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Game Review: Mall World
By Brad Keen
April 25, 2008
Publishers: Rio Grande Games / BeWitched Spiele
Designer: Andrea Meyer
Artwork: Sebastian Wagner and Sebastian Balogh
Players: 3-5
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: 70-90 Minutes
Some Useful and Interesting Links:
- Tips for Players (English, German)
- Errata (English, German)
- Andrea Meyer’s Game Origins Geeklist
- Board Game Speak episode featuring Andrea Meyer
In need of the funds to produce the game, Andrea accepted Jay Tummelson’s offer to coproduce Mall World, but also recognized the need to use a theme that would be accepted by US customers. After deciding not to make it into yet another game about building in Egypt, a road trip – coupled with some brainstorming during the 2004 Gathering of Friends – resulted in the present mall building theme. Mall World debuted at Essen in 2004.
So instead of re-building Germany, players take on the role of developers hired to design, plan, and build a new shopping mall. Ironic, isn’t it? On their turn, players use approval cards to design the mall and to build specific retail stores. They score points by fulfilling orders dictated by the different types of order cards that appear throughout the game, and players are enticed to fill these orders by bribes offered by various builders.
Needless to say, while the old theme may have turned off American gamers, the new one didn’t hold much appeal either. In fact, when I purchased Mall World at the PrezCon auction, several spectators laughed at the title of the game. Hindsight tends to be 20/20, but perhaps it was a mistake to theme a game around building a mall when your target audience is mostly male. I actually believe that the original theme may have been more enticing to gamers clamoring for originality and a break from the typical “trading in the Mediterranean” subject matter.
But enough of that, I enjoy this game a lot, and I don’t mind the theme. It fits the mechanisms of the game and still differs from the typical theme of most Eurogames.
What Do You Get
- 1 main gameboard
- 1 slush fund board
- 1 storage room tile
- 1 bathroom tile
- 36 shop tiles (9 each green, purple, red, blue)
- 32 target group chips (8 each green, purple, red, blue)
- 10 bribe chips
- 40 approval cards
- 28 order cards
- 10 red use orders
- 12 green rent orders
- 6 blue special orders
- 25 wooden liquid capital coins
- 10 player markers (2 in each color)
- 5 overview cards
- 1 rulebook
The various tiles, chips, and boards included with the game are thick, sturdy, and up to the high quality standards that I have grown accustomed to when playing games published by Rio Grande Games. The cards are also sturdy and should hold up to many plays. In a review of another Andrea Meyer game, Schwarzarbeit, I mentioned that the cards were a pleasure to shuffle, but I was worried about their durability (a concern that, so far, has happily proven to be unwarranted). I think that they perfected the choice of card stock with Mall World. The cards are still a blast to handle but I have no doubt that they will last. The wooden coins and playing pieces are of a similar high production quality. Although the provided playing aids are somewhat flimsy, they should also hold up over time. These aids do a decent job of summarizing the essential information necessary to carry out your turn, although they do lack some key pieces of information that would have been helpful. Overall, I was very impressed by the unique and functional production quality of this game.
I do agree with the complaints that I’ve read concerning the English translation and composition of the rules, but I’ve always received a prompt and helpful response from Andrea Meyer after emailing her with various rules questions. My general opinion with rules issues is that if your rules are confusing, please be available to help people out when they have questions, and Andrea Meyer is incredibly helpful.
There are many fine details important to playing the game, and I must admit that I got many of them wrong or forget about them during the first two plays of the game. My main problem with the rules is that the theme and word choice get in the way of game comprehension and readability. The different thematic terms used make the rules confusing. Here are some examples of this issue:
- Realizing an approval card means playing a card that lets you lay down tiles or chips
- Accepting an order card is the same as paying to draw a order (i.e. goal) card
- The account track is the score track of your income level
- The slush fund is the bank, and the liquid capital coins is money which allows you to bid in an auction for approval cards
- The bribe chips are your reward/punishment for playing an order card face up in front of you from your hand
On the last page of the rulebook is a section entitled “Rules That Are Easily Forgotten,” and I would highly recommend looking over this section, as well as perhaps writing out your own. At the end of the review, I have included my own list for those of you who already own Mall World, which incorporates the one from the rulebook. Finally, there are errata associated with the three-player game that were not included in the rulebook. I included a link regarding this issue at the beginning of the review.
The Setup
The rules come with a suggested board setup for beginning players, with one tile of each color placed as shown in the image. (After playing this way for the first time, you place the tiles anywhere on the board so that no two tiles touch.) In three- and four-player games, you cover some of the spaces on the board. In a three-player game, you also randomly remove three use order cards (red) and three rent order cards (green) from the game. These alterations work well to scale the game for a full range of players.
