MY FAVOURITE GAME

Max Wikström, the creator of Agemonia, sends a love letter to Machiavelli…

Max Wikström shows his motives in Machiavelli

Machiavelli said, “The end justifies the means,” and that is basically the way this game works. This fantastic game is of course hopelessly outdated in modern board game times, some might even call it unplayable, but personally I have a thick love letter’s worth of fond memories of it.

Machiavelli recreates the historical situation of the fast developing and ever shifting balance of power struggle in Renaissance Italy. To win a game of Machiavelli, a player must get the control of a certain number of provinces before the other players. A game is divided in years and each year in three seasons (spring, summer and fall). Each season is, in fact, a game turn. The turns of all the players are played simultaneously; they must secretly write down their orders and these orders are read aloud when all the players have finished.

We used to play Machiavelli a lot back in the day, between the late 80’s and early 90’s. To me (and many others), Machiavelli is the epitome of diplomacy variant games, though one might have to remove some randomizing elements from it. Like Pauli Jantunen, a dear friend of mine, says, “the best thing in games is the proximity of one’s enemies.” This is very evident in

Machiavelli, true to the name of the game. After long game sessions it was sometimes hard to relax and sleep without the fear of someone backstabbing you mercilessly and suddenly.

Machiavelli taught a lot about playing in general. Losing is boring, but with this game, most often the best player was the one who won despite the random elements caused by diplomacy and backstabbing. Our group had grievous fights when the game was going, but I can still fondly reminisce that once the dust settled and the game was done, everyone left the table feeling good and in high spirits.

Nowadays games like this are avoided more often and the focus is on creating games where cooperation is key, or interaction is minimal. This is fine but I aim to raise my children with board games in a manner where instead of complaining about losing a game, one should be happy for the winner. It makes winning more enjoyable, when the other players give the winner their due credit and glory. Learning this requires playing, playing again… and sometimes losing.

I used to play in a club called Simulation Players of Finland, and with my extensive hours in Diplomacy,

I was inspired to try Machiavelli. I was hooked from the first go. Getting hold of a physical copy of the game at the time was a true challenge, as the second edition of the game was sold out and no information of a new print was in sight. I was one of the ones who ended up building my own copy, meaning I printed the map, turn sheets and rules, and then tinkered and fashioned cool meeples.

When playing with the same group, some tropes might happen again and again in Diplomacy-style games, our example being that we had two brothers in the group, who would eventually start a war against one another at some point in the game, every time, without fail. Knowing this always made it easier for the rest of us.

Machiavelli did have enough advanced rules that made it trump Diplomacy – such as garrisons, income, and special units. These brought just the cutting edge it needed that it ended up on the gaming table more often, since it had more changing variables for new playthroughs. One of our constant repeated whining was that “the plague will come and ruin the game”, and that the “random income” rule should be removed to make the game fair for everyone. However, we had the discussion again and again, and most of the time we ended up having them both in the game to make it more exciting. (A die roll was used to determined what areas get struck by plague, but this could be anticipated since some areas were a lot more susceptible to the plague, and one would always move their navy to sea during plague rounds). I think we had plague running rampant in our games more than half the time in our game sessions.

This game is probably the main reason why I have aimed to keep my RPG group on their toes, spreading paranoia and secrets between the players, to create a level of playing where “being sure of things” is never a given, and challenges are myriad and always present.

I sometimes find myself misty-eyed and yearning back to those years, also for reasons past the days of my youth. I wonder what my kids would say if I went up to them and proposed we play an eight hour board game, which includes writing a lot of things down and occasionally having negotiations?

Losing is boring, but with this game, most often the best player was the one who won despite the random elements caused by diplomacy and backstabbing