each region per turn. And there’s 4 regions to choose from in any given turn. You could place 4, 4, 4, and 2, and now all your party meeting markers are gone. You won’t get them back until the current region’s election is decided, and then you only get back the party meeting markers in that region.

So there we have a limited resources problem. You simply must choose where and when and how many party meeting markers to place when it’s time to do so. You may want to hold back some in order to place 4 more in a future region. Whatever you place now is out of commission for the time being. So you have to balance and make choices.

4) Next area of the board is the voting area - numbered from 1 to 50. Again, a wooden cube indicates how many votes you’ve accumulated so far in that region. And obviously, the more you have, the better.

5) A section on each board for the region’s 4 opinion cards. Each region has views on certain issues. There are 7 issues, and there are two sides to every issue. The issues are:

Social Security / Welfare
Military
Education
Energy
Science
Health
Finance

For game purposes, all that matters is that 4 of the issues are chosen (at random), and they could be a mix of pro and con. And there’s no duplications and no opposites - the region can’t be both pro- and anti-military at the same time, for instance.

When the game starts, each player can see all 4 of the current region’s views on its 4 issues. But with the 2nd region, one card is face down, so the players only know 3 of the issues that that region is passionate about. And with the 3rd region, two cards are face down, leaving only 2 issues known. And you guessed it, the 4th region has 3 cards face down, so only one issue is known.

What also happens at the beginning of the game is that each player is dealt out 5 Party Platform cards. These are a separate deck, but they are similar to the region’s opinion cards. That is, each player starts out with 5 of the 14 possible views on the 7 issues.

You might find for instance that Region # 1 is pro-Energy, pro-Education, pro-Science, and anti-Finance. Your starting 5 Party Platform cards might be anti-Social Security, pro-military, pro-Education, pro-Science, and pro-Finance.

Thus - in comparing your party’s platform against the view held by the people in the region being contested, we find:

You have two matches: pro-Education and pro-Science

You have one issue which you differ from the people: your party is pro-Finance while the people in the region are anti-Finance.

And the other 2 issues are not matches and are not opposites, and so are non-issues for this region, and are (at least for now) irrelevant.

So now, we’ll see how some of the above stuff interacts. In determining votes, one compares the matches of their party platform cards with the region’s opinion cards, then adds or subtracts the party’s current trend marker in that region, and then multiplies that number by the number of party meeting markers in the region to determine the votes.

Thus: we had +2 matches, then minus one match (the opposite-Finance issue), which leaves us with a +1 for the party matches. If our trend marker was at +3, that would give us a total of +4. If we had 5 party meeting markers, then 5 times 4 would give us a total of 20 votes.

But if we had a minus 2 trend marker, that would have left us with a total of -1, instead of the +4 before we multiplied the number of party meeting markers. Any time you get a negative number or zero, the rule is that you get 1 vote for every 2 meeting markers. Which would mean a grand total of 2 votes.

And of course, if we had more matches, or fewer matches, or a different trend marker, or more or fewer party meeting markers, the votes we could get would change every time. And to add to the challenge, you have to juggle all these variables in 4 different region-elections all at the same time..... if you put party meeting markers in THIS region, then you won’t have enough left to put in THAT region etc.

6) The 6th region of the 4 windmill boards is simply 5 microphone spaces. During the game, you can acquire media markers (influence with the papers, TV, and radio). Having a majority of media markers in a region gives you additional influence in that region - you can influence the people in that region to change an issue that is dear to them - perhaps abandoning their anti-Finance issue and replacing it with pro-Military. And suddenly you have another match....

Having a majority of media markers also can protect you from downward movement of your trend markers - and that is often crucial.

So that’s the 4 main election boards. There is also a general organization board which stores all the various decks of cards and assorted other bits.

Finally, there is the main scoreboard. This, too, is divided up into areas.

There’s the media marker track. Each time you win an election, if you had a media marker in that region, you get to place that media marker onto the appropriate place on the score track. This is good because it earns you points at the end of the game. It is also bad, because now you have one less media marker (you only have 5 total to start with) with which to influence future elections.

There is the National Party Membership track. During the game, various events will increase or decrease your National Party Membership (that is, points).