Next, construct the deck of order (or goal) cards, which come in two types: use and rent. A use card shows a specific combination of two tiles, such as a blue tile next to a red tile, or two adjacent blue tiles. (Note the four use order cards in the mall lobby in the above picture.) A rent card shows two specific combinations of one tile and one chip.
If a player confirms an order card (i.e. plays it from his hand onto the table), then he scores 3,000 CHF for each tile combination on a use order (with a tile able to appear in multiple combinations) or 4,000 CHF for each chip/tile combo on a rent order at the end of the current round. (A tile with a chip on it does not count towards a use order cards, only toward a rent order card.) All points scored from order cards are added to a player’s Swiss bank account on the score track, then the order cards removed from play.
The rent cards are shuffled and placed on the bottom of the order deck, with the use cards on top. Four use cards will be face-up in the lobby with prices listed above them: one, two, four or seven thousand Swiss francs. Whenever an order card is purchased, the remaining cards slide down in cost, and a new card goes in the 7,000 CHF slot.
As soon as a player accepts a rent card – that is, purchases it and places it in his hand – all the use cards are removed and replace with new rent cards. If this doesn’t happen by the end of the first round, you clear them out automatically. Because tile combinations pay out only at the end of a round and because a tile no longer counts for use orders once it has a people chip on it, use orders quickly lose their value after the first round.
Each player starts the game with a random (and secret) special order card that shows a specific combination of two tiles and two chips. Each of these completed combinations net the player 12,000 CHF. It is an essential strategy to work toward completing as many of these combinations as possible throughout the entire game.
Players are finally given four approval cards, four liquid capital coins, and two player markers, one of which is placed on the 20,000 CHF mark on the score track and the other is placed in front of the player. Coins are used to purchase and play approval cards during the auction and to improve your choice of available cards. The last step of the setup is to place bribe chips (one more than the number of players) in the mall bureau. More bribes will be available in the second round, and twice as many bribes are available in the third round, increasing the number of potential order cards that can be played.
How Do You Play and Win the Game: The Three Phases of a Turn
In the first phase of a player’s turn, he may accept an order card by paying the cost shown on the gameboard and adding it to his hand. If he passes on doing so, he places his player marker in the mall lobby. If at the start of a player’s turn, all of the player markers are in the lobby, then the cheapest order card is removed from the game, then the active player begins his turn. (When a player purchases an order card, all markers in the lobby are returned to their owners.)
The second phase of a player’s turn involves either realizing approval cards, i.e. playing tile-laying cards or confirming an order card, i.e. playing a goal card. During the first two rounds of the game, a player must choose between the two options. In the third round, players may take each action once.
If a player confirms an order, he places it in front of him and takes a bribe chip from the mall bureau and adjusts his score accordingly. The bribe chips are a mix of positive and negative values. The positive values act as an incentive for players to play goal cards early in the round, while the negative ones encourage more buildings and growth so that the order cards you play will be worth the negative hit you’ll take. All confirmed orders pay out at the end of the round. The round ends after the turn when the last bribe chip is claimed from the mall bureau.
The other thing that a player can do in this phase is to realize 1-3 approval cards – that is, play 1-3 of his tile- and chip-laying cards. A player has these options:
- If he plays one card, he pays one coin to the slush fund, then carries out the approval card. (Details below.) However, money is tight in this game as the economic system is closed and the only way to earn coins is during this phase of the game, as you’ll learn below.
- If he plays two cards, each other player secretly bids a number of coins. The high bidder (with ties broken clockwise from the active player) pays his bid to the slush fund, then chooses and plays one of the approval cards. The active player carries out the remaining approval card.
- If he plays three cards, players bid as before. The high bidder pays his bid to the active player, then plays one of the three cards. The second-highest bidder pays the slush fund and plays one of the two remaining cards, then the active player plays the final card.
Things work differently in the three-player game, and this difference really makes the game shine, granting a greater deal of control to the active player. (As I discuss later in this review, I believe that the three-player game is the best and perhaps the only way that I would want to play Mall World.) With three players, the active player participates in the auction and wins ties, paying the slush fund if he wins. As such, it’s expensive for the active player to win an auction, but being able to play two or three cards grants the active player a greater amount of control and truly increases the value and tension inherent in the auction.
Okay, so you won an approval card, but what do you do with it? The top of each approval card shows two potential tile placement options; the bottom half shows possible placements of a chip on a tile. During the first round of the game or until a player has purchased a rent order, you can use approval cards only to place tiles onto the board. In the sample card shown at right, you could place a purple tile next to green or green next to purple.
