Players:2-5
Playing Time: 90-120 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

This game is published by Phalanx Games and distributed in the United States by Rio Grande Games.

The Components

Maharaja comes with very high-quality and nice looking components:

• 1 game board
• 5 action discs
• Cardboard Bits:
  • 7 governor markers
  • 7 character cards
  • 60 gold pieces
  • 7 action chits
• Wooden Bits:
  • 5 architects
  • 100 wooden houses
  • 1 maharaja
• 35 glass stones
• 5 summary cards
• 1 rule book

A large four-fold game board, printed on linen-textured cardboard. It’s colorful, period evocative, and attractive. Each of 7 cities is depicted in a specific color, with an icon of its governor nearby. Paths, containing villages, lead to and from the various cities. There’s also a track to the right of the board which is used to rank the governor tokens.

My only complaint with an otherwise beautiful board is the annoying, annoying font used to display all of the city and village names. It’s very stylized and almost impossible to read. For example, the A's and the M's look almost identical and I've never been certain if another (similar) letter is an "O" or not. This is a clear case of an evocative display element making the game harder to play, not easier.

Action Discs: These circular discs are each printed on thick, linen-textured cardboard. They also include two arrows which are screwed to the disc with plastic screws. (I'm really happy with how the disc is put together because I'll never has to worry about the arrows getting too loose, as they can just be tightened up.) Each of the five discs uses one of the five player colors as its background color (yellow, red, black, blue, and green).

On the face of the disc are icons displaying the nine possible player actions. They initially look a little intimidating, but once you've played the game for a few minutes they become very obvious and easy to use.

Cardboard Bits: Like the action discs, all of the other cardboard bits are printed full color on thick, linen-textured cardboard. They're all attractive and evocative.

The governor markers are small square chits which are arranged on the governor track on the board; each shows a small picture of the governor against the color of his city. (Some people had troubles matching the colors of the markers to the board since a couple of the colors are fairly similar, but you can just match the picture as well, which is a good design element.)

The character cards are much larger square tiles. They show those same governors, are marked 1-7, and also show special powers for each character iconically. The special powers are very easy to identify based on the tiles.

The gold pieces are all round cardboard discs, with different colors and sizes for the three denomination (1, 5, 10). The action chits are more round cardboard discs, these blue.

Wooden Bits: These are all high-quality painted wooden pieces, as is pretty typical for German games. Each player gets small wooden houses and a large wooden pawn to represent their architect. There's also a very large pawn to represent the maharaja, which unfortunately is black, the same as one of the player colors. Unfortunately, the yellow wood pieces are actually orange; not a bit deal, but not aesthetically pleasing either.

Glass Stones: Fairly typical glass stones, used to represent palaces. They're more or less in the five player colors (in this case yellow, red, purple, blue, and green). As you'd expect, people constantly asked who the purple stones belonged to, since the player color is black. Not a good choice.

Summary Cards: A full color info card, printed on thin cardboard. The front has a rules summary and the back a list of all possible actions. This is an extremely useful inclusion, except for the fact that it gets a couple of the actions minorly wrong. (It implies that you have to build secondary houses in the same city as your primary house or palace, when taking those "double actions", which isn't true.)

Rulebook: An attractive full-color rulebook with lots of examples. It's a bit hard to follow in some places. Nonetheless, it does an OK job of getting the rules across. (I had the most problem using it for reference; I'm not entirely sure why.)

Box & Tray: The box is large and sturdy. The tray is yet another tray that doesn't fit its game at all. I've managed to jam most of the pieces into the various nooks and crannies, but some are very tight fits, while there are also long, empty slots. I get a bit tired of these trays which are just wrong for their games.

Overall, despite my minor complaints, the components for Maharaja are high-quality, beautiful, and very utilitarian. Thus the game earns a full "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Maharaja is to gain the favor of the Maharaja by building 7 mighty palaces to his glory.

Setup: Each player starts out Maharaja by selecting a color and taking the assortment of action disks (1), architects (1), palaces (7), and houses (20) for that color. The architect is placed in the "starting city". Each player takes 4 houses into his hand which he'll build at the start of the game and another 6 into their ready-to-build "pool". The remaining 10 houses are left in the quarry.

