Date: 20th August 2004
Game played: Maka Bana ( Tilsit ) BGG Id: 8147

Next up was a game from Essen last year. Maka Bana is a very attractively produced bluffing game by Francois Haffner and released by Tilsit Editions.

The game is set on a tropical island with four beaches and the players are aiming to build groups of beach huts together and control the beaches by having the most huts there. Each player has a set of cards and chooses a combination of cards to identify the location where they would like to build. These cards are laid face down but one card is revealed to give an indication of where you might build. Players then can each place a 'Tiki' on a space that blocks any action on that space in the current round. Cards are revealed and where possible the players place a newly constructed hut in the location they chose. As an alternative to building players can choose to try and repaint an existing opponent's hut to their colour. In this instance, the Tiki can be placed on a location to protect yur hut if you're feeling threatened. The game continues in this fashion until a player has built all 10 of their huts or one of the four beaches is full of huts or Tikis. In the former case, the game ends straight away; in the later, one final round is played before scoring. Scoring is based on groups of adjacent huts: a sole hut is worth 1 point, a second worth 2, and each additional one is worth 3 points. Then whoever has the most huts on each of the four beaches receives 4 bonus points, with two-way ties sharing the points. Three or more tying for most huts receive no bonus points. The highest total wins.

This game is quite a bit of fun, with lots of second-guessing going on. Getting adjacent huts early on means you are going to be a target for repainting and you may be forced to try and protect these. We all tried to spread out initially but even so one or two of the Tikis were successful in stopping some from building. John, however, seemed to build in places we were unable to guess and he progressed fairly steadily, but without any large groupings. Eventually, one of the beaches was filled and we made our last attempts to grab more points. I concentrated on getting one of the beach bonuses, which I achieved but wasn't able to match John and Mark G's collection of huts. Mark K and I both missed out on building a few too many times, allowing the other two to tie for first place.

 
Player
Rating
Score
Position
Winner
Mark G
7
12
1
John
7
12
1
Garry
6
11
3
Mark K
6
7
4

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