Our review

Conflicts within and outside Poland and Lithuania

The Magnates: A Game of Power

The power of Cards

I would call my self a died-in-the-wool frequent gamer. I have played a lot of board games, have attended quite a few game fairs and have had many games explained to me at those fairs. Usually those explanations follow pretty much the same procedure: You sit down at a free table, wait for the explanation and then play the game. Sometimes we did not finish a game. Big surprises did not come up on those occasion over the last years. Why do I start a review with such intrinsically trivial sentences?

Because I was very much surprised at this year’s SPIEL in Essen. This surprise happened at the booth of Phalanx Games, which is a Polish company with a preference for historical games. As usual, I did sit down at a table with the intention to try out The Magnates: A Game of Power. So far, so good. But then the surprise happened: Despite a lot of protests from some players the lady who did the explaining  refused to explain the complete game. She only did explain the current phase as the game. I have to add that the game is played over a maximum of four rounds, and that each round is split into five phases, whereby phases 1 and 5 are happening automatically. The other phases 2 to 4 are very similar. All players have a set of 13 cards of their family for each round, players represent the heads of those families. Those sets are equal as regards to games mechanisms. Each card shows a value of 2 to 14 power points. Over the course of three phases those 13 cards must be distributed to 14 cards, and that must be done face down and simultaneously.

In Phase 2, the Senate phase, the four Senate cards are distributed. Players must bid on three of those four Senate cards by placing one of their family cards face down next to it. Who bid the highest power card, gets the Senate card.

In Phase 3, the Sejm phase (Sejm was the Estates Parliament of the Polish-Lithuanian Nobility Republic) five cards are revealed. No each player must place one family card next to each Sejm card. Again the player who placed the highest power card receives the Sejm card.

In Phase 4, the Conflict phase, five conflict cards are revealed. Again, each player places one family card next to each conflict card. Then, for one conflict card at a time, the family cards placed next to a conflict card are revealed. If the total of the family card values is higher than the Threat value depicted on the Conflict card, players have won the Conflict together and the player who did play the highest card earns a bonus. Should players lose the conflict, something very bad happens according to the information on the conflict card, usually the player who contributed the lowest card is hit the hardest. Conflict cards that were won are taken out of play, the other remain on the table and you turn up fewer cards accordingly in the next round.

Furthermore, the conflict cards are assigned to the big neighboring realms of Poland-Lithuania – Austria, Prussia, Sweden, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. When there is a minimum of one lost conflict on display face up in front of three of those realms, Poland-Lithuania is split and all players have lost the game: Historical facts on this: The real Poland-Lithuania was split in 1795 between Austria, Prussia and Russia and thus disappeared from maps of the world for more than 100 years, at least as an independent sovereign state.

Most of the cards, regardless if Senate, Sejm or Conflict cards, allow you – when you win them – to place estates of your family into one of the five provinces marked on the board, or to remove estates of your opposing players. Other cards can raise the number of power points on family cards that you bid, or manipulate the game in other, but similar ways.

At the end of the game there is a scoring, players receive wealth for their family estates and majorities in provinces and you win with most wealth.

But now back to the lady explaining the game who kept refusing to explain the complete game. In hindsight I am forced to agree with her; this method definitely works with The Magnates. So we players had now idea what we had coming to us and therefore had to more or less randomly distribute our cards in the first round, which did not make a big difference, after all. Because I also distributed my cards randomly in the following two rounds when I already did know what would happen. I admit that at this point my actions were also a bit governed by frustration, due to the rather limited options to actively shape the game.

In Round 4, to my surprise, something like tension or thrill occurred, due to the manipulation options due to the Sejm cards collected so far and also due to the looming final scoring. In this round, for the first time, I did place my cards selectively and finally had the feeling that I was actively shaping the game.

In the end I did win the game very clearly, despite the fact that the other player s at the table did not follow my strategy of distributing my family cards over three rounds completely randomly.

Well, what opinion can I have of an alleged strategy game that you can when by playing your cards randomly? And I am firmly convinced that selective placing of the cards would not have resulted in a noticeably better result. Maybe the result would have been even worse, due to the psychological effect of the ostentatious shuffling of cards before playing them.

My first impression was bad, really bad! That bad that I did hope that we might lose three conflicts in Round 2  so that the game would end really quickly.

Well, and at the end of the day the game was not really that bad, two of my three fellow players even had a positive impression and declared that they would want to play again. Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I have played a few worse games, albeit also a lot of very much better ones.

If you want to have fun with The Magnates: A Game of power you must have a preference for the historic Polish setting, because this historical context is the great strength of the game. At least from my non-historian point of view the game seems to be a very well made and very accurately researched simulation of the then current political system and of the circumstances that led to the downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian empire. The historical details are stated on each card. If you are interested, you can learn a lot about the Polish-Lithuanian history.

Markus Wavra

Players: 2-4

Age: 14+

Time: 60+

Designer: Jaro Andruszkiewicz, Waldek Gumienny

Artist: Jarek Nocoń, Piotr Słaby

Price: ca. 40 Euro

Publisher: Phalanx Games 2015

Web: www.phalanxgames.pl

Genre: Auction

Users: With friends

Version: en

Rules: en pl

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Simple basic mechanisms

Beautiful components

Not very predictable

Compares to:

Friedrich, Maria

Other editions:

Polish edition, Phalanx

My rating: 2

Markus Wawra: At first glance a strategy game, at least as regards to design and components. But that it is not. It is a simple auction game, with a hidden” auction as a basic mechanism) in an opulent historical setting. For me personally it offers too few option to actively influence play. Therefore it is not my game. But at least I learned something about Polish-Lithuanian history.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0