-
Max Jamelli
United States
Chambersburg
Pennsylvania
-
#24 on my list - Acquire
When I first got back into gaming and found BGG, I started looking for economic games. I liked games where money was the key factor and through all of my searches, Acquire always came up as one of the best games. The only problem was, it was no longer in print. Copies on Ebay were also pretty expensive at the time. I resigned myself to the fact that this was probably a game I'd never get to play. Until ...
My birthday of 2008. I had been given a couple bucks to buy some presents and I went to Thoughthammer to browse. I had to double or triple take at what I saw. On the front page, TH was advertising an Acquire! And it was only $21!! I rushed to check BGG to make sure it was the same game and not something new, and it was! That was the first game I bought in that bundle.
A little while later I had my first package of games and Acquire was the first I de-shrinked. I knew the game was minimalistic, but I was kinda surprised at how little there was to it. Just some cardboard squares and a board. I got into the rules and attempted to teach Jen and her mom how to play. The first game we played, we made a major oops.
We played tiles correctly, but our mistake came with payments. When a larger hotel gobbled up a smaller hotel, we didn't pay the shareholders of the smaller hotel - we just kept paying Jen's mom who owned the stakes in the largest. I think Francie won by $150,000 or something like that. I figured there HAD to be something wrong in how we played. Otherwise, this runaway leader garbage was getting sold in a hurry. Well, obviously we were wrong and when we found out and played it again - the game was much closer and much more well received.
Jen and I both enjoy Acquire (as does her mother). Acquire sits at #13 on our combined ratings geeklist currently. Jen likes building up hotels and making their stocks more expensive. I try to find the smallest hotel she's interested in and buy the stocks cheap.
I'm not the greatest player, but I've sat at WBC tournaments and held my own. I think one of the keys of Acquire is getting yourself involved in that first merger. If you can get paid in the first two mergers, you're really in good shape. I've often wondered what the game would be like if loans were available. I've been in games where I missed out on payments early and really fell on hard times in the mid-game when I had $0 and other players were gobbling up stocks like there were pac man pellets. I never tried a loan varient though.
The obvious game cousin for Acquire would be Union Pacific. I rated UP as my #7 game. I think I like UP more because shares are invested and then open knowledge. Acquire lends itself well to card counters. UP does too, to an extent - but investments being open makes it a little easier to track who has what. My #13 game, Alhambra also shares similar payment/point mechanics.
Final Thoughts
I tried playing this through GameTableOnline before they became a paid site. I also remember a facebook application attempted. It was tough because for a PbEM game, having Java load up took so long.
Acquire is a definite classic though and worthy of a lofty rating. I don't get to play it very often, but when I do I do enjoy it.
|
|
