Relive Black Monday, Grab Three Dicey Combos, and Color New York Your Own

Relive Black Monday, Grab Three Dicey Combos, and Color New York Your Own
Board Game: Easy Come, Easy Go
To follow up on this week's post covering a half-dozen November 2021 releases from Korean publisher Playte, here's another quartet of new editions of older games that it plans to publish in the near future.

It might seem odd to bring all of these older titles back to print, but I have no idea what the Korean game market is like and which titles have been released there previously. I wish that I could know everything about games everywhere, but without readily available cloning technology, that's not going to happen.

• One of the titles coming back to print has a name that describes how you might think about the availability of these games on the market: Easy Come, Easy Go, this being a dice game for 2-4 players from Reiner Knizia that first appeared in 2004 from Out of the Box Publishing. Here's how to play:
Quote:
Easy Come, Easy Go features gameplay familiar to anyone who's played Yahtzee or many other dice games, with you trying to roll combinations of dice in order to score. The nine combinations are four of a kind, two pairs, a straight, exactly 7, exactly 13, sum of 3 or less, sum of 17 or more, and three of a kind with all numbers being odd (and the same thing again, but for even numbers).

Board Game: Easy Come, Easy Go

The four dice show numbers 0-5, and on a turn you roll all four dice, freeze one or more of the dice, roll all unfrozen dice, freeze one or more dice, etc. until either all four dice are frozen or you have achieved a combination and can claim the tile showing this combination, whether from the center of the table or from another player.

If you claim a third combination tile, then the next two players (or the same player twice in a two-player game) each have one chance to steal one of your combinations. If they fail to do so, you win! If they do steal one, then perhaps they now have three tiles and have a shot at winning themselves!
Coincidentally, this design had its first Spanish edition — Va y Viene —released in 2021 from Argentinian Maldón, and it's a shame that this game has otherwise been absent from the market as I think it rivals Can't Stop as the best dice game ever. I've played Easy Come, Easy Go more than fifty times, and I love introducing the game to casual gamers as it's both familiar in concept and gameplay, but novel in its goal and high in interactivity.

Board Game: Easy Come, Easy Go

Board Game: Circus Flohcati
• Knizia's Circus Flohcati was one of OPEN'N PLAY's first releases in 2016, and the game now has a new look to accompany its company's re-branding as Playte.

Like Easy Come, Easy Go and, well, most Knizia designs, Circus Flohcati has simple, intuitive rules that allow players to express themselves through their manner of play:
Quote:
In Circus Flohcati, players collect acts from the flea circus to score points, with the game containing ten types (colors) of acts, with acts being valued from 0-7 points.

On a turn, you can choose one of the face-up cards on the table and add that to your hand or flip the top card from the deck and add it to the cards on display. If you flip an action card, you must take that action — often stealing a card from an opponent — then your turn ends. If you flip a card of the same color as any face-up card, then you instead discard the newly revealed card and your turn ends with you getting nothing. Otherwise, you again face the same options: Collect a face-up card or reveal a new card.

Board Game: Circus Flohcati

If on your turn you have three cards of the same value in hand, you can play this trio on the table for a guaranteed 10 points. The game ends either when someone reveals that they have all ten acts in hand or when the deck has been exhausted. You score only for the highest-valued act of each color, so either avoid taking duplicate colors or ditch them in trios. If you have all ten acts in hand, score a 10-point "gala show" bonus. Whoever has the highest score wins.
Board Game: New York, New York
• I'm not familiar with Wolfgang Kramer's New York, New York, which debuted in 1989 from German publisher FX Schmid, so I can only rely on the relatively inadequate description on the BGG game page to convey what the game is about:
Quote:
The object of the game is to build up the New York skyline, consisting of twelve numbered sections. Each section has four pieces, one in each color — 48 tiles in all. Each player has a color for which they will score. You start with a hand of six tiles, a "draw pool" of six face-up, and the rest face-down.