Then there are the National Opinions. Each time an election is won, the victor is allowed to place one (or two, depending on the type of victory) of the current region’s opinion cards onto the National Opinion Board. This has two effects. If your current party platform cards match these now-National Opinion cards, you will earn National Party Membership points. And at the end of the game, each match you have is worth varying victory points.

That’s it. That’s the boards.

In the game, there are 4 ways to score victory points:
1) Votes get converted to seats, and seats equal points.
2) Winning elections with media markers in the region lets you place media markers, and each media marker is worth points.
3) National Party Membership is worth points. Plus there are bonus points if you have either the most or the 2nd most.
4) Matching your party platform cards with the National Opinions earns you points for each match. And there are also possible bonuses here as well.

Add them all up, and high score wins!

Nothing to it.

Well, there’s a little to it.....

So the game is about to begin. You’re sitting there with your 5 party platform cards, and you’re checking out the 4 regions. Of course, you can only see all the opinion cards of the current region. You know exactly how many matches you are starting out with in regards that region. But with each additional region, you know less and less. Yes, you might have one match right now - but there’s still 3 face down opinion cards in that 4th region. They might or might not match. You might have to use your influence to MAKE things match as things develop.

But before anything else happens, you get to choose one from Column 1 and one from Column 2....

On the back of the scorepad are two columns. Each player in secret chooses one option from 3 possible in Column 1 and also chooses one option from 4 possible in Column 2. So right off the bat, players have to make some tough decisions as to how best to utilize these options.

There’s a mixture of choices. Column 1’s options allow you to move your trend markers up, place additional party meeting markers, or to take votes right now, all in 3 different combinations. Remember, you have 4 different elections right now to be concerned with, and there will be 3 more elections before the game is over. So do you pile everything into one region? Or do you put some votes HERE, and raise the trend marker in this region OVER THERE, and place some party meeting markers HERE? Or would you be better off putting votes and raising the trend marker in the same region over here instead? And so on, and so on....

Column 2’s options let you choose among varying numbers of placing media markers and increasing your National Party Membership. Same tough choices. Do you focus on one region, or spread them out between 2 or 3 regions? Or all 4 regions in conjunction with your Column 1 choices?

After this agonizing start, everyone reveals their decisions, and adjusts the various markers accordingly. And now the game is ready to get going for real....

STEP 1 - Choose Start Player.

This is done by secret auction. Each player has $25,000 to start the game. Each player writes down in secret how much he is willing to bid for the right to choose the start player. The winning bidder pays the money to the bank, and chooses the start-player. It could be himself, but we’ve found it usually isn’t. (in most of our games, the player who wins this auction always seems to choose to go last - thus, the player on his left becomes the start player).

Since the whole game proceeds in a series of steps in player-order, it is often very advantageous to go last so you can adjust your strategy and tactics in reaction to what the other players have already done. There are certainly areas, however, where there is an advantage to playing first (placing media markers, for instance). Since only 5 media markers can be in any given region, if your the last player, there might not be any spots left by the time your turn comes up, depending on what has occurred in earlier rounds.

So choosing the Start Player can be quite important, and often critical. In later rounds especially, we’ve found the bidding amounts for the right to choose the Start Player can get quite high - people really want that power!

In addition, you can’t just go crazy on your bid, either. You ARE going to need money for later steps in the round - if you blow all your money now, you will not be able to afford to do other things that you will want to do later. So we have another balancing act. The more you spend now to obtain the right to choose the Start Player, the less you’ll have to spend on other things later. You might be better off not bidding for the Start Player at all, and instead conserving your money for those valuable purchases later.

STEP 2 - Change one of your Party Platform Issues.

Once each round, you have the power to change ONE of your current 5 party platform cards. You always have a small hand of 3 cards from which you can discard cards and draw new ones. Then you can change one card and one card only (if you so choose) of your 5 face-up Party Platform cards before you.

