After last week's filler-palooza, I wanted to make sure that I had the opportunity to play something a little more meaty this week at game night.  So, prior to Tuesday, I actually had set up both a game of Agricola and a game of Macao. 

Agricola

For the second week in a row, we had games of Agricola playing in stereo.  At one table, husband and wife ringers Britt and Carol led Beth, Kenny, and newbie Joe in a game of excitement-filled dirt farming.  At the other, Alton, Charles, Adam, Keith and I played with my totally tricked-out copy. 


The "others" playing Agricola: Beth, Joe, Carol, Kenny, and Britt.  Then Britt totally "rocks out" to the non-stop, action-packed farming action, while Kenny plots his demise in the shadows...

Time: 138 minutes
Score: Britt 36, Carol 33, Ken 32, Beth 27, Joe* 9
Ratings: Britt 10, Carol 10, Ken 9, Beth 8, Joe ?

At my table, we decided to use the K deck, and then I proceeded to deal the proverbial "god hand" to Charles.  On turn 1, he played out both the Educator and the Perpetual Student occupations, which worked in ludicrous combination to allow him to play out, for free, one of his other occupations any time that someone else played an occupation.  And in fact, he actually earned a food every time he used the combo after his fourth occupation was out.  And then on top of that, his other occupations weren't exactly worthless either, helping him to accumulate hordes of resources and play out 5 of his Minor Improvement and a Cooking Hearth.  

Alton was firing on all cylinders as well, putting his normal plan of action into effect beautifully.  He horded a lot of wood, built rooms, grew his family, built pastures and acquired animals, converted to a stone house, and even planted a lot of fields on the way to a penalty-free score of 57 points.  But what's crazy is that 57 points was not enough for the win.  Charles racked up a ton of points from all his cards to push past him with 59 freaking points, which I think is the most that I've ever seen in a non-solo game of Agricola.



Charles' and Alton's farms...
Adam, Keith, and I didn't do as well.  As I usually do, I felt behind the curve all game long.  And despite filling in 3 more spaces with fences on my last turn, I still three empty farm spots, no grain and no veggies.  And while my 38 points would normally feel pretty respectable (and would have won the other game, all things being equal), I felt like I got my hindquarters handed to me by Alton and Charles.  Adam and Keith felt similarly.  

But this game was just crazy.  With Charles hording so many resources and everybody building things left and right, we used up all of the wood, clay, and reeds, as well as every single "4x" marker and every stone room/field tile.  I haven't counted them exactly, but some of the issue with the resources may have been that I had less "tricked out" resourci-meeples than I would have had wooden disks from the original game, but the field tiles were all original.  So it was definitely a strange game all around.  

Time: 125 minutes
Score: Charles 59, Alton 57, Me 38, Adam 31, Keith 25
Ratings: Charles 10, Alton 9.5, Me 9, Adam 9.5, Keith 6

Let me hold my comments about Agricola  a little bit, however, because almost immediately, I jumped in to a game of...

Macao  

Kenny, Tom, and I have been aching for another play of this, and Adam has wanted to try it since sitting in on the rules teach of a previous game, and we actually had to turn another person or two away from this session.  Maybe we should have even split into a couple of different games (since we had an extra copy floating around), but I definitely wanted another chance to prove my dominance over Tom and Kenny, as well as to show Adam who was boss for the first time.

Going in to this game, I planned to try out a gold-based strategy.  My thought was to pick up some early office cards to generate gold coins, look for some gold synergy, and then try to perform the tribute action (buying Prestige Points with Gold Coins) as often as possible.  But as I found out, walking into Macao with a plan doesn't necessarily work out.  Other people picked up many of the Office cards that I wanted because they were easy to activate, and I was never in the right position to pick up any other good gold-producing cards.  Instead, I claimed the Paper Storage card and used it to deliver 20 points of paper on one turn alone.  I also focused a lot on keeping my board clean, and never took any negative points throughout the entire game.  My only end-game scoring was from the pair of Baronesses, and while I didn't do all that terrible much special in the game, it was my overall efficiency that led me to a final score of 74 points.

