Games Session
|
|
| Date: |
20th August 2004 |
| Game Played: |
Maka Bana |
|
|
| Players |
Result |
Win |
Ratings |
| Mark G |
12 |
P |
7 |
| John |
12 |
P |
7 |
| Garry |
11 |
|
6 |
| Mark K |
7 |
|
6 |
Next
up was a game from Essen last year. Maka Bana is a very attractively
produced bluffing game by Francois Haffner and released by Tilsit
Editions.
The game is set on a tropical
island with four beaches and the players are aiming to build groups of
beach huts together and control the beaches by having the most huts
there. Each player has a set of cards and chooses a combination of cards
to identify the location where they would like to build. These cards
are laid face down but one card is revealed to give an indication of where
you might build. Players then can each place a 'Tiki' on a space that
blocks any action on that space in the current round. Cards are revealed
and where possible the players place a newly constructed hut in the
location they chose. As an alternative to building players can choose to
try and repaint an existing opponent's hut to their colour. In this
instance, the Tiki can be placed on a location to protect yur hut if
you're feeling threatened. The game continues in this fashion until a
player has built all 10 of their huts or one of the four beaches is full
of huts or Tikis. In the former case, the game ends straight away; in the
later, one final round is played before scoring. Scoring is based on
groups of adjacent huts: a sole hut is worth 1 point, a second worth 2,
and each additional one is worth 3 points. Then whoever has the most huts
on each of the four beaches receives 4 bonus points, with two-way ties
sharing the points. Three or more tying for most huts receive no bonus
points. The highest total wins.
This game is quite a bit of fun, with
lots of second-guessing going on. Getting adjacent huts early on means you
are going to be a target for repainting and you may be forced to try and
protect these. We all tried to spread out initially but even so one or two
of the Tikis were successful in stopping some from building. John,
however, seemed to build in places we were unable to guess and he
progressed fairly steadily, but without any large groupings. Eventually,
one of the beaches was filled and we made our last attempts to grab more
points. I concentrated on getting one of the beach bonuses, which I
achieved but wasn't able to match John and Mark G's collection of
huts. Mark K and I both missed out on building a few too many times,
allowing the other two to tie for first place.
