Auction / Bidding

Players take turns choosing blocks and giving them to each other to place on their structure. A player may pay a certain number of 'beans' to refuse a block and it gets passed to the next player. When a player's structure falls, they are out of the game. Last player standing wins.

Description of Bandu (1992, Milton Bradley, 2-6 players):
Bandu is based upon the game of Bausack. Each player is given a base block and a number of beans. During a turn, a player chooses a wood block from a common supply and either holds a Refuse or Use auction. All player bid with their beans and the winner/loser must place the piece on their tower. If your tower falls you are out of the game. The last tower standing wins.

Description of Sac Noir (Rio Grande Games, 2-8 players):
There are five variations on how to play. The goal in all of them is to build a tower. The bag contains very different wooden pieces (i.e. an ashlar, an egg, a ring, a fir tree etc.) as well as a sack of beans for the "auction variation" of the game. Depending on the variation you choose, either each player builds his own tower or all build one together. The "auction variations" are the most suspenseful and surprising. One might end up spending quite some beans to avoid building an especially difficult element. Gambling and bluffing abilities are needed just as much as a feeling for statics and construction skills. It's a game with almost endless building possibilities. It's a challenge for steady hands and shaky suspense for clever tacticians.

In the 1920s, the U.S. stock exchange experienced a period of growth previously unknown. Everyone speculated, and many become millionaires overnight.

In Mogul — a revised and expanded version of the 2002 game of the same name — players buy and sell railway stock, trying to outsmart both the opponents and the market. Each of the five railroad companies has five to eight shares, and in addition to being a share of the company, each share card has a box on it that indicates another company. Players start with particular stock holdings based on the number of players in the game and their position in turn order.

Each turn, one stock card is revealed from the deck. Players earn $1 for each share of this color that they own, then an auction ensues. Turn by turn, players must drop one of their bidding chips into a bowl in order to stay in the auction. When a player passes, whether by necessity or choice, they take all of the chips from the bowl, thereby earning bidding power for future auctions.

When all but one player has passed, this last player wins the auction and has the right to either keep the share or sell stock matching the color of the company depicted on the bottom of the share; the player who dropped out of the auction last takes the action that the winner didn't take. If a player sells stock, they either sell all shares of this color that they own, earning as much for each share as the number of those stock cards face up on the table or they sell none of them; in the latter case, the player places a station depot in their color on an empty space of the appropriate color on the game board. This game board has multiple networks in the five colors of the game, and at game's end each depot has a dollar value equal to the number of that player's depots in the same network.

When the crash card is revealed from the deck, the game ends. Players earn $1 for each share still in front of them and each five bidding chips they hold, in addition to the value of their depots. Whoever has the most money wins!

Isle of Skye is one of the most beautiful places in the world, with soft sand beaches, gently sloping hills, and impressive mountains. The landscape of Isle of Skye is breathtaking and fascinates everyone.

In the tile-laying game Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King, 2-5 players are chieftains of famous clans and want to build their kingdoms to score as many points as possible — but in each game only four of the sixteen scoring tiles will be scored.

Thanks to the scoring tiles, each game is different and leads to different tactics and strategies, but having enough money is useful no matter what else is going on. Managing that money can be tricky, though. Each turn, each player places two area tiles in front of them and sets the selling price for the tiles. Setting a high price is great, but only so long as someone actually pays the price because if no one opts to buy, then the seller must buy the tiles at the price they previously requested.

In the end, the player with the best kingdom — and not the richest player — becomes the sovereign of the island.

City Hall sees players competing to become Mayor of New York City. They do this by attempting to be the most successful at both bringing people into the city as well as campaigning for the citizens' approval. Whoever best balances these two goals will win the election.

There are seven offices within City Hall. These offices deal with a different aspect of building the city or campaigning, such as the Tax Assessor, Surveyor, or Zoning Board. In a round, each player will get to activate one of these offices. However, just because you activate an office doesn't mean you will get to use it. The other players will have an opportunity to use their influence to steal control of the office away from you. Keeping it will require countering with your own influence. However, you can instead let another player control that office this round and add their influence to your own, giving you a leg up on controlling things later on.

In using these offices, players will buy land and build properties to create attractive neighborhoods that will bring the most people into the city – or they might place a factory next to an opponent's housing complex to drive people out. They will also tax their constituents to raise funds (with the option of sacrificing popularity to tax at higher rates), buy and sell influence to the Lobbyist, and campaign to increase their approval level.

At the end of the game, the citizens of the city will vote based on which player brought them in and that player's approval level. Special interest groups will also collect votes for players based on certain goals, such as Wall Street backing the player with the most money. Whichever player has the most votes on election day will become Mayor of New York and appoint his or her opponents to the Sanitation Department.

Even for the mightiest pirates there comes a time when they must retire from their lives of invading and plunder — but what's coming afterward? Well, on the five peninsulas of Grog Island, they can invest their loot in rock-solid businesses, such as peg-leg shops, carpentries for figureheads, workshops for voodoo dolls, or the infamous "Grog Hole" pub.

The core of Grog Island is its unique auction mechanism, which uses five colored dice. The players use these dice and the pips on them to create and raise bids. While the winner of an auction can claim buildings on certain peninsulas, the players who have passed are also rewarded: Not only do they receive goods like grog bottles or treasure maps but they also visit merchant ships where they can trade these goods for money, parrots or treasure chests. The auction mechanism of Grog Island makes for tactical and interesting gameplay as in certain moments, passing can be almost as rewarding as winning an auction. Finding the right balance between bidding and backing out is the key to winning.

The game ends as soon as one player has claimed a certain number of buildings, then all players score the secret goal cards they received both at the start of and during the game. These cards may give points for majorities on peninsulas as well as for claiming certain types of buildings or collecting certain goods. The player with the most points wins.