by Choubi
(photo by ulible)
Check out my other [geeklist=49821]Multiple Player Reviews[/geeklist]
Disclaimer
Ok, just so you know where I come from and how the review will go. I'll start by an introduction so you know how I came to know the game and what my expectations of it were, then a little summary of how the game plays and what it looks like, you can skip that part if you're already familiar with it and the rules as I won't go much into detail here. I'll finish by my own opinion and my rating of the game. After that, I'll summarize what my playing group feels about the game.
About me, I started playing and fell in love with heavy games (Serenissima and Caylus). I began to play lighter games later like Odin's Ravens and Kahuna. I like mostly all types of games though I like when these are tense. I also usually don't like heavily luck-dependent games.
My favourites are Through The Ages, Race For The Galaxy, Imperial, Caylus, Dungeon Twister, Monster Mash.
Games I didn't like: Pillars of the Earth, Mykerinos, Caylus Magna Carta, Aton.
Introduction
I first heard of Maharaja through Tom Vasel's top 100 games of 2008 (I think it was the 2008 edition). It seemed like an interesting game for 3+ players that included some nice strategies and good decision making. I expected a medium weight game in the same vein as Puerto Rico. I finally bought it when it went on sale at the online website where I usually purchase my games at around 15 euros.
What is the game about
Maharaja was designed by Kramer and Kiesling. Though it is their only game I've tried yet, it seems the pair has designed a great deal of very good games.
In Maharaja, players take control of architects trying to impress the Maharaja. In order to do this, they will build great palaces throughout India, in cities the maharaja will visit.
Agra and its numerous marble palaces. See how the maharaja enjoys the view! (that's th big black guy in the picture!)
(photo by photocurio)
The goal of the game is to be the first player to build a seventh palace. But palaces aren't easy to build, they cost money, a lot of money actually.
The board is divided in 8 cities (Jaipur, Jodhpur and Delhi among others). Each turn, the maharaja will come and visit one of these cities. He will then issue generous grants to the architects who have most impressed him.
Here is how a turn is decomposed. First, the maharaja is moved to the city he'll visit, players then secretely choose which two actions they'll want to carry out during the turn using their action disk.
Action disks. The yellow player has chosen to build one palace with one action and to win 2 roupies with its second one.
(photo by Coffeebike)
Afterwards, players simultaneously reveal their chosen action and they will carry them out in order.
In order to build a palace, a player's architect has to be in the given city. Te players will therefore move their architects from city to city numerous times. However, to get from one city to another, you need to pass through built villages. The nice thing here is that if you pass through an opponent's village, you'll have to pay him so in addition to building palaces, you might want to ensure you control enough routes to move freely on the board.
Look at the roads going from Jodhpur. In order to go to Jaipur (upper-right city), player yellow will have to cross two blue villages, he'll therefore have to pay the blue player 2 roupies. Player blue could go there freely and make as many back and forth as he wants (moving isn't an action and players can do it before, between or/and after their two actions). However, no player can take the upper left route as no village has been built.
(photo by Geoman)
However, to build these villages, players need to have houses in their reserve which means that if you want to cover a lot of territory, you'll need to lose some actions replenishing your reserve with more houses. These houses can be built very cheaply in cities too which will help you impress the maharaja, albeit less effectively than palaces.
One of your possible actions is also to move one of these houses around enabling you to prevent another player to take a route right after you.
There are two very interesting actions left to discuss.
The first one concerns wich city the maharaja will visit next. There is a city ladder on the side of the board which shows the order in which the maharaja will visit te cities. Players can actually take actions to tweak the order, for example, if one player is very good in Jaipur, he migt want to move it forward several times in the game so that the city is visited several times throughout the game!
The governor's track. Next city is the blue one, and the one after that is the marron. Once a city is visited, the tile goes to the back of the line. Assume a player has a big lead on the green city, he might want to choose the action to move the green tile two spaces downward such that it will be the next visited city instead of the blue one.
(photo by matthew.marquand)
The last action concerns player roles. In maharaja, players can take several roles during the game. These roles will grant you some abilities but will also determine the order in which players will play their actions during the turn, the player with the crappiest role going first. One of your action is to change your role, either by exchanging yours with an opponents.
The different available roles. The 6th one allows you to build palaces for 9 roupies instead of 12, the 2nd one gets you 1 roupie each turn. The first one just allows you to go first (no special ability)
(photos by 4corners)
Once players have played, a scoring phase begins in the visited city. The player with most point will win a lot of roupies, the second player will win a little less and so forth and so on (the mount depends on the number of players).
A Highly contested city. The palace in the middle awards 3 points while every other palace awards only 1 point (this is because the middle palace is built on top of a hill so it is the first thing the maharaja sees when entering a city! Each house is 1 point and if your architect is present, 1 more point. One of the roles makes your surrounding palaces worth 2 points instead of 1. Here, player green has 3(middle palace)+2(surrounding palaces)+2(houses)+1(architect)=8 points. Yellow has 5 points (8 wit the right role). Red has 3. In case of a tie, player wit the best role wins.
