Sooo, Pax Porfiriana:
Theme:
Pax Porfiriana is Latin for The Porfirian Peace. It refers to the 33-year reign of dictator Porfirio Díaz, ruling Mexico with an iron hand until toppled by the 1910 Revolution. As a rich businessman (Hacendado) in the turbulent pre-revolutionary borderlands of the U.S. and Mexico, compete to build business empires of ranches, mines, rails, troops, and banks while subverting your opponents with bandidos, Indians, and lawsuits. Win by toppling Díaz, either by coup, succession, revolution, or annexing Mexico to the U.S. If Díaz remains firmly seated at the end of the game, then the player with the most gold is the winner.
The theme is very deep in these games, not only because many cards have very detailed descriptions about the historical background:
One of the aspects that impressed me the most is how ingrained the theme is in the game mechanics. One example: You play an event card, which states that US and German ships encountered each other, the tension seems to be rising and world may be on the brink of war. Due to this event, the US intervention regime may end, all US troops are pulled back from mexico (actively removing all us troops from your hand or your play area), but on the flip side, you'll earn some money for taking back control of your own mines, now that the US has less influence over your territory.
The game is incredibly smartly designed in that regard, really showing how gameplay can intelligently reinforce a theme instead of only being tacked on.
How to play:
Just to give you a quick impression of the gameplay loop (which is far from showing the tactical complexity of the game, but more on that later):
1. In your turn you have 3 actions
2. The most common use of those actions is to
- buy a card from the market (costs range from 0 to 16 depending on the position of the card)
- play card from your hand
- sell card
3. With the cards you play, you aim to increase your wealth, decrease the income of other players and gain influence points for the goal of the game.
4. However, there are more interesting possibilities (bet on market cards, improve your enterprises, buy connection upgrades, remove unrest, send troops to extort businesses from other players...) and even the play card action is highly dependant on circumstances, which makes this game so fascinating to play. No card is truly ever the best choice and there are many variables, that will have you ponder your choices each and every turn.
This is also the part that fascinates me the most, as I think Pax Porfiriana is pretty much the best example of this that I ever played. Take a look at this troop card:
Those cards are among the most straight forward cards in the game. You see the strength of the card (firepower from 1-3), the jurisdiction (aka the region it can be played in / which other cards it can affect), an additional effect (you reinforce security with federal troops, so you are strengthening the Pax Porfiriana/dictator regime) and the costs for deploying troops via train, horse or by foot.
Since there are troops with firepower 3, it will always be a good choice to go for higher strength value, right? Big noooope, as we now get to the best part. Lets break down how a single game decision works:
1. Market Price
First of all you need to buy the card from the market, which means that you can either get it for free, or pay 2 to 16 gold depending on the market position of the card. New cards enter the market at the most expensive end and if no one buys it, they get cheaper over time. Sometimes you might not have enough money to go for the higher card, but often you wouldnt even want to go for the more expensive card, as you can use that left over money for many actions.
2. Speculation Cubes
One of the cards you want to buy might have a speculation cube from another player on it, meaning he will get the money you spend on this card. Do you really want to give another player 8 gold for the card you need, or do you take your chance to wait if it gets cheaper until next round and buy the other card that nobody earns money for in the meantime?
3. Jurisdiction
There are 3 jurisdictions/regions in the game. Usually, troops can only be deployed to an enterprise that is located in the same jurisdiction, meaning that the troop card shown above can only be played on a Sonoran enterprise. If you want to attack on opponent in another jurisdiction or need to defend yourself somewhere else, this card, would not be very useful to you at the moment.
Side note: You could also change the regime to anarchy with a different card, which might allow you to redeploy the troops anywhere.
4. Costs to play/redeploy
Other cards have static costs to play from your hand, while troops always cost a certain amount depending on the mode of travel. This is restricted by the enterprise they want to travel to. Some troops have horrendously high costs for train travels, while others are more expensive on foot. Even if a card has great firepower and fits the jurisdiction, you might still end up with high movement costs, making a card a lot less versatile.
5. Bonus effect
A bonus effect might change the regime and ooooh boy is that important. A regime decides on how much money you make, which jurisdictions might be available to you and which goal might be needed to win the game. So what to do if you earn more money in a US intervention, because your economy is more focussed on gold mines (which gets a boost), while the US troops of another player might get better access to your businesses, allowing them to extort you much easier. Will you play the troop card, changing the regime?
5. Firepower
If alllll of the above aspects were equal, the higher firepower would be better, but its almost impossible to have an absolute equal decision between 2 cards in this game, mostly because... there is not a single duplicated card. Every card is different, which means every turn will present you with interesting decisions, dangers and opportunities.
You can find a more elaborate description of cards, effects and rules in this overview:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/882396/guided-tour-revolutionary-mexico
It is one of the most tactically complex engine building games I have ever played, and its wonderful. The card design really seems messy at first, but I got used to it after a few rounds. Also bonus: It plays with up to 6 players (which is actually quite interesting, as you can actively influence your opponents enterprises (you can even make money from providing train connections to an opponents business) and victory conditions) and goes by relatively quickly, considering how complex those decisions can get. A 2 player match might end in about 60-90 minutes, 4 player took us around 3 hours.
There are some other Pax games, but I havent played those yet. These games are very, very smartly designed and if you like diverse situations, on the spot thinking and more complex tactical decisions, I highly recommend looking into these games. These games pack a whole lot of game and complexity into a very, very small box. Also PSA: Those games get stupidly expensive once they are sold out (~200$), so if you are interested and see a copy for 40-50$, grab it sooner rather than later.
Currently fighting them in a game of Elder Sign. Also realizing that the cursed/blessed mechanic is more fiddly than it needs to be.