For example, if you have an anti-energy card, you can get rid of it and exchange it for any card in your hand of 3 except an identical card you already have face-up in front of you. As well, you can’t switch an opposite card. You couldn’t replace an anti-energy card with a pro-energy card. Your political party simply can’t change its views that fast! You could do it over two rounds, though, if you really, really wanted to. (switch anti-energy with anti or pro-anything else in the first round, and then in the next round, switch that card to pro-energy)

Now, there’s some luck involved here. You only have a hand of 3 cards to choose from. If you drew lousy cards, then you may not even be able to switch a card you otherwise would want to. Politics is an ugly business.....

Of course, you have a few other things to look at, as well. There’s 4 elections going on simultaneously, in various stages. Changing a party platform in THIS region here may help you there, but it may HURT you in a subsequent election (nothing worse than those negative matches!....) So if you’re going to change a party platform card - which one should you change, and why? Will the “help” it gives you in one region more than offset the “hurt” it might give you in another region? Would you be better off not switching? Is this particular region worth a lot of seats? Or is it wimpy, and one to just write off?

In addition, as the game end draws near, the matching of your party platform cards with the National Opinion cards also gains more significance, as they are all worth points at game-end. If you switch a card in your party platform, you might end up losing some of those points. Yes, if you win an election, you can place one of the region’s opinion cards onto the National Opinion track, and change things favorably for yourself that way. But what if despite your best efforts, you lose that election? Then your opponent may well choose a different card - you might lose both ways!

STEP 3 - Shadow Cabinet Time.

Now, besides all your little wooden cubes and the various cards you have, you also start the game with 7 different Shadow Cabinet cards (each player starts with their own personal set of the same identical 7 cards). These cards cost money to play, which you pay to the bank. If you don’t have the money to pay for the card, then you can’t play the card. The prices range from $3000 to $25,000.

The more expensive the card, the more (and better) options it gives you. You can play a maximum of one card per region. You could play one card in one region only this turn. Or you could play 2 or 3 or even 4 cards (one each in all of the regions). At least theoretically. In the 6 games I’ve played so far, no one has ever played more than 2 Shadow Cabinet cards in any given round.

Each player, in turn order, chooses which Shadow Cabinet card or cards (if any at all) he will play, and places it (them) face down in the region(s) he wants that Shadow Cabinet card to influence. So again, turn order comes into play here. If you’re last, you can see which regions everyone else has already placed their Shadow Cabinet cards, and that may well be a factor in your own decision whether any particular region needs a Shadow Cabinet card from you.

Based on how the game is going, you may decide to not play any cards this round. It all depends on the game situation of course, and what regions you think you may need to help yourself in.

Once all the Shadow Cabinet cards have been placed, they are then flipped over, and then resolved, again in player order. Once used, a Shadow Cabinet card is discarded and can’t be used again.

The cheapest cards will only give you 2 or 3 choices. The more expensive cards will give you 5 choices, with the most expensive being the most powerful overall. You can of course only choose ONE of the choices. And sometimes it can be very tough to pick the one that is best.

The 5 possible choices are:
a) earn votes in the region
b) place or unplace a doubler on a region opinion card
c) Media takeover in the region
d) Move your own trend marker up in the region
e) Move an opponent’s trend marker down in the region

A) Earning votes is easy. Basically the more you paid for the Shadow Cabinet card, the more votes it will earn you. The cheapest card will earn you 5 votes. The most expensive card will earn you 15 votes. And getting votes is what it’s all about.

B) The Doubler. If you choose this option, you can double the importance of ONE opinion card in the region. This has a number of effects. First, it in effect gives you an “extra” card when you are counting your matches. If you place a Doubler on the region’s “Pro-Finance” card, and you have the matching “Pro-Finance” card in your party’s platform, then that counts as 2 matches instead of just one match. And if you recall, the number of matches you have, plus your trend, times the number of party meeting markers you have, will equal your votes.

Anytime you can increase any of those 3 variables, that is a good thing for you, as it means an increase in the votes you will receive.

Now if one of your opponents placed a Doubler on one of the region’s cards, and you have the OPPOSITE issue card, then that will count two AGAINST you when counting your matches, instead of just counting one against you. So a Doubler can be used to help yourself, or to hurt another player.

Once a Doubler has been placed on one of the region’s opinion cards, no other Doubler can be placed on any other opinion card in that region. Only one Doubler per region, that’s it.

