PLAYED FOR YOU

Malacca

Goods, pirates and Governor

Trade ships sail the Malacca Straights - during 12 rounds you try to amass the biggest treasure, be it from trade, piracy or premiums handed out by the governor.

You begin with three cards for attack, trade and defense plus five silver coins. In each round a ship is revealed and you choose an action card, put it face-down on the table and place an amount of money on it, your "bid" for the round. Then all cards are revealed and evaluated: When the sum of attack values on all cards is higher than the defense value, the ship has been conquered: If you played trade or defense, you lose your money, it is added to the freight value and distributed evenly among all attackers. If you played attack, you take back your money and get a share of the loot. When the defense value is higher, the ship has defended itself - traders get back their money and the same among from the bank, defenders take their money and share the bids of the attackers. When at least one attack was played, each defender takes special action card, which can be used once. They give you higher values for trade, attack or defense and the choice to wait and choose your action later. Attackers lose their bids and also half of their remaining money.

In variants you randomly assign captains' characters with special abilities or you can buy an item card at the start of a round, before the new ship is revealed.

Malacca offers a cute mix of bluff, risk and part information like freight value of the ships and bids of other players, that is, if you are not one of the first players in the round - all in all a game in which you rely heavily on your assessment of other players.

Players: 2-8

Age: 9+

Time: 30+

Designer: Jiří & Jan Daněk, Jan Drevikovsky, Jiří Dvořák, Krystof Kozak, Stepan Pudlak

Artist: Jan Drevikovsky

Price: ca. 14 Euro

Publisher: Loris Games 2013

Web: www.lorisgames.cz

Genre: Card selection, evaluation

Users: For families

Users: With friends

Special: Many players

Version: multi

Rules: cz de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Basically an auction game, based on little real information

Fast and witty, the rounds are quickly resolved

Works better with higher numbers of players

Compares to:

Auction games with partially known stakes and information

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 3

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 2

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0