Maracaibo

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. 9 out of 10

   adamgrey

   I think this is my favorite Pfister game. The theme is wonderful and I love the interwoven story, the multi-use cards, and the rondel.

2. 7 out of 10

   amodman

   I played without the story. I suspect the story might make this more interesting and variable. I'd need to know more about it.

3. 8 out of 10

   4Corners

   Another interesting gamers game by Pfister (he’s on quite a roll), this time you’re sailing the Caribbean, plundering, colonizing exploring all in an effort to score points. The game lasts 4 rounds, and the length of these rounds is determined by player actions; you can decide to take your time and get lots of actions or race ahead, possibly to get key actions and/or to more quickly end the round as once one player finishes a “lap”, this triggers the end of the round. Each player has a player board with several bonuses or abilities that can be unlocked and a hand of cards that can either be discarded to unlock these bonuses or built for end game points and in game bonuses and abilities. There’s a massive amount of cards so some good variety, although many are duplicated or similar. On your turn, you sail your ship and stop at either a big city (this is where you can discard to unlock your player board) or a village where the further you move, the more village actions you can do (so another incentive to move further). The city actions change from game to game (there are tiles that you place similar to great western trail) and while the village actions are initially limited and simple, through building cards or unlocking some of your player board actions, you can potentially improve these actions. Some cards give one time bonuses, some give assistant actions (you do this in place of a village action), some give passive abilities, and some give an end of round income. At the end of a round players get a money and a point income. There seem to be several avenues to take in this game (building cards, prestige cards of which one is introduced for all players to access each round, explorer track where you move a guy along a track getting a bonus where you land, in game income generation and finally end game results of the combat you did in game (this is similar to the stocks in Mombasa)). It’s a good game, it plays 2-4 players well, and it similar elements to the designers other games, and yet still feels fairly fresh and original. That said, I find it “clunky”; the rules are a bit of a mess in some areas, sorting the cards is involved, there’s a whole legacy aspect that seems cool, but I haven’t even attempted to try it due to its opaqueness, and the game seems to only be playable (provide more viable strategies) if you use the “hard” level, but this is misleading as it’s not harder and it’s not made clear that this is the case in the rules. It also takes a surprisingly long time to play even with 2 players. Own the [boardgame=338013]Uprising[/boardgame] expansion, the [boardgame=296519]La Armada[/boardgame], [boardgame=316190]Flying Dutchman[/boardgame] and the [boardgame=313600]Own Monument[/boardgame] promos.