Marrakesh

I am not objective, i love Feld. But is a great game full of things to do.

Lots of very similar tracks to move up, choices felt a bit obvious. Still a lot of fun, just a bit disappointing that it felt more like a roll-and-write than a classic Feld game.

1 play / 3 players (essential edition)

LIKE: It's satisfying to see the game actions get more and more powerful over the course of the game. It takes a play to see that progress. I like the inter-connected-ness of the actions and how every "keshi" is valuable, being able to spend them in clever ways. Euro-point salad, which I enjoy. Difficult to accomplish everything. I liked the design of the dual-use keshi: selecting three for actions, then drafting them from the tower for action boosters.

DISLIKE: Some randomness disappointed me when I was flipping over the oasis tiles and not getting anything to sync up. It's also random where some keshis can get stuck in the tower, but I also think that's a part of the charm. There's also randomness in which scrolls reveal for player power synergy. I think the player reference cards could have been helpful, rather than on the back of small player blinders.

OVERALL: I liked it, but to a point, because of the randomness and mild player interaction. I think there is some similarity with Trajan, but I felt more control with Trajan than Marrakesh. I will say Marrakesh is more much dynamic from game-to-game. The game plays smoothly, but feels a little solitaire, except for the choosing of the keshis, which is the most interesting part of the game. The essential edition is just fine for me, I would not want to pay more than I did.

Similar games: Trajan

Cube tower, even in essential edition, is useless.

Excellent game if slightly point salady. One of my favorite mechanisms is being able to plan while also playing a game that can force a pivot and this game really delivers that.

The tower makes it really engaging as you can never be sure what exactly will come out of it. We found on about 50% of the drops something got held back and in two different 3 player games we had 3 things get trapped.

Every game I start with the idea that "I want to explore X" and then I have to turn to something else to amen my choices work. I really like that.

Got the expansion and it greatly improves this game, very close to a 10. Loses points in my vision because I can’t get it all in one box.

Marrakesh is special – it’s the first Feld game that we’ve tried in a long while that manages to reignite the love that we had for Carpe Diem and Castles of Burgundy. Some titles felt so disjointed that they detracted from gameplay (Trajan); others were dragged down by weird setting and iconography (Bonfire); some were just fine, but not quite replayable (Notre Dame, Castles of Tuscany). Amsterdam and Amerigo felt a bit better than those, but the former still had iconography issues. Well, Marrakesh takes the incredibly fun gimmick from Amerigo – the cube tower – and has players draft cubes that allow them to improve actions that they can take in the future. It comes with some of the most elaborate player boards we have seen (even compressed as they are in the Essential Edition, and they still take a lot of space), where each player can advance in a variety of sectors. Each turn, players secretly select 3 cubes (out of 12 different ones, with red being wild), reveal those cubes, and assign workers to the sectors on their boards corresponding to the colors of the cubes. After that, all the cubes selected by players are thrown into the tower – and players draft the cubes that fall down. In case you cannot use one of the workers that you placed (because you haven’t advanced on that track / made progress in that sector), you can use your action in order to advance / place a cardboard keshi. There are a lot of fascinating actions that you can take, but, given that the game lasts 3 rounds, and you start each round with cubes of 12 different colors, that means that at most you can take any action 6 times (and that is if you use the red cube that you select each time for the same action). Unlike Trajan, the mini-games here are connected – bonuses you gain from advancing on the mosque and palace tracks help you in other sectors, for instance; the gates that you add to your board also help you in other regards; the mini-exploration that takes place with the oases (variable scoring conditions!) is also fully integrated in the game. Excellent stuff (but incredibly expensive for how poor the quality of the components is).

No, not what we expected. There is no connection to the 11 (!) Different sections on your player mat. It all seams very fabricated, just to put al those mechanisms in the game, and then, o well, we need a theme. Could be anything.

Then the nice ideas with the tower and the different colored keshis just doesnt work out. At least not when playing with two players. You get every action at most three times (and yes, here is a red bonus worker available 3x per game), so none of the actions ever satisfies.

Conclusion: overall the game is incoherrent, does not match with its theme and does not give you any endorpfine moments of hapiness. After playing we had no feeling like, I will do this next time, so I can there quicker and then will be able to do that so I earn more points. No, instead it all felt so random that we probably wont play it again.

Not a bad game. Like the worker collection element and engine building.