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Manilla
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A player who wants to go all out on luck pays five pesos and boards the pirates boat. In this awaiting position he hopes a ship will reach his area. When this happens in the second round, he may enter the ship if there is still space left, and shares in the pay out when the ships enters the harbour. But it turns out better for a pirate if a ship enters in the thrid round, as in this case he may completely take over the ship and throw out (or over board!) all occupants, getting all revenues immediately paid out for just himself! After this, he decides if he wants the ship to enter the harbour, or the docks.
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Ships can be insured, and a player placing a token at the insurance agency immediatley gets 10 pesos paid out. This is only advantageous if a player expects that all ships will arrive in the harbour, otherwise he will have to pay for every ship that enters the docks. And then it will turn out if the insurance was easy money!

For each arrived type of goods in the harbour, its share value is raised, after which a new round begins with the bidding for harbour warden. The game ends when at least one of the goods has reached value ‘30’ on the stock market.
‘Manilla’ plays best with five players when everyone nags the other player the most and space on the ships and along the shore is tight. The game looks nice, and it plays nice too - the first two times. After a third and fourth time it becomes painfully clear that we deal with a dice game and nothing more than that, how much we fool ourselves in pretending we can influence the outcome of the die by a few choices that lack any tactics but only deal with probability. But dice rolls remain unpredictable, however hard we may shout: ‘The six! It’s the six that has to come!’ A ship that seems to have a perfect starting position at ‘5’, may as well not arrive when the dice rolls are very low, despite the little extra push from the pilot.
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In this respect 75 minutes are a bit long, especially if it turns out that it does not matter what decisions are to be made. With less luck and some more tactics ‘Manilla’ could have been a good game. In its present form however, despite its charming look, it fails to deliver.
© 2006 Richard van Vugt

Manilla, 999 Games (orig. Zoch Verlag), 2006 (2005) - 3 to 5 players, 10 years and up, 50 minutes
half a point added for the nice atmosphere
not very demanding but good for a laugh or two
I somehow like this dice game
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