I really like how well put together this game looks in terms of both the aesthetics and the mechanics, it really gives you a lot of options for points, money, and potential to try different strategies. Do you go all in on one type of good, go for a balanced approach, building specialties, or hedge your bets? Excellent work as always on this video, it was great.
At first I thought this looked like a dry game, but all of the variations on the buildings has won me over. Plus the diminishing returns on buying points is very clever. All in all, looks like a lot of thought went into the design of this one.
Thanks, Steven! I spent the past two years stripping out everything I could until every decision carried a lot of weight. But you're right, "you just buy stuff and then sell stuff" doesn't sound terribly compelling. I got a lot of curious glances at conventions until players sat down and found themselves sweating over every decision about _how_ to do it. In addition to the unique stores, I've also designed the market cards to very often be (potentially) every bit as helpful to your opponents as to you.
If I were an accredited institution, I'd be all for it! Alas, I'm merely a lowly game designer. That said, some folks do have plans to try to bring the game into the classroom.
Just recently watched video and game looks very well made and I like how market works, and I like look of game (as they say themselves - quirky artwork! :) ). But I am not yet sure about cost and shipping for EU is more than I would like. I will surely keep eye on it.
Did I miss a rule? At 52:14, when it's time to sell clothing, the blue player is the only one with clothing and they have 5, but there is only 4 demand. Do they have to sell from the highest shelves first? Otherwise, why wouldn't they sell one of the cubes that they are about to lose and leave the cube they just bought in the other store (which would only drop to the middle shelf and be in a building that rewards you if you can max its inventory)? Sure it sells for $2 less at the starter store, and early money is always better than later money in an economic game (except for Last Will-ish games), but $8 + nothing now always seems worse than $6 now + stock that will sell for at least $2 later, especially when the current supply is empty (plus the inventory bonus of the store that the stock would be in). If there is such a rule, I really wish it would have been mentioned/repeated it during that sequence of play, because it just seemed idiotic when watching it. I know its tough to play 3-handed, and it's easy to lose track of things when doing so, which means I understand and don't care about the other massive tactical mistakes made in the game (auctioning and winning the Loading Dock, when the marketing cards on hand and current supply don't support the type of play he wants to do at all - though it doesn't help to erroneously specifically call out that there are lots of goods in the supply, which was only true of goods that weren't relevant to the decision he was making at the time). Whether there is such a rule or not, could a comment about it please be added in the Klingon subtitles as to why which goods were sold?
I do not believe there is a rule that specified which shelf you sell from first. It's likely I could have played this one better, and I also sometimes play sub-optimally in order to find myself in a good teaching situation.
I wonder if this could be expanded a bit for a classroom setting. Would be interesting to do a turn a day kind of thing with students tracking their expenses and profits each turn. Would be so easy to tie in different curriculum along the way. Any thoughts on how one might expand the game a bit for 20 or so kids? Could group them up in 4 groups of 5 but 5 people in a group really does not include individuals well.
@@JonGetsGames I would see that you could "create" a city that had say 5 regions and each region could be 4 students. Each region would have different storefronts offered and maybe even any discarded storefronts could rotate over to other regions. That seems very doable. The buying and selling components might be more challenging. Perhaps everyone supply cards actually go to an adjacent region while demand cards would go to an alternative adjacent region. I welcome any thoughts from this community.
Also, what happens if a player loses an auction that they started? Can they put another store up for auction? Or at least play one from hand, if they still have one?
Seems interesting, but I'm a bit concerned about the duration of the game, with all the goods type, and bidding (which happens twice), and 12 overall rounds... Jon, have you played the game with 2 human opponents? How long was that?
Games tend to take 60-90 minutes. A typical game will end in about 7 rounds, but players can rush it or delay it a bit based on strategy. There is a cap only in case players don't at all try to win the game.