(photo by Lord_Prussian)
Once the money awards have been dealt, another turn starts. Once a player builds his 7th palace, the game ends at the end of the turn. In case 2 players built their 7th palace in the same turn, money left s the tiebreaker (assuming of course one of the two player didn't manage to build an 8th palace in the same turn!).
That's it for the gameplay, let's see what I think of the game.
Random Musings
I must say I have grown to really like this game a lot. Yes, I admit there aren't that many strategies in here, nor that the game is particularly deep but still it provides with very good and difficult decisions to make. Some turns feel like a puzzle where you try to figure out if you can beat your opponents on the turn's city. The exchange of roles can really become nasty and thanks to that, there are some very good screwage possibilities.
Although it might seem that the first one to build a palace in any given city is virtually certain of wining the city each time it comes up, we found this was absolutely not true as houses can be built very fast and fr cheap and enable you to pull out some nice come back.
Personnally, I like concentrating on few cities and spending actions to make these come back as often as possible while a friend of mine usually likes to build a little bit everywere and is never really safe.
I like the fact that there is a lot going on, the way you open yourself routes to control the map or to rely on other players doing it for you.
The roles are balanced enough (although with few players, the very small roles usually aren't as good since you can still get first place with good roles).
To note, the rulebook proposes 2 variants, the first one lets players have 2 roles at once, I have no real preference between playing with 2 roles or just one althoug both games feel different. The other variant gives us another role (the 7th role in the pictures above). This role seems awfully broken to us and never play with it anymore. The role allows us to take one additional action on our turn (or more precisely, win a chit that one could spend in any other turn to perform one additional action). We figured, one always had to choose the action change a role as you could use your first ability before switching, then getting a new action point that you could spend on anything... (Worst case scenario, you use that point to do what you intended to do first!).
Apart from my first play that was ruined by this 7th role, all subsequent times maharaja hit the table, I had a great time.
To wrap up, Maharaja provides several doable strategies, although they might not be as diverse as some other games nor as deep. It provides a perfect level of interaction where, even though you can't directly hit the other players, you sure can pull some nasty things by stealing their victories or anticipating their tweaking of the governor track and use it yourself, blocking someone out of a city by removing your villages...
Of course, the fact that absolutely NO luck is present is a big plus for me and maybe people will think it turns the game dry as it often does but here, there are enough things going on that you can't anticipate too much and in the end, there is always something you didn't see coming happening!
One last note: the marble palaces are gorgeous!
Overall, I rate this game an 8.
What my game group thinks
Laurène
Laurène is my girlfriend and was initiated to gaming by me, her first hit was Race For The Galaxy, she loves card games like Dominion, Lost Cities, Court of The Medici, as well as real brain burners like Caylus, Dungeon Twister, Through The Ages and Imperial. She also likes Galaxy Trucker, Princes of Florence and Agricola.
Not one of her favourites, I don't think she'd ever suggest playing it but I'm quite sure she wouldn't turn down a play if that's what the other wanted to play.
Matthieu
Matthieu likes mostly any kind of game, except the really heavy ones. His favourites are Settlers, Puerto Rico, Lost Cities, Serenissima, Agricola and Princes of Florence but isn't keen on games like Caylus or Imperial.
Although Maharaja seems to be exactly the kind of game that Matthieu would like, he didn't appreciate playing it. I think both times he played he got confused with the rules (both plays were far apart) and that lessened his enjoyment of the game. He would prefer play Puerto Rico without a doubt.
Bassem
Bassem came to gaming through me, he played Caylus and this is to this day his favourite game, he really wants brain-burning games with absolutely NO luck. Now, he is a bit more open and has started to enjoy games like Shazamm! though his preference still go to heavier games. He is a very competitive player (he's the only one with me capable of getting angry over a game). To him, games are a kind of sport. He's in it for the competition.
Although Maharaja is definitely lighter than Caylus, it is a game that Bassem enjoys playing competitively and he really gets into it, pondering every single one of his moves. I guess the no-luck factor really appeals to him a lot, as well as the numerous screwage opportunities present.
Vincent
Vincent is the less 'player' of us all, he usually comes just to spend time with friends and is rarely into the game, not really trying to win as hard as us. We usually mock him because he has some really weird ideas in games sometime but this is basically because he doesn't really try very hard. Some games however have engrossed him pretty much like Dungeon Twister or Serenissima.
The game is meh for him. I am positive he plays this to spend time with us and doesn't really like the game, like Puerto Rico or Caylus.
Thanks to ulible, photocurio, Coffeebike, Geoman, matthew.marquand, 4corners and Lord_Prussian for the photos
If you have any comments on how to make these reviews better, don't hesitate to tell me, I'm always happy to hear good criticism. Also, if you see a game in my collection you'd like me to review, go ahead and ask!
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