Adam, in his first play, fell into a city-heavy strategy.  He picked up the card that allowed him to buy 2 quarters a turn, and then also nabbed the Smithy, giving him an additional point per quarter that he owned at the end of the game.  He probably should have worked a little harder at delivering some more of the goods he accumulated, but still did pretty well overall with 55 points.

I can't remember quite as much about what all Tom did, but I thought that he was my main competition for most of the game.  He did better than I did in generating extra gold, and bought Prestige at least one extra time when I wasn't able to.  Tom was consistently ahead on the wall, but we all started challenging him more near the endgame.  He also made some good deliveries, but was hurt a little by having to take some penalty points and by having no end-game scoring.

 
Kenny and Adam "politely" illustrate the large jump I had in points after delivering paper products... 
Kenny, on the other hand, built by far the best synergy between all his cards.  He picked up a card that let him activate people for one less cube, as well as one that gave him a gold each time he activated a person card.  Between that and a couple of other cards that produced money (or allowed him to re-use Joker tiles), he was probably overall the richest of everyone.  But even with his crazy card-combo shenanigans, I still thought that I was going to be able to pull out the win.  That was, at least, until he also pointed out that he had a card that gave him 1 point for every activated person card at the end of the game.  So, when all the dust had settled, I suffered my first loss at Macao when Kenny pulled ahead by two points at a total of 76.    

Time: 117 minutes
Score: Ken 76, Me 74, Tom 59, Adam* 55
Ratings: Ratings

I've compared Macao to Agricola before, but after playing them back-to-back, I think that I'm more able to make some direct comparisons between these two great games.  

Mechanics - Agricola is worker-placement, while Macao is more just action-based.  Both use a huge set of cards that when played/activated give special benefits, and which can be used together to form combos and all sorts of synergy to make you awesome.  Overall, I think that Macao uses this better, because everyone has the same opportunity (after the first turn, anyway) to pick up the cards, while Agricola depends on a random deal of the cards.  Of course, one of the few things I don't like about Macao is that you can never count on any one card coming up, since not all of the cards are used each game.  And, of course, I hate the tiny little doll-sized cards because of my aging eyes and big, sausage-like fingers.

Pain - Both games have some sort of penalty mechanic that punishes players for not meeting certain benchmarks.  In Agricola, you've got to feed your family at harvest time, while in Macao you've got to have cubes to use each turn, and you've got to activate your cards before you fill up your tableau or the game ends.  These are pretty comparable overall.


The spread of tribute costs that we had in our game of Macao
Tension -  In addition to the "pain" of the penalty mechanics, both games do a lot to generate tension in other ways.  Agricola's worker placement is probably the biggest factor for it, in that you're always having to consider not only what you need, but also who else might need it and when they can and will try to get it before you.  In Macao, most of the other tension comes from the dice, and the short- vs. long-term planning because of it.  Do you delay your payout for a bigger bang later, or take what you need right now?  Both games are near the top of my "tension meter", but in general, Agricola rides the line of being too oppressive and "work-like" to me, while Macao feels a bit more open and fun.

Strategy vs. Tactics - Both of these games are mostly about balance.  You can't really pick just one avenue for scoring, but instead, you must focus at least some attention pretty much everywhere.  But at the same time, there are definitely ways to focus your attention on a particular avenue or combination of cards/actions to maximize its payout.  While you can generally have some long-term planning for both games, they are also both very tactical on a turn-by-turn basis.  And especially in Macao (but also in Agricola to some extent), grand strategy seems to be a lot more of an emergent thing, where you can't walk in with a plan before taking into account the cards that come up and the actions of the other players.

Final Thoughts - For me, it became completely clear to me that Macao is noticeably more fun for me than is Agricola.  The contrast of the "god hand" possibility that came up in my game of Agricola, along with the more entertaining level of tension in Macao, left me in the perfect position to make a real choice between the two.  And while I still certainly like Agricola a lot, I think that Macao has definitely unseated it from its position in my top 10.  It may even affect my overall rating for Agricola, because for a similar experience and time investment, I think that I'd prefer Macao in most cases.

