In Oh My Goods!, first released as Royal Goods, players are European craftsmen during the Middle Ages who produce tools, barrels, glass windows, and many other goods. Only if you make clever use of your production chains will you have the most victory points at the end of the game.
Using the central board in A Feast for Odin, players have to hunt, gather basic materials, refine those materials, develop their production-buildings, build/buy ships, and raid settlements.
The resulting earnings are placed on the players' board in the best possible pattern to produce income and (later) victory points.
It is a time of unrest in 1920s Europa. The ashes from the first great war still darken the snow. The capitalistic city-state known simply as “The Factory”, which fueled the war with heavily armored mechs, has closed its doors, drawing the attention of several nearby countries.
Scythe is a Worker Placement/Economic Engine board game set in an alternate-history 1920s period. It is a time of farming and war, broken hearts and rusted gears, innovation and valor. In Scythe, each player represents a character from one of five factions of Eastern Europa who are attempting to earn their fortune and claim their faction's stake in the land around the mysterious Factory. Players conquer territory, enlist new recruits, reap resources, gain villagers, build structures, and activate monstrous mechs.
Each player begins the game with different resources (power, coins, combat acumen, and popularity), a different starting location, and a hidden goal. Starting positions are specially calibrated to contribute to each faction’s uniqueness and the asymmetrical nature of the game (each faction always starts in the same place).
Scythe gives players almost complete control over their fate. Other than each player’s individual hidden objective card, the only elements of luck or variability are “encounter” cards that players will draw as they interact with the citizens of newly explored lands. Each encounter card provides the player with several options, allowing them to mitigate the luck of the draw through their selection. Combat is also driven by choices, not luck or randomness.
Scythe uses a streamlined action-selection mechanism (no rounds or phases) to keep gameplay moving at a brisk pace and reduce downtime between turns. While there is plenty of direct conflict for players who seek it, there is no player elimination.
Every part of Scythe has an aspect of engine-building to it. Players can upgrade actions to become more efficient, build structures that improve their position on the map, enlist new recruits to enhance character abilities, activate mechs to deter opponents from invading, and expand their borders to reap greater types and quantities of resources. These engine-building aspects create a sense of momentum and progress throughout the game. The order in which players improve their engine adds to the unique feel of each game, even when playing one faction multiple times.
Letter Tycoon is the word game for 2-5 capitalists!
In the game, players take turns forming a word using a seven-card hand and a three-card community card pool, scoring money and stock rewards based on their word. Players may use their earned money to buy one letter "patent" in the word they make. In the future, whenever another player uses one of your owned letters on their turn, you earn money from the bank. Letters that are used less frequently have special abilities, increasing their power.
When enough of the alphabet has been claimed, players finish the current turn, then score all money, stock and letter patents owned. Create the most valuable empire and you can become the letter tycoon!
In Arkwright players run up to four factories in England during the late 18th Century. Your goal is to have the most valuable block of own shares. Thus, you must increase your share value and buy shares from the bank.
To run the factories, you need workers. When hiring Workers, demand is automatically created. But of course you want to replace your expensive workers (wage 2-5) by machines (1). To have more output from your factories you may employ new Workers or improve your factory to the next technical level.
You fix the price for your goods during an action round. To enhance your chances of selling goods, you improve your factories to higher levels, increase the quality and make some sales promotion. The higher these factors, the better are your chances of success - the higher the price, the lower.
Each player has an own set of "action tokens" like "build and modernize factories", "employ new workers", "improve quality" etc. On your turn you place one of those tokens on one of the free spaces in your line of the "Administration board" and pay the according administration costs, ranging from 2 to 10 (odd numbers). Some actions depend on how much you paid, i.e. you may buy more machines with one single action, when you pay more (= use a higher space, which is then blocked for the rest of the round). During the game your actions become more and more effective by new tokens, i.e. allow you to buy 3 machines in a single turn instead of 2, increase quality 2 levels instead of only 1...).
After each round of actions one kind of factories is active and you have to pay for all your workers and machines there, then sell the manufactured products. The value of your shares increases for sold products and best quality.
Goods may also be traded to the colonies by ship - provided you have a contract with the monopoly of the East Indian Company.
After four turns each of the factories has produced and the round ends. Players remove the action tokens from the administration board and reveal an event token. After 5 rounds the player with the most valuable block of shares wins. Neither being to be the one with the most shares nor being the one with the highest share value guarantees victory.
Arkwright allows you to act in different ways. Run all four factories with most possible output, set the focus on only two factories and improve them more than the others can; use shipping to colony or focus on the home market. In any way you have to react to the opponents and their strategy. Enter markets with deficit in supply or give up business where the other players start to push you out. Buy shares when they are cheap and increase the value, or first make money and buy shares later.
To get familiar with the market mechanics you may start with a 120 minutes version "Spinning Jenny", but for those who like full strategy in economic themed games, the 240 minute "Waterframe"-Rules come with more options to improve your factory and use ships.