Each player also gets a rules summary card and 15 gold pieces.

The 7 governor pieces are shuffled, then placed at the bottom of the governor track. They're flipped face-up and reveal the order in which cities will be scored (more on that momentarily).

Character Card Selection. Now each player selects 1 of the 7 character cards. Each has special powers, which are explained later, after the basic gameplay discussion. They're also used to determine turn order and tie-breakers.

House Placement. Finally each player places his 4 initial houses, one at a time, in villages. There are a total of 28 villages on the board. They are arranged very symetrically, two on each road that connects up a pair of cities, except for the two edge roads which only have one village each.

Houses must be located in all villages on a road to allow an architect to travel along that road (more on that shortly). In addition, they collect money from players without houses in each village. Finally, there's a limit of just two houses in each village (one in a 2-player game), so there's a lot of strategy in this placement.

The initial placement of houses will have a lot to do with which cities are up first for scoring (e.g., player will place on the roads leading to those cities).

Order of Play: Each round of play is conducted by all the players simultaneously. Here's the order of play:

1. Move the Maharaja
2. Move the Governor
3. Select Actions
4. Take Actions
5. Score City

Move the Maharaja: At the start of the round, the Maharaja moves to the city currently indicated by the governor at the bottom of the governor track (recall that each governor is associated with one city, as clearly noted on the gameboard). This city will be scored at the end of the round.

Move the Governor: The governor who's city was just selected is now moved to the top of the governor track, advancing the whole track forward one space toward the end of the game.

Select Actions: Now each player must select two actions to take this round on his action disk by pointing the two arrows; he may choose the same action twice. There are a number of possibilities:

Gold Take 2 gold.

House. Build one house in a city or a village from your pool (cost: 1 gold).

2 Houses. Build one house in a city and a second house in a city or a village, both from your pool (1 + 1 gold).

Move a House. Pick up one of your houses on the board and put it in a city or a village.

Quarry. Move 2 houses from the quarry to your pool.

Palace. Build a palace in a city (12 gold). There are only 7 spaces for palaces in each city.

Palace/House. Build a palace in a city and a house in a city or a village (12 + 1 gold).

Governor Track Order. Push one governor down two spaces on the track, and move the two governors he passes up one space each. This helps get a governor's city scored sooner.

Character Cards. Take a character card from another player or the bank; that player then gets to choose a character card from the bank, including the one you just turned in.

A few things to note: first, every house that's built comes from your pool and costs 1 gold; every palace that's built cost 12 gold. In addition, whenever a palace or a house is built in a city (not a village) your architect must be there.

Take Actions: Now each player takes their actions one at a time, in ascending order of character cards (meaning #1 goes first). The two actions can be done in any order, and can even be split up (e.g., if you choose "palace/house" and "change character cards", you could build a palace, then change character cards, then build a house).

Character cards can be exchanged during the round. If this happens, the player who has the lowest character card number always goes next (e.g., a player who'd had a "7" could end up with the "1" after someone traded with him; he'd go next). In addition, a player gets to take advantage of any and all character powers he has access to during his turn.

Sometimes a player will not be able to conduct one, or perhaps both, of the actions he selected on his disc. In this case the bank pays every other player 2 gold for his failure.

Finally, for many actions, an architect must be in a city (basically: building any house or palace there). This requires the architect to move around.

Moving the Architect. The architect moves from city to city freely during your turn, as is required by your actions. he may only move along roads in which there is at least 1 house in each village. If you have at least 1 house in a village, you may pass that village freely, otherwise you must pay 1 gold to each player who owns a house in the village.

Score City: After all actions are taken, the selected city is scored. Each player adds up his points for the city: 3 for having built the central palace; 1 for each outer palace; 1 for his architect being there; and 1 for each house in the city. Ties are broken by lowest character number.

Based on their prestige total, each player now gets paid a certain number of gold. This varies based on the number of players. In a 2-player game the players get 10/5 gold. In a 5-player game they get 13/10/7/4/1. If a player has no presence in a city, he doesn't share in the bounty. If a player is the only player in a city, he gets a 5 gold bonus.

The Character Cards: The character cards each have special powers. Some are valuable during a round, while some only in scoring. In addition, rank of character cards also determines: order of play and tie breaking (lowest goes first and wins ties).