During the second and third rounds – or after the first rent order card has been purchased – you can choose to place a chip on a tile that’s already on the board instead of adding a tile. Referring to the sample card again, you could place a purple chip on a green tile (creating the Fresh Fish store) or a green chip on a purple tile (creating the Maid of the Mall store).
Playing approval cards is how you create patterns that will earn you points off your order cards at the end of each round. Ideally, you try to play cards so that opponents create patterns that will score for you without allowing them to create patterns that will increase their own score. This is difficult to do, but it is one of the many strategic elements of the game. It is also interesting that you can put cards up for auction that may be impossible to “realize” that turn.
In the third phase of a turn, a player may draw 1-2 cards from the four face-up approval cards or from the deck. A player may first (repeatedly) pay 2 coins into the slush fund to discard the face-up cards and reveal four new ones. If he holds any approval cards that can’t be realized for the rest of the game, he can discard them and draw replacements. Finally, if the slush fund contains at least as many coins as players, you distribute coins evenly among the players, leaving any extras behind.
Triggering the End of the Round and the Game
Mall World lasts for three rounds, with a round ending the turn that a player takes the last bribe chip from the mall bureau (by confirming an order). At the end of each round, players score points for their confirmed orders, discard those cards, and take their marker from the lobby. After the last bribe chip has been drawn during the third round, the game ends.
The game also ends if all of the spaces in the mall have been filled with tiles or if the last rent card is purchased. In either case, each player gets one final turn, including the player who triggered the end of the game. This is another easy rule to forget, but it is essential that you remember it!
Each player then scores points for his confirmed orders and 1,000 CHF for each of his coins. The player with the most Swiss francs wins!
Whew. I hope that the game does not sound that confusing, as the mechanisms and turn phases will feel intuitive after you have played through a couple of them. Let’s move on to my general thoughts and conclusions.
Why is Mall World my Game of the Month?
At its core, Mall World is an abstract tile-laying game, a style of game that I am fond of because of the feeling that you get after building up the board in new patterns every time you play. My favorite games of this genre include Oasis and California, which also employs a two-layer scoring and tile-placement mechanism similar to Mall World, not to mention a theme atypical for Eurogames (interior decorating). Mall World reminds me of this style of tile-laying game rather than the Carcassonne family, and I would highly recommend it if you enjoy placing tiles on a board and working to create patterns, but are turned off by the draw bag mechanism employed by Carcassonne.
On another note, Mall World seems like a study in boardgame design. As I read the rules, I often wondered why I would want to do something, only to be provided with a clear explanation a couple of paragraphs later. One example is the auction for approval cards. Since you can guarantee that the card you want is played to your full benefit only if you play one card, it initially struck me as odd that people would want to play more than one card. However, you quickly learn that the best way to score points is to populate the board with tiles and chips, then set up a situation in which you are able to buy up the valuable order cards.
The trickiest part of the game is trying to force other players to make the plays that benefit you most. You may look over the board and realize that there is only one or two ways that an approval card could be played and that one or both of those options benefits you. That 50/50 shot and the additional coins that you gain are valuable and make an auction worthwhile. Further, since the only way that you earn money in this game is through the sale of approval cards, you will need to hold auctions to generate income. In my experience, the person who won was often the individual who was best able to utilize the auction phase to his best benefit. You may also find a situation where you can scare off other people from bidding on cards or you may discover when to auction cards that no one else wants, thus giving yourself multiple cards to play for a small amount of money (with three players) or free (with four or five).
The coins are also useful since you can reveal four new approval cards as often as you want. I didn’t often choose this option, but when I did, it proved to be very beneficial.
The decision to either play approval cards or confirm an order is another area where Meyer must have recognized a problem, then used the bribe chips to solve it. Time is limited, and players often fail to recognize just how quickly the round and game can end. As soon as someone decides to confirm his first order, everyone else tends to realize that the clock is ticking; if they don’t confirm their own orders, they may not get the chance.
When I started thinking about the game, I wondered what incentive someone had to jump-start the process. It seemed to me that the game would play best once the players had some sort of information about which tile combinations other players were trying to achieve, but they have this knowledge only if they can look at order cards in front of others (unless you have a good memory). Thus, you have an incentive to hold order cards as long as possible so that opponents don’t know what you’re aiming for. At the same time, positively valued bribe chips are limited, so players want to confirm their orders early in order to gain them. Once the positive bribe chips are gone, what incentive do you have to play an order card? Well, by the time the positive chips are gone, only three or four negative value chips may be left – and if you don’t confirm an order ASAP, you may not get a chance that round. Failing to confirm at least one or two orders a round may cost you the game.
