Marvin Marvel's Marvelous Marble Machine (2005)

Overview

A tricky "look-ahead" game of directing and diverting marbles, represented by wooden discs with printed stickers on them (tiles), into your scoring areas of the board.

From the rules: "You are a middle manager trying to manipulate the marble sorting machine to obtain as many marbles as possible for yourself. The board represents the machine which distributes newly-minted marbles from the center and funnels them to one of six goal areas at the edge of the board. The winning player is the one who can manipulate the process to get the most marbles by the end of the day."

Players manipulate the process by playing Machine Tiles: Machine Parts & Modifiers, or Marbles during their turns. Machine Parts alter the direction or behavior of Marble Tiles that move over them on a turn. Some Machine Part Tiles reverse direction, redirect, push or jump the Marble. Modifier Tiles allow players to reposition or remove previously played Machine Part Tiles.

Marble Tiles are printed with a directional arrow and a value from 1 to 4. The player positions the arrow in a direction of his choosing in the center of the board. When subsequent marbles are placed, all marbles currently on the board will move in the direction of their arrow the distance identified by their printed value.

Players must play at least one, and at most two, tiles per turn. If a player plays a marble on her first turn, she immediately takes a second turn, playing another marble or a Machine Tile (A machine Part of Modifier).

The game ends when there are no tiles left for a player to draw or a player has met the specified marble quota for the game. This triggers the final phase, in which the machine keeps running until all of the marbles on the board reach their final destination. After the final phase, the player with the most marbles wins the game.