Another effect that the Doubler has is that you can’t change the opinion card that is sitting beneath the Doubler. Just as Step 2 allowed you to change one of YOUR Party Platform opinion cards, there are ways later in the game that can allow you to change one of the REGION’s opinion cards. But you can’t change a region’s opinion card if it has a Doubler on it. That opinion is locked in place.

However..... one can always use the Doubler power of the Shadow Cabinet card to REMOVE an EXISTING Doubler, instead of using it to place a Doubler. So it is possible to thus “unlock” an opinion, and make it just as potentially changeable as the rest of the region’s issues.

The Doubler can be a very powerful weapon, especially as the game approaches the end. “Locking” an issue in the 5th, 6th and 7th regions can have a dramatic effect on the end game scoring. You may really want to replace one of those issues for one that better matches your own party platform, but you can’t because that issue is locked. And it may hurt you in the final National Opinion matches scoring as well.

Yes, as mentioned, you can use the Doubler power on the Shadow Cabinet card to remove the Doubler - but sometimes the other options on the Shadow Cabinet card can be (or seem to be) more attractive. You constantly have to weigh and re-weigh how your strengths and weaknesses will be affected by the choices you make in relation to how both your choices and your opponents’ choices will affect your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. There’s a LOT to think about!

C) Media Takeover. There are 5 Media spaces in each region. If any one player has a simple majority of Media Markers in the region, they get a couple of very nice advantages. So if you have 2 media markers, and the other 3 players have 1 each, you have the benefit of the advantages, since you have the majority. If there is a tie, no one gets the Media advantages.

Later in the game, a player with a Media Marker majority in a region can, if he wishes, change ONE of the REGION’s opinion cards for any of the other available opinion cards (except an exact opposite opinion on an issue - that would take 2 stages, as discussed earlier). Regions simply can’t flip-flop on an issue that fast....

Obviously, if you have the Media Marker majority, you will want to make the Opinion Card swap that best helps you (gives you the most matches) and/or most hurts your opponents (reduces their matches).

The other advantage that a Media Marker majority gives you is that another player cannot make your trend marker go down.

These 2 advantages are very nice advantages, indeed.

So - what does a Media Takeover mean? It means that you pay $4000 to the bank AND $4000 to a target player. The target player removes one of his Media Markers and you replace it with one of your own. As you can no doubt guess, this can cause a big switcheroo....

Consider the example above, where you had 2 Media Markers, and the other players had one each. If one of them does a Media Takeover on you, you will go down to 1 Media Marker and they will go up to 2 Media Markers. THEY now get the Media Marker majority advantages, and you just lost them. You did get $4000 though.....

You could also use a Media Takeover to “attack” the player who you think is most likely to win the election in that region. If you remove their Media Marker from the region (assuming they only have one in the region), and they do indeed win the election, you will be costing them points. That’s because the winner of an election gets to place their Media Marker from that election on the National Board, which can earn some pretty nice points. But if they don’t have a Media Marker to place on the National Board because you nastily took it away, then they will lose out on those points....

Or you could use a Media Takeover to purposely create a tie. With a tie, no one at all gets any of the Media Marker advantages. And that may work to your advantage, depending on the game situation.

A Media Takeover is the only way to change the balance of power in already placed Media Markers.

So many alternatives, all intertwined....

D) Move your own trend marker up. This can be anywhere from 1 to 4 spaces UP, depending on how much you paid for the card. This one strictly helps yourself, and may be enough, depending on the values of the other 2 variables, to give you lots of votes and to win the election.

E) Move an opponent’s trend marker DOWN 2, 3, or 4 spaces, again depending on how much you paid for the card. Well - if you choose this option, you can fully expect someone to try it on you later, because that “someone” won’t be too happy with you....

One more thing. Four of the seven Shadow Cabinet cards have a telephone symbol on them. If the Shadow Cabinet card you played did have a phone on it, then you must place a Coalition tile in the region. This can be a very big factor in the next step. And speaking of....

STEP 4 - the forming of coalitions.

When it comes time to decide the outcome of the current region’s election (the current region being the one with all 4 of its’ opinion cards face-up), coalitions can be critical.