The addition of special order cards adds that last bit of depth, strategy, and planning, as it forces you to plan your entire game from the first turn. To complete your special order, you often choose use and rent orders, as well as approval cards, that will help you with this goal and reward you as you work towards it. Yet you cannot be too open, or other players will block your attempts to complete this goal. You must also be constantly aware of what your opponents are working toward. The balance is tricky and takes some thought as the game progresses, but this is what makes Mall World fun and strategic.
Although I find this game very enjoyable, my gaming group had mixed feelings about it. We generally agreed that the game was much better with three than four due to the increased amount of control that players had during both the auction phase and the set-up of the board. This last part reminded me of China / Web of Power, where so much could change on the board in the four-player game that the game felt much more chaotic and less strategic. Even after playing a number of games, however, my friends admitted that the game and its strategies continued to confuse them. For this reason, Mall World may be a “try before you buy” game.
I enjoy the game and would recommend it as a worthwhile purchase, but given the divided reviews and comments on BoardGameGeek and the comments of my gaming group, I would hesitate to whole-heartedly recommend it. The most troubling point is that people couldn’t necessarily say why they didn’t enjoy the game – perhaps it didn’t seem polished enough, like it was missing something but they weren’t sure what, perhaps it is too driven by the many mechanisms employed to entice players to play order and approval cards and take the pesky bribe chips. This line of thought could lead you to say that the game is more of a study in game design than a game itself. I don’t agree with that sentiment. I liked it a lot and I am glad that I purchased it. I expect that, if I am in the mood for a tile-laying game, this will be first on my list of games to pull off of the shelf, ahead of Oasis and California. If you enjoy those other two games, then I would suggest that you give this one a try.
Points to Remember:
- If you do not accept an order card, put your marker into the lobby (unless the order deck is empty); if you do accept an order card, remove all player markers from the lobby.
- Do not put approval cards into your hand if you win them in the auction. Play them immediately, then discard them.
- In the third round, you may play approval cards and confirm an order card.
- You may not place the people chips on tiles until a rent order card has been accepted or the second round has started.
- Your hand may not exceed eight cards at any point in the game. The special order card does not count towards this hand limit, but all other cards do.
- Tiles with chips on them do not count towards completing use orders.
- Coins add to your score at the end of the game.
- If the game ends early because either because no more tiles may be placed in the mall or because no more orders are left in the lobby the game ends after everyone, including the player who triggered the end of the game, takes one additional turn. If during this last round the last bribe chip is draw, the game will end as normal.
- At the end of the first round, remove all use order cards from the lobby and replace them with rent orders.
- In a three-player game, if the active player bids the highest amount in an auction for approval cards, he pays his money to the slush fund, not to himself.
Special thanks to Ward Batty, Gregor McNish, and Andrea Meyer for providing the pictures used in this review.
Posted by W. Eric Martin on Apr 25, 2008 at 02:00 AM in Reviews, Game Reviews / 686
Comments:
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Wow, this really puts the RE in REview. I barely remember my one play of Mall World, but among Mall World, Oasis, and California, Oasis is the only game I liked enough to buy and play more than once. Posted by Curt Carpenter on Apr 25, 2008 at 02:13 AM | #
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Curt, it has been awhile for me as well.... But I will mention that of Oasis, California and Mall World, Mall World is the only one that I liked enough to own and play more than once. Well, if this review sparks any interest, contact me as I have one for trade/sale! Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Apr 25, 2008 at 08:22 AM | #
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Dale, that’s a nice lesson on how to deliver a backhanded compliment! Eric Posted by W. Eric Martin on Apr 25, 2008 at 08:48 AM | #
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Wow, are you sure your middle name isn’t Thorough, Brad? I rather enjoy Mall World. It and Schwarzarbeit have shown me that Andrea Meyer gives some fairly unique feel to her games, and I like that. I find Mall World’s colors a little overwhelmingly psychedelic by game end, but the excellent parallelogram tiles with subtly differing art compensate for that a bit. Oh, and since everyone else is chiming in, I like Oasis, California, and Mall World enough to own them all for cheap. :^) Posted by Nathan Morse on Apr 25, 2008 at 11:07 AM | #
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I think Mall World was hurt by a really crummy rulebook. I like the game myself, but it’s very hard to fathom from the rules included, which use some translated terminology that’s sometimes hard to parse. It tanked with the first group I played it with, largely because of struggling with the rules. But after they had suffered through it, and I had figured out how to play, I was able to teach it more successfully to others. Posted by Chris Farrell on Apr 28, 2008 at 06:53 PM | #
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