Auction / Bidding

Who can first build his stone statues in Orongo? The players are part of the exciting story of the mysterious Easter Island, far away from civilization in the midst of the harsh Pacific Ocean. During the game, they pay homage to the gods in the Orongo ceremonial grounds and with their help create the giant stone heads that everyone in the modern world recognizes, the still unique to the world moais.

Whoever bids more shells than his opponents will grab the best building sites and the most profitable resources for the construction of the stone colossi. Orongo is an original bidding and building game with simple rules.

Santiago is about cultivating and watering fields. To accomplish this, a number of tiles denoting various plantation types come into the game each round. The tiles are auctioned off such that each player gets one, and the tiles are then placed onto the game board along with an ownership marker that also indicates how plentiful the tile's yield will be. Whoever bid the lowest in each round gets to be the canal overseer and decides where a canal will be built that round. The other players may make suggestions to help the canal overseer decide, and back up their suggestions with money. The final decision is always wholly up to the overseer, though.

At the end of each round, players determine what the water supply situation looks like. Should a plantation not be sufficiently watered, its production drops dramatically; should it happen more than once, then that plantation may revert to fallow ground. At game's end, naturally only the cultivated land counts. Each plantation is counted according to type – the bigger the better. But since the ownership markers play a role as well, the same plantation can give drastically different points for different players.

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.