Marrakech is a

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a comp ...

Dominique Ehrhard "Dominique" is a 1963 French language popular song, written and performed by the Belgian female singer Jeannine Deckers, better known as Sœur Sourire ("Sister Smile" in French) or The Singing Nun. The song is about Saint Dominic, a Spanish-born ...

in which players are competing carpet traders in the city of

Marrakech Marrakesh or Marrakech ( or ; ar, مراكش, murrākuš, ; ber, ⵎⵕⵕⴰⴽⵛ, translit=mṛṛakc}) is the fourth largest city in the Kingdom of Morocco. It is one of the four Imperial cities of Morocco and is the capital of the Marrakes ...

. It was first published in 2007. Its German edition has been renamed Suleika.

Gameplay

Two to four players can play the game, but four is recommended. The game is played on a grid having of 7 squares per side. Players place "carpets" of the size of two squares, possibly overlapping each other. Each player has a color and plays only carpets of that color from their stack. The players also move a single "trader" piece on the grid using a special six-sided

die Die, as a verb, refers to death, the cessation of life. Die may also refer to: Games * Die, singular of dice, small throwable objects used for producing random numbers Manufacturing * Die (integrated circuit), a rectangular piece of a semicondu ...

. When someone moves the trader to an opponent's carpet, they have to pay an amount of game money equal to the size of connected carpet squares of the same colour to the owner of the carpet. The players aim to earn money this way and to have less of their carpets covered by other pieces of carpet.

Reception

The game won the 2008 French As d'Or award and the Austrian award. It also was one of the recipient of the 2009

Mensa Select Mensa Select is an annual award given by American Mensa Mensa is the largest and oldest high-IQ society in the world. It is a non-profit organisation open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardised, supervised I ...

awards, and it was also nominated for the 2008 German Spiel des Jahres award and the 2009 U-more Award. The reviews were generally mediocre: the reviewers praised the game material, the harmonious design and the simple rules of the game, which would make the game easily accessible to children in particular. On the other hand, however, the game offers too little game depth and tactical options to be able to entertain experienced players in the long term.

In popular culture

Marrakech is the first game played by the heroines of the ''

After School Dice Club is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hirō Nakamichi. It focuses on a group of teenage girls and their efforts to set up a board game café. It was serialized in Shogakukan's ''shōnen'' manga magazine ''Monthly Shōnen Sund ...

'' manga series (also an anime).

References

Sources

**{{bgg, 29223, ''Marrakech'' Board games introduced in 2007 Mensa Select winners