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Macht & Ohnmacht / Power & Weakness
Author: Andreas Steding
Publisher: MoD Games
Year: 2007


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In the days of King Arthur and his knights of the round table, England was ruled by knights as well as magicians. They each had their own unique means to exert their influence: while knights appeared on each others doorsteps on horses and armed with swords, the magicians used their magic, which enabled them to operate from a distance. In Macht & Ohnmacht, two players attempt to control as much provinces as possible, by making use of the different characteristics of their knights and magicians.
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A sword cycle, where the knights are ‘active’ and the magicians are ‘passive’, alternates with a magic cycle, where the magicians are in charge and the knights are powerless. Each round, points can be scored for the player that controls the majority of provinces, and the first player to reach a total of 12 points wins the game.
The map of England is divided into 15 provinces. At the beginning of the game, a random region marker (red, green, yellow or blue) is placed in each province. For the knights, two provinces are considered to be ‘adjacent’ if they are physically adjacent (if they share a border), but for the magicians, all provinces are called ‘adjacent’ that contain an identical region marker. During the game, only adjacent provinces may be attacked, but which provinces can be considered ‘adjacent’ depends on whether the attack is lead by knights, or by magicians!

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At the beginning of each round, both players take two ‘active’ pieces in their colour: in the sword cycles, the knights (cubes) are the ‘active pieces’, and in the magic cycles, the magicians (discs) are the ‘active pieces’. A random time token determines how long the round will last: the indicated number of grey cubes is placed on the hourglass. When certain actions are performed, one cube is removed from the hourglass, and when the last cube is removed, the round ends.
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The players may alternately perform two actions.
They may choose from the following options:

- Take an action tile. The player must subsequently remove a cube from the hourglass.
- Place one active piece from his personal stock in an empty province, or in a province that already contains pieces of his own colour.
- Recruit two passive pieces from the general stock to his personal stock. The player must subsequently remove a cube from the hourglass.
- Use one or more action tiles. For each action tile used, the player must subsequently remove a cube from the hourglass.

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The most important action is the last one: playing action tiles. This is how the actual attacks are carried out.
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When a player plays an action tile in the colour of a region marker, he may attack a province that contains a region marker of that same colour. The attacking strength is calculated by adding up the number of his active pieces in all the provinces that are adjacent to the province under attack. This implies that in the sword cycle, all his knights (cubes) in the physically adjacent provinces are added up, while in a magic cycle, only his magicians (discs) would be counted that are in provinces with a region marker of the same colour as the province under attack.
The strength of the defender is equal to the number of pieces (both active and passive!) in the province under attack, plus all his active pieces in provinces adjacent to the province under attack. If the strength of the attacker is higher than the strength of the defender, the latter has to remove all his pieces from that province. One piece may retreat to an adjacent province (and, again, the definition of ‘adjacent’ depends on the current cycle!), the rest is returned to the general stock. The attacker may place one of the active pieces from his personal stock in the now empty province.
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There are other action tiles that enable the players to perform various actions, but the tiles that can be used for an attack are the most important. As soon as the last grey cube has been removed from the hourglass, the round is over. The players count how many active provinces they control; a province is called ‘active’ when it contains more active than passive pieces. The player with the majority of active provinces gets one point, which is added to his total on the scoring track. Then, the players temporarily add the number of active provinces they control to their score; if one of the players has reached a total of 12, he immediately wins the game. If neither player has reached 12 points, the game continues; the cycle marker is moved from ‘sword’ to ‘magic’ or vice versa, and a new round begins.
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It is obvious: the trick in Macht und Ohnmacht is the continuously changing definition of ‘adjacent’. A province can be very strong in a sword cycle, because it is surrounded by other provinces with many knights that will help to defend in case of an attack, but in a magic cycle this is absolutely not important: then, the only thing that matters is whether the player also has a lot of magicians in the provinces that contain the same region marker... However logical it all may be, it remains very confusing when you’re playing the game. It makes the game very interesting and tactical, but the drawback is that a player’s turn can take extremely long. If you’re trying to calculate how your intended move(s) will affect your position, not only in the current but also in the next cycle, then analysis paralysis lies on the wait!

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At the end of each round, the number of provinces the players control at that moment is added temporarily to their victory points, and if either player reaches 12 points the game is over. If a player has collected five victory points, and he controls seven provinces at that moment because he’s just had a quite successful round, he immediately wins. The victory is therefore often not the result of a steady improvement of your position on the board and the subsequent collection of well-earned victory points, but more often an unexpected surprise caused by one lucky round. In such a tactical game!
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That leaves the loser, but also the winner, with an unsatisfied feeling. The box states that the game takes 45 minutes; that might be just a bit optimistic, it can easily be multiplied by a factor two or three. For such a long game, we would at least like to get the feeling that the victory, or the defeat, was well-deserved!
© 2008 Barbara van Vugt

Macht & Ohnmacht, Andreas Steding, MoD Games, 2007 - 2 players, 12 years and up, 45 minutes


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