First play of James' birthday present from Kieron, Industry. This is a four player maximum game revolving around bidding for and commissioning factories and technologies. The bidding is a new system for us: the Auctioneer chooses which factory is up for auction, all other players bid once only, and then the Auctioneer either takes the money and auctions the next item, or matches the best bid and distributes the money across all players (including himself, somewhat peculiarly) but then passes on the Auctioneer role to the next player.
This mechanism leads to some interesting dilemmas, particularly since if you auction something that nobody bids on, you take it yourself - admittedly for free, but you've got no money in and have to pass the role on. Or else you auction something you want and find yourself tempted to take the money rather than match the bid. Very clever.
The various factories provide instant victory points or produce resources that can be used to commission future factories. The added twist is that the final scoring is where most of the points come from - bonuses for factories that are connected by roads, or (if you have the corresponding bonus field - port, railway station, oil refinery or electricity locations) linked by rivers, railways, pipeline or power cables. It's simpler than it sounds although the board is a bit busy and not always immediately obvious what is connected to what. But it worked well and we enjoyed it. It's much more of a Rivals game than the BGG score would suggest.
We were somewhat finding our way this first play - Orhan almost monopolised the port and rivers option early on, James spotted this and invested across the other bonus fields later, Stuart and Kieron were spread across a number of strategies. Most of the scores were very close but James pulled ahead with the bonus fields really delivering in the final scoring. James 52, Stuart 37, Kieron 34, Orhan 33.
This mechanism leads to some interesting dilemmas, particularly since if you auction something that nobody bids on, you take it yourself - admittedly for free, but you've got no money in and have to pass the role on. Or else you auction something you want and find yourself tempted to take the money rather than match the bid. Very clever.
The various factories provide instant victory points or produce resources that can be used to commission future factories. The added twist is that the final scoring is where most of the points come from - bonuses for factories that are connected by roads, or (if you have the corresponding bonus field - port, railway station, oil refinery or electricity locations) linked by rivers, railways, pipeline or power cables. It's simpler than it sounds although the board is a bit busy and not always immediately obvious what is connected to what. But it worked well and we enjoyed it. It's much more of a Rivals game than the BGG score would suggest.
We were somewhat finding our way this first play - Orhan almost monopolised the port and rivers option early on, James spotted this and invested across the other bonus fields later, Stuart and Kieron were spread across a number of strategies. Most of the scores were very close but James pulled ahead with the bonus fields really delivering in the final scoring. James 52, Stuart 37, Kieron 34, Orhan 33.
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