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Marvin Marvel's Marvelous Marble Machine box art
2005 Ranked #16,103

Marvin Marvel's Marvelous Marble Machine

A tile-manipulation game has managers redirect moving marbles through a shared sorting machine toward their scoring areas. Machine parts alter paths and modifiers rearrange them, with the most collected marbles winning after the system runs out.

Maze Puzzle Tile Placement

Players

2-6

Play time

Not listed

Age

12+

Complexity

1.8/5

Rating

6.25

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.4/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 3.9/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.8/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.1/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.7/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

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.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

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.

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Category

2

Mechanism

1

Family

1

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
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Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

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Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2–6
Best with
3
Play time
60 min
Age
12+
Complexity
1.8/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Greg Lam

Publishers

1
Pair-of-Dice Games

Linked items

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