[Boardgames] Sunday night capitalism [Rowan Tree and Red Thread]

We had friends over last night for board gaming for the first time in ages. When our friend Ken was living in Cork we played regularly, but since his departure to parts Belgian we've been increasingly lax about scheduling board game nights. So I was glad to get things organised to play last night. The request was for Acquire by Sid Sackson, a well-known stocks and shares themed game of getting control of corporations and maximising your investment as they grow and merge.

I've enjoyed the game in the past, but I think last night confirmed my worries about it. One of the other players overspent early in the game and had no way of liquidising his shares to get back into the game. For more than half the game he was stuck picking and laying tiles without any chance to change his position. Okay, I can see that it was his fault for buying too much too early but the game is unforgiving (and worse, boring) if you let yourself get into that position. I placed third of five and can see why I didn't make the running for victor: I didn't invest enough in shares of the largest corporations while they were growing and lost out in the big pay out at the end of the game. Extra annoying as I was top for cash throughout the game and should have spent more of it to strengthen my position. I hesitated to pay out though, as I had suffered the cash-choke problem I described above in an earlier game and that left me wary of overspending.

I suppose playing that balance between ready cash and short-term stock purchased to win mergers and the long-term investments to grab the big payouts at the end of the game is the heart of Acquire and the source of the major, soul-searching questions that make for a good game. Nonetheless, I think the problem of an early overspend leaving you out of the running for the entire game but still requiring you to sit there and fulminate about your luck and stupidity is a bad one and one that should be addressed in the rules.

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This is a problem I have with a lot of board games and the cause of my long abiding hatred for Capitol (where exactly the same thing happened to me as happened last night only on the game's first run out) playing out a loooong defeat is rarely a fun way of spending an evening.

If the game screws you, or you make one or more duff decisions early on, you have to keep playing for the sake of the others and have no fun yourself and it sucks. The only way to fix that really is to beef up the social end or play more often so the pain will (hopefully) be spread around. We should have been more lenient with Utz and let him sell those shares back that he bought because he didn't understand the rules correctly but we forgot the 'doh!' rule and were not thoughtful enough.

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The key to Accquire, IMO, is that it -is- a fairly fast game (at least, in essence; people can stodge for as long as they want, of course), so it's really the entire structure of the game that matters, not specific turns.

I pretty much never worry about liquidity -- instead, I always invest as heavily as I can and try to cash out as quickly as possible -- sure, running out of money can make you lose if your gamble fails and you can't retrieve your money...but you can't win if you don't play. (of course, I also play around my tiles -- it's a lot harder to gauruntee getting your money back if you've got a couple of merger tiles).

Basically...Acquire is a challenging strategy game -- a bit more serious than some, but once you pick it up, it isn't that hard, and it's really difficult to end up with an unplayable position once you've played it a few times.

Note that I'd have a lot more problem with this if the game took more than an hour to play...but it really shouldn't, unless people are thinking -way- too much. This said, I'd rather play with hands and stocks open, because I don't think the memory aspect is very interesting (and it artifically increases the diffulty to little benefit).

An hour? Not with our lot it's not. I'm afraid that our group are on a couple of sigma out on the slow side of the distribution. That given, Acquire is too long to pay back the investment, particularly when I feel the tile drawing allows for unlucky draws. (I know that there are plenty of draws and the luck element balances out; it just doesn't feel that way when your stuck with tiles that only seem to benefit other players.)

I still think it's a pretty good game, but it's one that probably should be played faster than our group manages. I agree that the hidden cash & stocks option is silly. I'm not in favour of games that pretend to hide information. Anyone who is willing to put in the effort can track that info, and it only serves to slow things down or penalise those with poor memories. It's my only nitpick with Tigris & Euphrates, for example.

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*shrug*. Actually, Acquire -might- take closer to an hour if your lot played with open info -- there just isn't that much going on at any given point; the big "mulling things over" bits -might- involve not remembering how much stock any given person has. (or just addict them all to the handheld versions of the game; that should reduce their action time. :) I'm not quite sure what could cause the game to take that long, honestly; except for a psychological feeling that stock games -should- take that long. :)

I agree with the Tigris nitpick -- keeping tiles hidden is a key element, but there's no real reason to keep scores secret.

Back to Acquire for a moment, I think it's key that the game is about risktaking and investment -- there's no reason to hold onto capital except in the endgame (when there's nothing to spend it on) and when you need a cushion for defense. So any turn when you're not buying three stock is a wasted turn, unless you're out of cash or the bank's out of stock.

I agree with you on the three stock a turn idea,. The real crunch is estimating when your investments will pay back, so that you have an idea how much you can spend each turn until then. This was obviously something I wasn't good enough at in that last game. In my defense I was burned by the cash flow choke in the game before that and was worried about a repeat.

This suggests a different problem. I don't get to play board games often enough to really get up the learning curve with many of them. This is a shame. I like getting better at games, and this was one of the things I particularly liked about Puerto Rico. I've only played Acquire about 3-4 times total over the last 3 years.

The eternal cry of the gamer: so many games, so little time.

For me, at least, the question in Acquire isn't so much estimating when your investments will pay back but instead, either holding the merging tile (ie, they'll pay back -when I want them to-) or hedging and hoping for luck -- the game will often have all players run out of money, and hinge on players drawing the merging tile first. You -will- lose a game where you get into a control race with a player who manages to get his payout substantually before you do...but that's just the way the game is played.

Re experience...yeah; this contributes both to slow games and frustration. Perhaps the palm game could help? With either a palm or an emulator, playing a bunch of solitaire games can help one get the general idea, and the computer plays very fast.

_Acquire_ is one I've never played. I keep hearing good things about it, but can't quite believe that someone was making Germany-style & -quality games 50 years ago;).

I'm in the same boat; I've heard about Acquire again and again on boardgamegeek.com, but I've never played it.

::B::

It is good, despite my griping. I think Sackson was a great games designer and Acquire is one of his better games.

I greatly regret lending my copy of A Gamut of Games to someone years ago and never getting it back.

I greatly regret lending my copy of A Gamut of Games to someone years ago and never getting it back.

(scratches head) I'm not familiar with this title. Why the regret?

::B::

"A Gamut of Games" is a book by Sid Sackson containing dozens of games created by him as well as many other games from different designers. It's a really good collection and most if not all of the games can be played with the sorts of things you already have (decks of cards, checker boards or pieces, and so on).

I miss my copy and it's now oop. Getting a new copy is pricey.

Rowan Tree and Red Thread

[Boardgames] Sunday night capitalism

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