Our Review

Colonialization of Africa

Mombasa

Shares & Stocks, a bit different

At SPIEL in Essen 2015 it was rather difficult to get by without contact with a game by Alexander Pfister because too many good games were published in his name. The highlight among them, at least for me: Mombasa, published by eggertspiele together with Pegasus Spiele.

Players assume the roles of investors; in those roles they invest into trading companies in order to earn money and get rich. Those companies will vie in the course of the game for influence in Africa. Events take place in the time of colonialism, the game only looks at the economics aspects. Other, dark, aspects that are unavoidable connected to this topic, like war, exploitation and slavery, have not been touched upon. There were some discussion on the ethical tenability of the topic of colonialism, which can be found elsewhere. In this review I will not enter the discussion but evaluate the game as game, with a focus on game mechanics and fun in playing it.

Mombasa is played over seven rounds. The core of each round is the planning phase. Players hold action cards in hand. At the beginning of the game, each player can only deploy three of those action cards, face down, later in the game you can unlock up to two additional action slots which enables you to deploy the respective additional numbers of action cards. What sounds rather easy here, is a real heavy-weight in reality, because the decisions that you take in that phase are heavy-weights in themselves. You not only plan the complete current round of the game, and small mistakes can end up being very much regretted in later rounds, but more on that later.  

After the planning phase, which all players implement in parallel and at the same time, follows the action phase:

In turn, beginning with the starting player, all players implement actions or bonus actions. Actions are determined by the action cards that were played, the number of available bonus actions depends on the number of players; Basically, the bonus actions are available to all players, if you do it first, the action is yours, but some bonus actions demand meeting various conditions in case of certain action cards that were played, for instance sufficient investment in one of the four companies, or simply payments of money.

Shortly summarized, actions and bonus actions can result – by different ways and means – in the following:

• Acquisition of new, better action cards
• Investment in the four companies, which, on the one hand, allows you acquisition of shares for the final scoring and, on the other, unlocks bonus actions or small permanent advantages.
• Expansion of companies to raise their value for the final scoring and to acquire small additional once-only bonuses.
• Advancement on the diamond track, which results in unlocking of an additional action slot, and scores points for the final scoring.
• Advancement on the bookkeeping track, which results in unlocking of an additional action slot, scores points in the final scoring and earns you small once-only bonuses.
• Acquisition of the starting player position for next round
• Acquisition of additional actions for the next round
• Earning money; money is a condition for many actions and points in the final scoring.

If you cannot do another action or do not want to do one, you must or can end his action phase and may take on of your discard piles back in hand and then place all action cards that were played in this round on the discard piles corresponding to the respective action slots. The important detail here is that the choice of action slot in the planning phase determines the discard pile on which it will be placed. As you can take back only one discard pile per round, it can take several rounds to get an individual card back in hand and to be able to play it again.

In the final scoring, after about two hours playing time, the shares in companies are multiplied with their value, and you add the scores for advancement of diamond and bookkeeping tracks as well as cash. If you have the highest total score, you win.

In this review I did not enter into the topic of how interlocked and interaction the various actions are, because that would really exceed the scope. Yet this interaction is the biggest part of the allure of this game, as in many other of the games that can be compared with it. And then there is the necessary far-ahead-planning that I did already mention. Both aspects combined has the effect that Mombasa must be ranged in the upper end of a complexity scale for board games. Therefore, Mombasa can only be very provisionally recommended to casual players and even experienced players should expect to have to play several games until they have grasped Mombasa completely.

When you have mastered the mechanics of the game, another aspect is revealed – Mombasa is highly interactive. You need constantly to keep an eye on other players and their options: The rivalry for majorities – it is good to know which types of actions players have in hand; the permanent dilemma when implementing actions – which one do I do first so that nobody snatches it up first? Such details can result in large point variations in the final score. Thus Mombasa promises to be of long-term interest and variety, as there are several strategies to try out.

As regards to components and design, publisher and designer did a nice job, only 12 wrongly die-cut coins lead to deductions in the B or Artistic Score. The rules are easy to understand and exemplarily designed.

Markus Wawra

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 150+

Designer: Alexander Pfister

Artist: Klemens Franz, Andreas Resch

Price: ca. 40 Euro

Publisher: eggertspiele / Pegasus 2015

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Stocks and development game

Users: For experts

Version: de

Rules: de en fr it

In-game text: no

Comments:

Innovative card mechanism

Many interlocking action options

Very interactive

Very complex

Beautiful components

Compares to:

Imperial, Tzolk'in, Dungeon Lords

Other editions:

Gigamic, R&R Games, uplay.it; announced: Lacerta, LudoSentinel, The Game Master

My rating: 7

Markus Wawra:

I am always glad to be able to lay hands on a game that can make itself noted with a new mechanism. Mombasa does that for me, that is, I cannot remember with a game that is directly comparable. The innovative mechanism of replenishing cards demands long-term planning. As all actions are very intensively interlocking and interaction, Mombasa also meets my demands for a complex strategy game that fills an entire evening. In my opinion, Mombasa should not be missing from any board game collection.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 2

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0