The auction is one round only, so each player has the chance to only bid once. A very devious mechanic is also in place, which says that if you win your own tile the one you put on auction , you pay the money to the bank. If you manage to track and remember the money reserves of each player, you can manipulate the auction very effectively. Should I bid high for this tile or hope noone will want it and I can get it cheap? Will they follow and let themselves get drained or will they leave me with the tile?
I need it, but giving him the money is dangerous… And so on, and so on. Tile Management Choosing the tile to auction is also a nice mini-game in itself. The first player chooses the space the auction will start, and every subsequent player can only choose a neigboring tile. This way you have a degree of control over which tiles your opponents will be able to auction. If I choose a specific tile, what options does that give to my opponents?
Are those options not too powerful? Resource Management There are several types of resources in the game: money, 5 kinds of spices cloves, pepper, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg , colonists and ships. Ships and spices are used to upgrade your enterprise, money is used for auctions and colonists are used to… well, found colonies. Colonies let you plant and harvest spices later — and they are better than the normal spice tiles you get from the auction, because colony tiles let you plant verious types of spice on one tile.
Each enterprise upgrade needs several ships and a certain combination of spices — so the obvious decision point is to where to spend your spices and ships. Action Management Each turn you have 3 actions, possibly more if you have additional action cards most commonly obtained in tha auction phase.
There are several action types you can choose: upgrade your enterprise, build ships 1 to 5 per action depending on your upgrade level , harvest spices 1 to 8 per action , get money 4 to 12 per action , get expedition cards 1 to 3 per action or found a colony with 0 to 6 bonus colonists.
As you can see, the efficiency of your actions rises dramatically with your enterprise upgrades. So, which actions should you do this turn? In what order? Should you spend your additional actions now or save them for later? The amount you get and the amount you can hold is determined by your upgrade level.
You can then play them to augment an action you do in your Action Phase. One catch though — one action can only be boosted by one expedition card. Expedition cards are very powerful — they can give you resources, let you upgrade without using ships or spices, and do many other things. With 4 players, use all 5 auction markers, with 3 players, use only the auction markers, and with 2 players, use only the auction markers. Place the unused markers back in the box. Each player places 5 gray success markers in the top row of his development board and each player takes cards worth 4 ships and 2 colonists.
The youngest player draws the top-most expedition card and the others follow in clockwise order until a player turns a card with a tiger symbol. This player is the starting player. He takes the flag and 7 ducats. The other players each take 10 ducats. Players keep their money secret during the game. The oldest player takes the role of the banker. Players place the expedition cards they turned over face up on the discard stack. The player with the most victory points wins the game. Players earn victory points for progress on their development boards, for colonies, for special tiles, for the player with the most money, and for expedition cards, which the players have in their hands at the end of the game.
The game is split into two parts : part A and part B. Each part runs for 4 rounds. At the end of part A, players remove the remaining game tiles from the playing area and place 25 random B game tiles on the playing area, discarding the 2 not used as be fore. Then, the players start part B. At the end of part B, the game ends and players tally their victory points.
The player with the flag begins. He places the flag on the game board and his number 1 auction marker on top of it. Then, the next player, in clockwise order, places his number 2 auction marker on a tile in the playing area.
He must place his auction marker on a tile adjacent to or diagonal to the flag. The next player, in clockwise orde r, places his number 3 auction marker on an empty tile without an auction marker on it adjacent to or diagonal to the number 2 auction marker.
The players continue in this way, ending with the starting player placing his highest numbered auction marker adjacent to or diagonal to the last player's auction marker. Players may not place auction markers on top of auction markers. The auction markers form a increasing number trail with 4 players, with 3 players, and with 2 players. The starting player places the flag on any empty space in the playing area or on a space at the edge of the playing area adjacent to a space in the playing area.
The player must place the flag so there is at least one space with a tile orthogonally adjacent to the flag either horizontally or vertically; diagonally is not sufficient. On one of these spaces, or on a space diagonal to the space, the next player will place his number 2 auction marker. If a player, on his turn to place an auction marker, cannot do so because there are no empty game tiles adjacent to or diagonal to the previously placed auction marker, he chooses any empty game tile without an auction marker on it in the playing area and places his auction marker on it.
The following players place their auction markers using this space as the new base. Thus, the number trail is broken, and may be broken more than once if subsequent players cannot place auction markers for the same reason. First, the flag is auctioned. To get the auction started, the owner of the flag the starting player and auctioneer bids 0 for the flag. Next, each player, in clockwise order, may bid once or pass. To bid, a player must offer a bid higher than the previous bid.
The auctioneer has the last chance to bid or pass. The highest bidder takes the flag, 1 additional action card, and pays the bid amount to the auctioneer. The tiles and tokens are nice and thick and the art work looks good. The rules are well organized and easy to read with lots of examples. I have a super small nitpick about the board. I wish there was a track for marking the round and which action you are on. They do provide tiles for this, but something on the board would be less fiddly.
Again this impacts the game in no way and would be nice to have. I really like the way the auction system works. Picking the tile you want to auction is tough. Plus then you pay them for the tile and they get more cash. It is just such a well-designed and yet tricky system. Developing your board to get more efficient actions is important and challenging. Do you concentrate on one or two tracks to score more points or try a more well-rounded approach?
Some of these decisions might be answered by the tiles you win. Goa is a really fun auction game with an excellent auction system.
The resource management and action selection make this game tense and every decision meaningful. If you like auction games buy this. If you are a fan of Eurogames in general you should try this out. Score and synopsis: Click here for an explanation of these review categories. Tags: Board Game Reviews , 2 to 4 players , auction game. Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
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