Upon reading the title of this particular post you might have had one of two possible reactions: either you had a deep sense of deja-vu, almost like you have read those particular words before, or otherwise you immediately started declaring me a hack and a charlatan, since I've obviously used those exact same words before in relation to another wonderful game, Tigris and Euphrates.
I must now admit that my piece on that wonderful game was nothing more than a shock piece, one of those well known journalism tricks in which they try to catch your attention by presenting a shocking headline in order to draw you into buying a shitty tabloid newspaper. It was, however, interesting to argue that a game such as T&E (as it's known by its friends and close relatives) is one of the most thematic games ever, due to the apparent lack of theme that the game presents at first glance.
I've gone over it before, but I have a real thing against pigeonholing particular genres or games simply due to their surface qualities. It's the sort of thinking that ends with assumption that 'of course Agricola is non-thematic, it's a Euro!' and other such idiocies. Theme does not need detract from the rules of a game, while on the other hand, rules shouldn't detract from the theme. Shockingly, for once, the answer is truly in the middle: a mixture of features seems to me to be the crucial point in which theme and rules merge together to produce games with true lasting appeal.
The game that I will talk about today has that appeal, so much appeal that it literally burst out of the seams in terms of theme and rules: this game, as you might have guessed from my last spoiler-update, is Pax Porfiriana.
Pax Porfiriana is a card game designed by Phil Eklund, noted developer of the complex brain burner High Frontier. The setting of Pax Porfiriana is pre-revolutionary Mexico, when the country was still under the iron fist of the dictator Porifirio Diaz. Each player takes the mantle of an Hacendado, powerful landowners within Mexico that had both the political and military clout necessary in order to shape the country to their own needs.
The aim of each Hacendado is simple: take control of Mexico by any means. This can be done in several different ways (although in terms of rules they are all handled in similar ways): an Hacendado can either lead a popular revolution, or he can conspire with the Americans to annex Mexico, or maybe lead a military coup, or simply suck up to Diaz enough that he is named his successor.
The above is done by gaining prestige, which comes in four different flavours: command (to allow you to do a military coup), revolution, outrage (American outrage, in this case) or loyalty. When a topple occurs, you total your prestige in a particular category and compare it to Diaz's current score and the scores of your two weakest opponents. If your value is higher, you win!
Prestige can be gained in different ways: you can hire specific partners which have that prestige (which can range from important people to newspapers or even inventions), or you can have enterprises which have a certain prestige attached to them. The other way to gain prestige is when other people play cards against you: this usually cripples your economy but does gain you prestige sometimes as a recompense.
This is where the genius of the game comes in: it is possible to play these cards against yourself: sure, you might get a negative outcome (or sometimes, not at all), but you will gain prestige out of it. Strangely enough, this doesn't feel gamey at all, but rather something that would have fitted right in with the sort of Machiavellian schemes that would have happened at the time.
Let's give some examples: it is possible to buy plantations. When enough unrest is created at plantations, they revolt, giving the 'liberator' revolution prestige. It is possible to make a revolt happen in your own plantation, thus allowing you to get the revolution prestige: the oppressor, working behind the shadows, suddenly becomes the liberator.
The truly wonderful thing about this game is that it can create a narrative from every single card play: sending troops to your opponent's enterprises in order to extort money from them, selling guns to various revolutionary groups, creating unrest in order to stop others from getting money, it's all there and it all fits. It also helps that all the cards have a little bit of flavour attached to them: it's enough to allow a true narrative to be created behind every action.
Another factor that helps the theme is that the Hacendado of each player is slightly different. There are some Hacendados which follow the life of the Revolutionary better than the one of the loyal servant, but the rules for each aren't overbearing, it's just small differences which end up creating a huge difference.
As well as that, the game has huge replay potential: you never use the full deck of cards (which is up to 120 different, unique cards), but simply a portion of them: no two games are going to be exactly the same.
If I was to compare this game to any other game out there, I would follow the choice made by someone else and say that the game bears a resemblance to Munchkin. Now, you might rightly think that this is not necessarily a good comparison, but the fact is that Pax Porfiriana is a minutely, perfectly and expertly balanced, playable and rules-strong version of Munchkin.
The game has a lot of 'fuck you' elements and the end game can be somewhat of a 'screw the leader', but there always seem to be ways to be able to do something: it's almost impossible to completely blame the luck of the draw for losing like it is possible in Munchkin.
Going back to the theme, it is really the details that make this game what it is. It is possible to send Mexico into depression within the game, a situation in which certain industries will cost money rather than make money. Each type of regime can affect the game in remarkable ways. The flavour text of each card really gives a glimpse of how historically important certain characters/groups/families were at that time. Pax Porfiriana far surpasses any other game I've played just in terms of pure adherence to rules and even only for this it would garner a recommendation from me.
There are, however, issues with the game: first, the cards in the games are very visually busy and it can be difficult to parse all the information present within them since some of the important elements within them are so stylized. Although I personally like the look of the cards, I have heard comments that consider them ugly, so I guess the design isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Secondly, this game has probably one of the worst rulebooks I have ever seen (wondering where the second part of the title was coming from, where you?).
This rulebook makes the cardinal sin of placing necessary rule explanations within a glossary at the end of the book, thus requiring going to it in order to read fundemental rules in the game.
This is an issue that irritates me greatly since it plagues a lot of the games I like. Vlaada, for all his virtues, does create some truly annoying rulebooks, for example. Through the Ages is probably THE most awful rulebook ever due to its decision to split the rules in different sections of the game (since the game can be played in one of three difficulties).
Finding rules in such a rulebook thus becomes an exhausting endavour of trying to remember in which specific section that particular rule is, which is enough to send anyone crazy especially for such a complex game like Through the Ages.
Other rulebooks by Vlaada suffer similar issues, although not to the same extent. Vlaada rulebooks tend to do two things that lead to them being annoying to find things in when you need rule explanations: first of all, they are divided into different sections as explained above: secondly, they are designed to be enjoyable to read. You might wonder how the second is a negative, but sometimes the indexed nature of a wargame rulebook is preferable since it makes finding specific rules (or referring back to them) a breeze.
Going back to rulebooks in general, I think that poorly thought out rulebooks can put people off from trying an awesome games simply because it's tedious to learn how to play it through the rulebook alone. Rulebooks are often as important as the design of the game itself: if people can't learn to play your 'perfect design', then surely the game is a failure no matter how good the design is?
Going back to the Pax Porfiriana rulebook, another thing that should be avoided is placing your own personal political views in the design notes of the rules: it might put people off so why bother?
Overall, I would strongly recommend this game. The way that it implements the rules and theme is truly something else and cannot be reasonably compared to any other recenet release. The game plays fast (except if there is a depression) and provides both complexity but also ease of play once learnt: easy to learn, hard to master would truly fit as a description of it. Pax Porfiriana receives 5 out of 5 angry scowling King Philips.
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