Telestrations  

Since I spent 5 or more hours setting up for, playing, and putting away those two games, I didn't have much time left in the evening.  And after such heavy games, I thought that something light and silly would be perfect.  I had heard a lot of good press about Telestrations coming out of the recent Gathering of Friends, and first realized that it was a production version of Eat Poop You Cat.  So that's what we pulled out next.  We had a lot of fun with it, even if Charles beat me again.

Time: 30 minutes
Score: Charles* 11, Beth* 9, Ken* 9, Me* 9, Tom* 8
Ratings: Charles 7, Beth 10, Ken 7, Me 7, Tom 7

Telestrations immediately jumped into the top tier of my favorite party games, and is probably my favorite "drawing" game ever.  As we were all discussing ratings, however, we got into a bit of a disagreement.  Reading the descriptions of the BGG ratings, the other guys initially were going to rate it a 6 or so, because they don't really like playing party games that often.  But then I made a comment about how it was at least a 7 for me, because I would usually be willing to play it when a party game would be appropriate.  They tried to argue with me, though, because there's no qualifier on the "usually willing to play" limiting it to only when party games would be appropriate. 

But the problem with this thinking is that attraction of many games is very situational.  Take Macao, for instance.  I'm rating it a 9, and it's in my top 10 favorite games fo all time.  But after playing it back-to-back with Agricola this week, I doubt that I'll be in the mood to play it again next week.  There are just some times when because of the time you have, the mood you're in, or any other reason, you wouldn't always want to play even your favorite games.  So I think that it's definitely appropriate for you to make some "situational" modifications to ratings of this sort.   

Other Games Played

Aye, Dark Overlord
Time: 37 minutes
Score: Graham* 12, Michelle* 9, Chris* 7, Chris A* X (dead maybe?)
Ratings: Graham 7.5, Michelle 8, Chris 6.5, Chris A 8.5

Bang!
Time: ??
Game 1: Outlaws (Ben, Chip & Brad) - Win; Sheriff (James), Deputies (Michael & Alton) & Renegade (Charles) - Lose
Game 2: Outlaws (Charles, Alton & Brad) - Win; Sheriff (Chip), Deputies (Michael & James) & Renegade (Ben) - Lose
Ratings: James 8, Ben 10, Michael 9, Chip 7, Charles 8.5, Alton 8.5, Brad 9

Blue Moon City
Time: ?? (still in progress when I left)
Score: ? Alton, Chip, James, Michael
Ratings: Alton, Chip, James, Michael

Can't Stop
Time: 31 minutes
Score: Chris 3, Alton 2, Graham* 2, Charles* 0
Ratings: Chris 8.5, Alton 8, Graham 8, Charles 6

The Downfall of Pompeii
Time: 41 minutes
Score: Chip 9 (9 dead) tied with Mark 9 (9 dead), Ben* 8, Michael* 7 
Ratings: Chip 8, Mark 8.5, Ben 7, Michael 8

Escalation!
Time: 31 minutes
Score: Joe* 32, Keith 42, Michelle 59, Beth* 65, Graham 74 
Ratings: Joe 9, Keith 8.5, Michelle 10, Beth 10, Graham 7.5

Im Reich der Wüstensöhne
Time: 75 minutes
Score: James 29, Brad* 20, Chip 19, Ben* 17
Ratings: James 8, Brad 7, Chip 8, Ben 6

Race for the Freaking Galaxy
Time: 35 minutes (for 2 games)
Game 1: Mark 68, Alton 60, Michael 48, Charles 40
Game 2: Charles 59, Mark 55, Alton 51, Michael 33
Ratings: All 10's

The Stars Are Right
Time: 54 minutes
Score: Chris 10, Graham* 8, Michelle 8, Mark* 3
Ratings: Chris 6, Graham 6.5, Michelle 7, Mark 6.5

Through the Desert
Time: 25 minutes
Score: Michelle* 80, Chris 69, Graham 69
Ratings: Michelle 8.5, Chris 8.5, Graham 8.5

Witch's Brew
Time: 32 minutes
Score: James 26, Brad 20, Chris 18, Chip 17, Ben* 16
Ratings: James 8, Brad 8, Chris 9, Chip 9, Ben 9

* First play for that Person