The guys in my Wednesday gaming group started a push to play more of the old, dust-ridden games at the bottom and backs of our respective game closet shelves. The premise was simple: let’s try to remember why we keep all these old games when all we ever play now are the newest, shiniest things in shrink.
Right on the spot, the Dusty Euro Series was born, and I’ve enlisted multiple game groups to help me lead the charge on covering older games.
In order to share some of these experiences, I’ll be writing a piece from time to time about a game that is at least 10 years old that we haven’t already reviewed here at Meeple Mountain. In that way, these articles are not reviews. These pieces will not include a detailed rules explanation or a broad introduction to each game. All you get is what you need: my brief thoughts on what I think about each game right now, based on one or two fresh plays.
MarraCash: What Is It?
MarraCash is a 1996 auction game published by KOSMOS and designed by Stefan Dorra, best known in my gaming groups as the man who gave us For Sale, the best short auction game ever made. MarraCash is a 3-4 player game that asks players to auction vendor stalls in an imaginary marketplace while trying to attract the best customers (color coded for your convenience!) to each stall. The player with the most money at the end of play is the winner.
On a night when I had the chance to play Saint Petersburg and Edel, Stein & Reich, my friends Beth and John whipped out a third game to wrap up the night…and that game was MarraCash. I didn’t even plan to see this game, and it ended up being my favorite game of the night.
That’s because the auctions here are a hoot. Bids can be started by any player on their turn. Bids have to increase in increments of $25. The person who started the auction gets a payout if they don’t get the stall they initiate for bidding. Everyone laughed as every auction got higher and higher (especially as I outbid myself for almost everything by the end of the game).
When auctions aren’t happening, players get to select batches of meeples to move in various directions towards certain stalls. When a yellow meeple is next to a yellow market, they stop inside and never leave, earning the stall’s owner increasing amounts of cash as stores fill up. When new shoppers need to be added to the board, the active player has first dibs on how those new customers enter, and from where on the marketplace grid.
MarraCash’s auctions are interesting, and the stakes were always high. The teach took maybe three minutes. The simple board is all you need to navigate the territory, and something tells me this would shine best at its full player count. As is, it played nicely even with three players.
Just Off the Top Line
I love auction games. My top three? The Princes of Florence, Ra, and Stockpile: Epic Edition. (Amun-Re is really good, and El Grande might be even better, but I need more plays at lower player counts in those games before I put it on my auction game top line. My early findings suggest that Amun-Re and El Grande only work well at the max player count.)
MarraCash instantly came in just below my top line, and I know it’s a blast because I got obliterated in the end. If “winner’s bias” is real, so is “loser’s bias”, and I didn’t feel a lick of that when we finished our play of MarraCash. It’s short, it is easy to teach, and there’s a lot of fun decisions to make as players push crowds of shoppers around the map. I love that auctioneers get paid even if they don’t win a stall, and I love that players who move shoppers around get a “finder’s fee” if they can push customers into a business even when it is not their own.
MarraCash just works. The problem, besides its admittedly terrible title? Finding a copy, because games from 1996 aren’t exactly on sale at your local Target. But if you can find a copy in trade or at a local garage sale, do it…I think you’ll agree that MarraCash is a treasure!
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