Stock Holding

In Arkwright players run up to four factories in England during the late 18th Century. Your goal is to have the most valuable block of own shares. Thus, you must increase your share value and buy shares from the bank.

To run the factories, you need workers. When hiring Workers, demand is automatically created. But of course you want to replace your expensive workers (wage 2-5) by machines (1). To have more output from your factories you may employ new Workers or improve your factory to the next technical level.

You fix the price for your goods during an action round. To enhance your chances of selling goods, you improve your factories to higher levels, increase the quality and make some sales promotion. The higher these factors, the better are your chances of success - the higher the price, the lower.

Each player has an own set of "action tokens" like "build and modernize factories", "employ new workers", "improve quality" etc. On your turn you place one of those tokens on one of the free spaces in your line of the "Administration board" and pay the according administration costs, ranging from 2 to 10 (odd numbers). Some actions depend on how much you paid, i.e. you may buy more machines with one single action, when you pay more (= use a higher space, which is then blocked for the rest of the round). During the game your actions become more and more effective by new tokens, i.e. allow you to buy 3 machines in a single turn instead of 2, increase quality 2 levels instead of only 1...).

After each round of actions one kind of factories is active and you have to pay for all your workers and machines there, then sell the manufactured products. The value of your shares increases for sold products and best quality.

Goods may also be traded to the colonies by ship - provided you have a contract with the monopoly of the East Indian Company.

After four turns each of the factories has produced and the round ends. Players remove the action tokens from the administration board and reveal an event token. After 5 rounds the player with the most valuable block of shares wins. Neither being to be the one with the most shares nor being the one with the highest share value guarantees victory.

Arkwright allows you to act in different ways. Run all four factories with most possible output, set the focus on only two factories and improve them more than the others can; use shipping to colony or focus on the home market. In any way you have to react to the opponents and their strategy. Enter markets with deficit in supply or give up business where the other players start to push you out. Buy shares when they are cheap and increase the value, or first make money and buy shares later.

To get familiar with the market mechanics you may start with a 120 minutes version "Spinning Jenny", but for those who like full strategy in economic themed games, the 240 minute "Waterframe"-Rules come with more options to improve your factory and use ships.

In Mombasa, players acquire shares of chartered companies based in Mombasa, Cape Town, Saint-Louis, and Cairo and propagate trading posts of these companies throughout the African continent in order to earn the most money.

Mombasa features a unique, rotating-display hand-mechanism that drives game play. Each round players choose action cards from their hand, then reveal them simultaneously and carry out the actions. These cards are then placed in a discard pile, and the previously played cards recovered for the subsequent round.

Each company has a double-sided company track, so games will vary quite a lot based on which tracks are revealed and at which companies they are placed.

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!

The Grasshopper & the Ant is the fourth title in Purple Brain Games' "Tales & Games" series, each of which comes packaged in a book-shaped box. In this game, players take turns playing the part of the industrious ants and the grasshopper content to sponge off the labor of the ants.

The Grasshopper & the Ant includes two ways to play, but the heart of both is the same. At the start of the game, lay out 16 (of the 48) path cards in a 4x4 grid; each path card shows one of four types of landscapes. The ant player places six ants on these cards, one ant per card, with the ants forming a chain (as in real life), then secretly chooses one type of terrain on which at least one ant stands. The grasshopper player then stands with one of the ants, and if the grasshopper chose the same landscape as the ant player, the grasshopper takes all the path cards of this type on which an ant stands; if the grasshopper chose incorrectly, then the ant player takes these path cards. Either way, you then refill the 4x4 grid. The ant player keeps playing until she finally wins path cards, then the next player in clockwise order controls the ants. (In winter mode, the third and fourth players control red ants and receive a random path card if they match the choice of the ant player.)

In autumn mode, players score path cards immediately, with each type being tracked independently; path cards that feature insects are saved for a endgame bonus. As soon as a player maxes out two scoring tracks, the game ends and whoever has the most points wins.

In winter mode, players keep the path cards they collect in order to buy provision cards (worth one victory point), which cost particular combinations of path types. In this mode, when you win a path card that features an insect, you can claim another card in the grid that features the same insect. Collect both provision cards of the same type, and you score a bonus VP. The first player to collect 4 VPs wins.

After one hundred years in service, the Panama Canal still is one of the most important and impressive engineering achievements in modern times.

Built in 1914, it held a prominent role in the deployment of military vessels during WWI and in the conflicts that have followed. Nowadays commercial usage is the core business of the Channel; its economic impact is profound and has not only developed the region, but in fact helped define shipping throughout the world.

In the wake of the Canal’s opening hull designs were influenced accordingly; ships fell into three categories, those that could travel through easily and in groups (Feeder class), massive ocean going ships too big to enter the Canal (ULCV or Ultra Large Container Vessels), and the new standard - designed to the maximum limits of the Panama Canal. These ships are called PANAMAX.

In Panamax each player manages a shipping company established in the Colón Free Trade Zone. Companies accept contracts from both US coasts, China and Europe and deliver cargo in order to make money, attract investment and pay dividends. At the same time the players accumulate their own stock investments and try to make as much money as possible in an effort to have the largest personal fortune and win the game.

Panamax features several original mechanisms that blend together; an original dice (action) selection table, pickup-and-deliver along a single bi-directional route, a chain reaction movement system – “pushing” ships to make room throughout the Canal and a level of player interaction that is part self-interest, part mutual advantage and the freedom to choose how you play.

On their turn, players remove a die from the Action table to select Contracts and Load Cargo or Move ships until the pool of dice is emptied ending the Round. Over the course of three rounds these actions are blended during the turn to create a logistics network which each player uses to ship their cargo, minimize transportation fees and increase the net worth of their Company. Each Company has a limited amount of Stock that the players can purchase in exchange for investing – receiving a dividend each round. The questions for the players will be which companies are likely to yield higher dividends?

There's more to explore and several ways to win, but we ask that you join us at the table and celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Panama Canal with a session of Panamax!