h e r b y a n g

Dramatic Elements
Aquire is a board game in which players create chains of hotels, merge them together, and buy and trade stock, to end up being worth the most at the end of the game.

Formal Elements
There is 1 board that is divided into squares. Each player begins with some cash, and 7 hotel pieces that correspond to specific squares on the board. On each turn, a player 1)places a hotel, which can result in the creation of a chain, or a merger, 2)purchases up to 3 shares of stock in any existing chain, and 3)draws a new hotel from the stack.

In case of a merger, the player chooses which hotel chain dominates the two, and then those players holding stock in the chain which has been sold gets the opportunity to earn money from the deal, and trade in their shares for shares of the larger company.

The game ends when the largest chain reaches 41 hotels, or there are 4 "safe" chains (chains with 11 or more hotels).

Dynamic Elements
The game took the complicated system of owning and merging companies and simplified it to an extremely manageable system. On the advice of our peers, we played the game without "power ups," although since we only had two players, we felt the game might have been a little more dynamic if we had used them. As it was, there wasn't as much mystery and surprise to the game with only two players and we thought it might be with more. Since only one person layed down a tile before you got to lay down yours, you could strategize many turns ahead and not be thwarted from your efforts to become a hotel mogul.

Comments
It seemed as though the optimal strategy was to get stock in many small chains, and either build them up to make them "safe," or ensure you are the primary stockholder when it gets gobbled up by a larger chain. Intimidating at first, once we got into the swing of the game it hit a flow that was fun and engaging. The strategy of going for primary/secondary shareholder bonuses seemed more feasible, especially given how difficult it was to plan on making money by investing in a hotel chain before making it bigger (hard because you are forced to first play a tile before being allowed to buy shares).

The dynamic for this game would probably much different with more players (as a matter of fact, seems like it would be more fun with 4 players); with more opponents with different agendas to play upon, there seems like more opportunity to pursue a strategy that wasn't completely obvious to the other players.