All players that have a Coalition tile in the region are candidates to form a coalition in the current region. (In other words, at some point in the game, you played a Shadow Cabinet card with a phone symbol on it in that region). If you really wanted to avoid forming a coalition with someone (because you think you can win the election on your own), then you would have had to avoid playing any of the Shadow Cabinet cards with phone symbols on them in that region. Because if you don’t have a Coalition tile there, then no one can form a coalition with you. (And you can’t form one either, even if you change your mind. No coalition tile in the region means you are not eligible to form a coalition. Period.)

So for all players that DO have a Coalition tile in the current region, starting with the Start-Player, each player compares his Party Platform cards with those of his opponents:

Any TWO players that have TWO matches MAY form a coalition (one player may offer to form a coalition and the other may accept or reject the coalition).

If any TWO players have THREE or more matches, then either of them can FORCE a coalition. (if one player wants the coalition, the other player has no choice - he MUST accept the coalition).

And what do coalitions do? Basically, the 2 coalition members get to add their votes together in order to see who wins the election - them, or one of the other players. But more on that later.

Sometimes, the decision whether to form a coalition or not is easy. If you’re trailing in the votes and things don’t look all that good, but you can hook up with someone else and ride their coattails and win the election with them , you can earn some advantages and points that you otherwise wouldn’t. So in that case, you definitely want to form a coalition.

Other times, you KNOW you can win on your own and you don’t need anybody else. So you definitely DON’T want to form a coalition if you can avoid it.

But.... the really tough coalition decisions occur when it’s borderline whether you think you can win an election or not on your own.

If you DON’T form a coalition, and you DO win the election on your own, then you made a wise decision. You don’t have to share the spoils of victory.

If you DON’T form a coalition, and you DON’T win the election on your own, then you’ll be kicking yourself, because now you have nothing to show for it, except for the seats themselves you won on your own.

If you DO form a coalition, and you DO win the election and you COULDN’T HAVE won it on your own, then again, you made a wise decision. You do get some spoils of victory, even if you have to share them. Without the coalition, you wouldn’t have any spoils of victory.

If you DO form a coalition, and you DO win the election, but you COULD HAVE won it on your own, then you’ll be kicking yourself again, because now you are sharing the spoils of victory when you could have had them all to yourself.

And if you DO form a coalition, and you DON’T win the election, then you sure couldn’t have won it on your own, then, could you?

Now remember - with only 2 matches, forming coalitions are optional. If both players think it is to their advantage, they’ll form it. But if one player thinks he doesn’t need the other player’s help, then the coalition won’t get formed.

But with 3 matches - a weaker player can force a coalition on a stronger player. And the stronger player has to accept it.

Now where it gets REALLY interesting is when there are multiple matches between multiple players. It can be incredibly difficult to figure out what is best for yourself. You could end up with a coalition against a coalition against a single player. Or one coalition against 3 single players. I’ve played games where I had two optional possible coalitions with 2 different players and two forcible coalitions with the other 2 players. Trying to figure out all the possibilities can be agonizing! And again, the players go in player-order, so it’s a lot tougher if you’re first in the cycle, since you have the most choices of potential coalition partners.

A coalition is limited to 2 players. You can’t have a 3-way or 4-way coalition.

Now - depending on the game situation, you may want to target a player so that you do have more matches with them in order to force (if possible) a coalition. So earlier in the game you would have switched one of your party platform cards to match one of theirs.

Or you can see what they are trying to do, and you may want to switch one your cards so that you DON’T match.

Of course, changing your party platform cards have a lot of other ramifications too. Being able to form or not form or force a coalition is only one of them.

Layers and layers and layers, everything interlocking.

STEP 5 - New Media Markers.

Earlier, we talked about Media Takeovers. That was for switching existing Media Markers.

In this step, you get to place a NEW Media Marker in any VACANT media spot in any of the regions for the price of $4000. (So obviously, if you don’t have the money because you overspent on other things, then too bad, buckeroo. You don’t get to place a Media Marker in that case).

This is done in player turn-order, one at a time. It keeps going around and around until everyone has passed. So you might pay for and place just one Media Marker, or you might end up buying and placing several of them. No region can have more than 5 Media Markers in it, though.

STEP 6 - Media Influence.

