Tahiti (1995)

A quirky auction game played on a delightfully eye-catching roll-up board with large colored marbles and stylized wooden sailboats.

The colored marbles are designated "pearls," and you buy spots for them on the board in two steps, taken in either order: First (or second), buy a pearl of a particular color. Second (or first), buy the right to place it in a row or column labeled with a particular letter. There's an auction on each player's turn where one choice in both these possibilities goes on sale at the same time. So, perhaps the auction is for B, or a blue pearl. If you win the auction and you've already got a pearl, you immediately have to choose a spot for it somewhere in row or column B; if you've already got your letter bought, you get the blue pearl and immediately choose a spot for it; if you've got neither, you can take either one and await getting the other in a later auction.

Ultimately your scores are determined by how many pearls of the same color are clustered together and the number of empty spaces surrounding the cluster, and whether you have more pearls than anyone else in the cluster.

Tahiti is an excellent choice if you enjoy auctions, area majorities, and that "Acquire" kind of feeling you get from watching squares fill in and grow into scoring groups.