Board Game: New York, New York

On your turn, you lay a tile from your hand, draw a replacement from the draw pool, then replenish the draw pool. The game continues until all the tiles are laid, though you can stop laying tiles if you want (to "protect" some of your own colors on show), but once you've stopped, that's it, and other players can still lay theirs. At the end, you score for any face-up tile of your color, with bonuses for getting tiles adjacent.
Board Game: Black Monday
Board Game: Card Games Around the World
• The final title in this quartet is from the same era as the previous game, with Sid Sackson's Black Monday having debuted in 1988 following the stock market crash of October 19, 1987, a crash known worldwide as "Black Monday" (except if you live in Australia and New Zealand, where the event is called "Black Tuesday").

The game's first appearance was actually in Sackson's 1981 book Card Games Around the World under the baldly efficient name "Card Stock Market", but I suppose German publisher Salagames thought it would be ideal to capitalize on the financial disaster brought about by Black Monday so that folks could find joy in the misery of others.

Anyway, here's an overview of how to play:
Quote:
The game includes 104 cards, with corporation cards in four colors. Each card shows a monetary value, along with a number of shares. Reveal cards from the deck until you get one card of each color, and use these cards to set the starting price of the shares for each of the four corporations. Deal each player a hand of eight cards, and give each player $20,000 as starting capital.

Board Game: Black Monday

On a turn, you can deal in shares (both buying and selling) and change the value of stocks, but you must do all of your dealing either prior to or subsequent to changing stock values. When you deal, you can sell any number of shares you own, earning money from the bank equal to the number of shares sold by the current value of those shares; when you buy, you can lay down at most two cards from your hand, paying money to the bank equal to the number of shares bought by the current value of those shares.

When you change value, you take one or two cards from your hand and cover a corporation's current value with this new value; corporations have different limits on how much they can be raised or lowered per card play, with some being more stable than others. If you play the highest-valued cards, you can either pump up the value tremendously — or tank the stock, bringing its value to $0, with all players discarding all shares they own of this stock. (A player can jumpstart the value of this company by playing a new stock value on it, even with the second card played on the same turn.)

Alternatively, you can skip the dealing and changing actions to discard 1-4 cards from hand. In either case, to end your turn, replenish your hand to eight cards.

Board Game: Black Monday

When the deck is exhausted, take all of the discards and all of the stock value cards other than the top one of each corporation and shuffle them together with a "Market Closed" card to form a new deck. Continue play until the "Market Closed" card is drawn, at which point the game ends immediately, and all shares held by players are cashed out at the current stock value. Whoever has the most money wins.

Related

Game Overview: Brian Boru, or the High King of Area Majority Awesomeness

Game Overview: Brian Boru, or the High King of Area Majority Awesomeness

Dec 10, 2021

Brian Boru: High King of Ireland, is a new release from designer Peer Sylvester (The King is Dead, The Lost Expedition) and Osprey Games, which features a unique and interesting blend of...

Kickstarter to Fund and Adopt Decentralized Blockchain-Based Protocol

Kickstarter to Fund and Adopt Decentralized Blockchain-Based Protocol

Dec 09, 2021

On December 8, 2021, Kickstarter published "The Future of Crowdfunding Creative Projects", an article by founder and chair Perry Chen and CEO Aziz Hasan that presented an overview of plans for...

Sail the Chao Phraya River, and Engage in a Battle Through History with Sabaton

Sail the Chao Phraya River, and Engage in a Battle Through History with Sabaton

Dec 09, 2021

As we near the end of 2021, I find myself with a large number of newly released or upcoming games in my inbox and on browser tabs about which I know very little, but about which I know just...

Designer Diary: Merchants of Magick

Designer Diary: Merchants of Magick

Dec 09, 2021

As of November 2021, Merchants of Magick pre-orders are being delivered, and hopefully it will show up at your local game store soon. It's been a journey getting to this point, and I wanted to...

Brew Potions, Stack Penguins, and Avoid Vampire Hunters with Playte

Brew Potions, Stack Penguins, and Avoid Vampire Hunters with Playte

Dec 08, 2021

While researching the catalog of Korean publisher Playte — formerly known as OPEN'N PLAY — ahead of an October 2021 post about a trilogy of new releases, I discovered many titles on the...

ads