Commodity Speculation

Power Grid: Factory Manager is the new stand-alone game in the world of Power Grid. It was released at Spiel '09 in Essen, Germany.

Each player owns a factory and tries to earn the most money during the game. To be successful, each player must use his workers to buy the best machines and robots at the market and to run the machines most effectively in his factory. Because of increasing energy prices, the players must be careful to check the energy consumption of their factories and to avoid using only energy-consuming machines. Otherwise, their profit will suddenly vanish, the worst fear of a good businessman.

Power Grid: Factory Manager uses a clever market mechanism for choosing the supply of factory tiles in the market.

Game description from the publisher:

Command your own skyship and become a master merchant in Sky Traders, a board game of commerce and intrigue for two to five players. Evade the ruthless Wind Pirates as you collect influence with the powerful Sky Guild. Manipulate the commodity market using your powers of persuasion. Through clever trades and resourceful captaining, you can seize the title of Master of the Sky Guild!

Each round of Sky Traders takes place in two main phases. In the first phase, players sail their ships and perform actions. To start, each player draws an Ill Wind card, which has a variety of effects that can help or hinder players. The Sky Patrol could attack you for carrying contraband, or the Wind Pirates might try to board your vessel in hopes of plundering valuable goods. If you're lucky, you'll stumble upon a treasure map that leads to riches. It's all up to fate when you draw from the Ill Wind deck.

You'll add new members to your crew to gain various improvements. Skymen lend their blades to fight off Wind Pirate attacks. Other shipmates can help you earn more money when selling goods. Some crewmembers even make it possible to disregard the results of an Ill Wind card. You'll want to be judicious when hiring crew since they take up valuable space on the ship that could be used for trade goods.

If your skyship requires repairs or refueling, visit a city. While there, line the ship's cargo hold with valuable textiles, spices, or even jewels, then deliver the goods to another city where entrepreneurs will pay large sums of money for the items. Make sure to stock up on goods when the price is low and sell them off when their value increases.

In the second phase of each turn, the Guild Council takes place. During this round, players deliberate with each other in hopes of persuading their peers to help influence the price of goods. Strike a deal with your peers and you could force a surge in the value of the commodities you own, but if you've angered your rivals, they may choose to team up and devalue the wares you are selling.

At the end of the Guild Council phase, each captain also has the opportunity to purchase Influence, which increases his ability to control prices and moves him a step closer to victory. Influence is expensive, but you cannot become the Master of the Sky Guild without it.

As captain of your own skyship, you'll have to decide each turn how to best service your needs. Buying cargo at one port and delivering it to another city where the goods are highly desired is a great way to turn a profit. However, a captain also must consider hiring new crew, checking the ship’s phlogiston (fuel for skyships) levels, repairing damage sustained in pirate attacks, and undertaking other important tasks to keep the ship running at peak performance. When money is tight, haul toxic sludge or collect minerals from the countryside to make some quick money.

This game is inspired by the Portuguese Age of Discoveries in the 15th-16th century. Players take actions such as contracting men, acquiring ships and buildings, sailing the seas, establishing colonies in discovered lands, trading goods on the market, and getting privileges.

Each player starts with only two ships and three workers and tries to expand his wealth.

There are several undiscovered lands that allow players, once discovered, to found some colonies there. Colonies exist in different places where sugar, gold and spices are available and can be sold to the market to make some money. Money is used to build ships, erect buildings such as factories, shipyards and churches, and to get workers. Workers are necessary to found colonies or to acquire buildings and privileges, which exist in five categories and therefore encourage players to follow different strategies competing with each other.

At the end of the game the player who is most successful in combining his privileges with his achievements (colonies, factories, discoveries, shipyards, and churches) is the winner.

King Solomon presided over a golden age of peace and prosperity in ancient Israel. During this time Solomon instituted an unprecedented building program. As one of Solomon's chief governors, you must procure materials and oversee construction of buildings and roads across the land for the glory of Solomon. You will also help to construct the Temple, one of the wonders of the ancient world.

Kingdom of Solomon is a worker-placement game with a few new twists and turns. Do you claim a resource space, an action space or throw in all your remaining pawns to grab a powerful Bonus Space? Will you spend your resources to extend Solomon's kingdom, take some points in the Market or add to the Temple? These and many other choices await you in this highly interactive game.

You play Kingdom of Solomon in rounds of four phases. You start the round placing your pawns to get resources, take actions or get a bonus. In this placement phase players take turns, each placing one pawn at a time. After all pawns have been placed, players resolve what they get from placing their pawns. This is called the resolution phase, and each player, in turn, resolves the placement of all their pawns before the next player. Next the players can go to the Market to sell or buy resources. In this market phase, like the placement phase, players alternate taking turns, except that players take turns in reverse order. The last shall be first, and the first shall be last. Finally, you build in the building phase. Players, one at a time, can build a building, roads and add blocks to the Temple.

When you place pawns to take actions, you can get an additional resource for a resource space, trade one resource for another, steal a resource from an opponent, get victory points or draw Fortune cards. You can play Fortune cards at any time. Fortune cards provide resources, victory points or special actions. Bonuses your pawns can gain for you include one of every resource, three Fortune cards or victory points with a rearrangement of turn order so you become the new first player.

You use resources to build things. Each thing costs a specific set of resources. The buildings you build give you victory points and additional spots to place pawns for resources or actions. Roads link resource spaces into resource regions so you can get more resources per pawn placed in the resource region. Building Temple blocks give you either victory points or temple tokens that help you gain or keep the High Priest. The High Priest lets you take advantage of another player’s resource region and gives you victory points at the end of the game.

The game ends at the end the round when a player places all his building tokens on building sites, there is a building token on each of the building sites, or the Temple is complete. The player with the most victory points wins.

Merchant of Venus uses many elements which come together to form a very interesting game. Players take on the roles of space traders who move their ships through interconnected systems discovering new alien worlds to trade with. As players start to make money delivering commodities in a unique supply-and-demand system, their earnings can be used to purchase better ships and equipment (shields, lasers, engines, etc...) and construct their own spaceports (which speed up trading) and factories (which create better commodities). Variations included in the rulebook allow for interplayer combat. The player who first acquires enough total value ($1000, $2000, $3000, $4000) in cash and port/factory deeds takes the day.

For the 2012 edition of Merchant of Venus from Fantasy Flight Games, the company promises that this revision "remains true to its magnificently campy core while updating the map and game components and expanding game play in surprising ways that will cause even the most hardcore fan to celebrate." That said, the player count has been lowered from six (in the Avalon Hill edition) to four, with the four races in the game being Human, Whynom, Qossuth, and Eeepeeep.