NOW, starting with the current region, and then proceeding to the other 3 regions, the player with the simple majority gets to change ONE of the region’s opinion cards. This can be a very powerful move. You obviously will make a change which will give you another match, since that should improve your overall votes.

At least, most of the time, that’s what you will do. But there may be alternatives. If you’re in a coalition, if may be more beneficial to your coalition to make a non-match for the opposition than it is for you to make a match for yourself.

Every situation in Die Macher seems to have multiple possibilities to it. Nothing is necessarily as it first seems on the surface.

If no one has a Media Majority in a particular region, then no opinion card in that region can be changed.

STEP 7 - Organizing Party Meetings (rallies)

For $1000 each, each player in turn-order may buy Party Meeting Markers. The most you can place in any one region in any one turn is 4 markers, and the maximum you can have in a region is 10 markers.

So again, money management comes into play. Not enough money and too many things to buy. (Hmmm, that sounds vaguely familiar....)

Party Meeting Markers are of course one of the 3 variables that earn you votes:

(Number of Card Matches + Trend value) times (Number of Party Meeting Markers) = Votes.

So buying Party Meeting Markers is also very important. But as mentioned earlier, you only have a grand total of 18 of them, which have to be distributed over the course of the game on the 4 regions in play at the time. In other words, you don’t have enough of them to place them in every region you would otherwise want to do. More limited resources management....

STEP 8 - the Opinion Polls

If there’s one aspect of Die Macher that I don’t care for, it’s this step. I hate this phase. Well, maybe “hate” is a little strong. It’s just a bit too much of a crapshoot, in my opinion. In fact, whenever this step comes up in the game, I always refer to it as “Las Vegas” time....

The Opinion Poll cards are yet another deck of cards in Die Macher. Starting with the current region, and then continuing with the other 3 regions, the players take turns (in player order) bidding on the right to “buy” (or “publish”) an opinion poll.

The catch is, you are bidding blind. You don’t know what you’re going to get if you win the bid (other than being poorer). You might bid $1000 and win a very good card or a very bad card. Or you might bid $30,000 and get the same card. You are bidding BLIND. There are no clues whatsoever as to whether the card will help you or not. It’s really straight luck.

Of course, nobody is MAKING you bid on these cards. You can sit out the bidding if you want to do so. But you can still be affected by the cards, even if you don’t get one yourself.

So what is an Opinion Poll card? It is a card that affects the Trend Markers of each of the political parties (players) in the game. It lists each of the 5 parties in the game. And then, for each specific party, it gives one of the 5 possible Trend Marker moves:
a) up 3
b) up 2
c) up 1
d) down 1
e) down 2

Every card is different. So if you are the Grune party, you might get a card that says Grune up 3. Which is great. Or you might get a card that says Grune down 2. Which is rotten.

After buying the card, you look it over. You can “accept” the card if you wish. If you accept it, then you can choose either one or two of the a, b, c, d, e options to take effect. You could just move yourself up. You could just move one opponent down. Or you could move yourself up AND one opponent down. Or you could move two opponents down.

Well, you say, that’s not so bad. There’s a few options there.

Yes, but.... at least half the time, it seems, the card is useless. It moves you down (which you’re not going to do), or it moves your opponents up (which you’re also not going to do). Or it moves somebody else up or down when they’re not really involved in this particular election. So it’s useless.

Now, in those cases where the card is useless, your alternative option then is to roll two dice and advance your National Party Membership up the amount of the dice roll. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it certainly FEELS like a waste of money if that’s all you get, especially if you bid a lot of money for it. At least to me, it does.

So - you bid on these cards blind for 2 main reasons:

1) you hope you are lucky and you get to move your own trend marker up and/or your main opponents down

2) you are already high up on the trend marker scale, so you are bidding as a defensive move in order to prevent your opponents from getting a card that possibly moves YOU down.

I guess what I don’t like about it is that it seems so random compared to the rest of the game. Las Vegas here we come!

During the bidding, once you pass, you can’t get back in. It might be nice if the first player to pass could then look at the card in question. Then, for say $3000 or $5000, or some other pre-arranged and agreed upon amount paid to the bank, the bidders still in the bidding could ask one only of these two yes or no questions: Does it move me up? or Does it move Player A (or B, or C, or D) up? (Of course, the question must be answered truthfully by the person who passed!!!)