The cards are:

1. Mogul: No special power (but always goes first and wins ties).
2. Trader: Receives 1 gold.
3. Sadhu: Outer palaces are worth 2 for scoring.
4. Wandering Monk: Doesn't pay for moving his architect (the bank pays instead).
5. Builder: Build or move 1 additional house for free.
6. Artisan: Palaces cost 9 gold instead of 12.

Winning the Game: The game ends at the end of the round in which someone builds their 7th palace. If multiple players win, most money is a tie breaker, and after that, lowest character number. (Alternatively if a governor is moved to the last space on the governor track, that round ends the game; in both of the games I've played multiple players built their 7th palace a few turns before the game would have automatically ended.)

Optional Rules: The game also includes a number of optional rules. Some enhance the game (such as a rule that allows player to have multiple characters in a 2-player game; and another which lets characters give a +1 bonus for scoring their home city) while I think others detract from the core gameplay (mainly a 7th character, the yogi, who gives free "action chits" which allow a player to take an action without selecting it on the disc, basically neutering the core mechanism of simultaneous action selection).

Relationships to Other Games

Maharaja (2004) is a majority-based area-control game built on a simultaneous selection action system.

The majority-based area-control aspect is an absolute Wolfgang Kramer signature. Here it's based on a number of items of differing values which can move around, and in the case of the outer palaces, even switch value. Though the system is relatively simple, it manages to match some of the chaos implicit in classics like El Grande (1995) and San Marco (2001).

A simultaneous selection system is usually the hallmark of a bluffing game, but here there's too many choices in this game for bluffing to really matter. Instead, with the selection of two different actions each turn, and the constant moving of the architect, it feels a lot like a simple action point system, another core of Kramer's design in games from Tikal (1999) to Mexica (2002).

Overall, Maharaja reminds me a lot of Mexica, as they're both in games in which you're constantly scuttling from one region to another in order to build up and maintain control of those regions; Maharaja is a little deeper thanks to the additional levels of complexity allowed for by the character cards. It's also reminescent of this year's Hansa (2004), another game where players constantly move about the map using a pseudo-action-point system.

The Game Design

The advertising copy calls Maharaja a "clever boardgame", and it is. Here's some of the stuff I particularly like:

Superb Tactics: The tactics really make the game. You can do a lot of cunning and clever things once you take a look at the board position on your turn and start figuring out the possibilities. (Longer-term strategy is a bit less prevelent, mostly because you can only look a turn or two ahead.)

Good Majority Control: The majority control is pretty good. There's some room for stability and some for chaos. It's not as good as El Grande, but better than staid designs like Medieval Merchant or Entdecker; a good balance.

Good Balance of Systems: The balance of many different systems, from controlling characters to controlling cities to controlling towns, is very good because it gives you multiple options for victory, but at the same time all seems well integrated. (I think Maharaja would have been just an average game without the introduction of the characters, which really crank it up that extra step.)

Here's some of the elements I don't like in Maharaja:

Downtime / Analysis Paralysis: These are common problems in very tactical games. You have to wait for your turn to understand the current situation, and then you have a lot of options, and so really have to think them over. The A.P. rating is relatively high on this game because I felt myself spinning my wheels sometimes, and I pretty much never do.

Possibility for Very Bad Play: You can make entirely critical mistakes in this game by dialing up the wrong possibilities or not accounting for how other people might influence your actions. The game is really, entirely unforgiving. Though they were all first time players, most every player made some critical mistake at some point in both games I played.

Overall, I think Maharaja is one of the best games of the year, with some good tactical depth combined with great color and well-designed & integrated game systems. However, I also think that it doesn't have quite that oomph! or originality that you find in the very best games, so I've held its rating at a high "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Maharaja is a well-designed game of majority-control and tactics that plays very smoothly and allows for a lot of very thoughtful play. However, it still suffers from some common tactical problems including slow play and analysis paralysis. Nonetheless, it's well-recomended if you're looking for a new "serious" game for your collection.

In consulting Gamer's Attic we've come up with a number of products which we think might be related, but some might be inaccurate because the name, Maharaja, is so short. Nonetheless, take a look, as purchasing through the RPGnet Store helps to support RPGnet.