The bidders still wouldn’t know a lot, but at least they would have a little bit of meaningful information that would help reduce the (to me) total and complete randomness of it. It also might make for some interesting bidding. If I KNOW the card up for grabs moves me down, and it also moves the opponent up - and HE KNOWS it too, of course - then you can be sure the bidding will be a lot more intense.

STEP 9 - Converting Party Meeting Markers into Votes

This is first done with the 3 regions that aren’t the current region. In player order, each player with 5 or more party meeting markers in the region MAY convert them into votes (using the 3-variable formula already mentioned). Generally, if you can get a bunch of votes because your matches and your trend marker is favorable, you tend to go for it. The old bird in the hand thing.... But there’s also another reason for doing it - step 10.

STEP 10 - Voting Majority

Immediately after Step 9, any player who has more votes in the region than all the rest of the players combined, can exchange ONE of the region’s opinion cards. So if you have a whopping one vote, and everyone else has zero, you can change one of the cards. Again, improving your matches and your potential for future votes.

STEP 11 - Converting Party Meeting Markers into Votes in the current region.

Exactly the same as Step 9, except it’s for the current region, and there is no 5 or more party meeting marker limit. All Party Meeting Markers must be exchanged and converted into votes based on the 3-variable formula.

STEP 12 - Determining Mandate in Current Region

Each region has its own card with a conversion table for changing votes into seats. If you’re contesting the 80-seat region, and you have 50 votes, then you get 80 seats. And if it’s the 15-seat region, and you have 50 votes, then you get 15 seats. And the number of seats you get goes down as your number of votes goes down. And if you have 4 or less votes, in any region, that gets you a big fat goose-egg. You need at least 5 votes in a region to earn a smattering of seats.

The number of seats you won is your score for that round.

STEP 13 - Determining the Victor

This is where turn-order can be important. The party with the most votes wins. That seems fairly obvious. However, for game purposes, the vote-marker stops at 50. If you’re at the 50-space, and another player also gets to the 50-space, AFTER you, then they have beat you by a nose (they came from behind and just nosed you out - shades of Win, Place and Show!)

Now, don’t forget coalitions. For determining who won the election, the number of votes the coalition got together CAN go over 50. So if the coalition has one guy at 31 and one guy at 20, then their coalition has 51 points, and will beat any single player who is at the maximum 50-space.

So: add up the votes. Whoever has the most total votes (single player or coalition) wins the election. If there is a tie for the winning votes, whoever got there LAST has won by a nose.

STEP 14 - Election Consequences

A) a Single player win. This is the ideal situation if the single player who won happens to be you.... because you get to do the following:

1) If you have a Media Marker in the region, place it in the Media Marker track on the board. Remember, this scores you points at the end of the game.

2) Take one OR two of the region’s opinion cards and place them on the National Opinion board. Remember, your party platform cards that match with the opinion cards on the National Opinion board earn you National Party Membership points during the game, and your matches also earn you victory points at the end of the game.

A word about the National Opinion board. It has room for 5 opinion cards. When opinion cards are placed on it, they must be placed in the 1st available empty spaces, from left to right. As the game goes on, more cards will get placed. Once the board has all 5 spaces filled, an opinion card can be replaced by any other opinion card. This is done by removing the card you want to remove, and shifting the cards to the right of it, over one space to the left. The new card you are placing goes into space 5. (The reason for all this: the various opinion cards are worth different victory point values depending on where they are in the 1st to 5th order).

Now, there are exceptions..... Unlike the regional opinion cards which can’t switch to the exact opposite of an issue in one single switch, the National ones can. If Pro-Military is in the 2nd position, and I can place an Anti-Military Issue Opinion card, then it goes into the 2nd position. The Military Issue (Pro or Con) is still the 2nd most important issue.

Also, much like the Doublers, an issue card can be played on top of an identical issue card that is already on the National Board. So there might be two Pro-Education cards there. If that’s the case, then the ONLY way to change that issue is to play the exact opposite Education card there. You can’t just remove a card and shift the others along.

So there’s a lot to think about with the placement of these cards, because they factor heavily in the final scoring.

B) A Single Player Win by a Nose!

1) Both the player who won by a nose and the player who lost by a nose get to place their media markers on the Media Marker track (assuming they have one in the region).

2) The player who won by a nose may place or change ONE only opinion card on the National Board.

C) A Coalition Victory

1) Both players in the coalition get to place their media markers on the Media Marker track (again, assuming they have one in the region).

2) Each player in the coalition, starting with the player of the coalition with the most votes, may change ONE only opinion card on the National Board.

STEP 15 - Increase National Party Membership

This is more scoring. Each Opinion Card position on the National Board has a number of points that your score on the National Party Membership scoretrack will go up by, if you can match the various National Party Opinion cards with your Party Platform cards.

STEP 16 - Clear the Board (Shades of Showmanager!)

Basically, getting ready for the next round. The just concluded region now gets a new region card, and one face-up and 3 face-down Opinion cards. Each of the 3 other regions now has one of its’ face-down cards turned over. So what was the 2nd region, is now the current region

STEP 17 - Money

You need money to bid on the Start Player Auction, to use your Shadow Cabinet cards, to do Media Takeovers, to buy Media Markers, to buy Party Meeting Markers, and to bid on and buy Las Veg - I mean Opinion Polls. This is how you get money:

You receive $1000 times the number of seats you won in the previous election. So if you won zero seats.......

Now obviously, if the first region is a big one (seatwise), there’s going to be a lot more money about for the next couple of regions. If the first region was a small one seatwise, then the money available to buy everything will be a lot tighter.

In addition, at the end of rounds 1, 3, and 5 only, each player ALSO gets $1000 times the number of their points on the National Party Membership Board.

STEP 18 - Party Contributions

There’s one more way to get money before the next round starts! Each player has an identical set of 5 Party Contribution cards. These each have a different dollar value on them (from $10,000 to $50,000). Each card also has indicated on it a certain number of dice you must roll.

In player order, each player plays one of his Party Contribution cards in front of him, EITHER face up or face down. Once all players have played their cards, then the cards are resolved.

If you played the card face up, then you receive the amount of money as indicated on the card from the bank. Then you roll the number of dice as indicated on the card, and move your National Party Membership marker DOWN by that amount (maximum of 3 spaces).

If you played the card face down, you receive no money. Now you roll the dice as indicated on the card and instead move your National Party Membership marker UP by that amount. In addition, if there were no ties among the face down cards, and you had played the highest $-value face down card, you get to throw 3 more extra dice to move your National Party Membership marker UP that much more.

STEP 19 - back to Step 1.

And after 4 hours and 7 elections, the game is over. You add up your total seats won, your Media Marker points, your National Party Membership points (and bonuses), and your National Opinion card matches (and bonuses), and add them all up for your grand total. And just maybe you won....

Die Macher is, quite simply, a tremendous game. If you can get 3 or 4 other people together who are willing to learn and play it, they (and you) will be well rewarded with a fulfilling, satisfying, gaming experience.

We played 3 times in 3 weeks quite recently. We were all very enthusiastic about it every time.

A lot of people have mentioned that winning the final election can be huge. Well, yes, it CAN be. If you can manage to pull off a single-party victory in the final election (there are no coalitions allowed in the 7th and final election), you will have the opportunity to change TWO of the final Opinion cards in the National Opinions. And yes, quite often, that can be decisive in making the difference in the final points, since you will favor yourself if you can, and hurt your opponents if you can, and it could mean a swing of 20 or 30 points or more.

But it’s not a lock. Our last game proved that you can lose both the first election (which is also a good one to win) and the last election and still win the game. The Doublers and the double cards on the National Board can severely restrict what is able to be changed to favorable cards.

Die Macher has lots of depth, and offers lots of room for fresh strategies. After 6 playings, we are still discovering new things, and getting those “ahhhhh” moments. It is truly a remarkable game.

Every time we play it, there’s always lots of post-game discussion. I’ve found with our group that any game that generates a LOT of talk and discussions about strategies after the game is one that you can be pretty sure is a winner. And Die Macher is.

I give it a 9 rating. It would have been a 10 if it weren’t for those Las Vegas cards.....