STAR TREK: GALACTIC ENTERPRISES

 Always inspect the merchandise before making a deal.

This is a small box game with an uncharismatic cover and a terrible name. Its theme is based around supporting characters from Star Trek Deep Space 9, which ended 19 years before the game's 2018 release. The components are cheap. The colors are dull. The graphic design is uninspired.
It's also a pretty fun little game.

#9 Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.

This is an auction & negotiation game for 3-8 players over a 10 rounds (8 rounds with 7-8 players) and the first half plays very fast before the market builds up, the negotiations take longer with higher stakes, and the scoring get more complicated. Basically you get to purchase ONE card at auction every round, usually a Product but there is also an (mostly likely powerful) Action card in the market as well. This card goes in front of you and you will have the opportunity to sell it to make money (gold pressed latinum in-universe) every round moving forward creating wealth. But only the player(s) who secretly set the lowest prices on this good will make a profit, and the highest priced goods make no money at all for the player(s) who set them. Everyone in the middle can gain the base value of each card. Prices are set secretly on your own pad of paper but negotiated openly, so cooperation is on the table but so is lying & backstabbing. This is a wonderfully mean game. I love that. You might hate that, but maybe you'd make a terrible Ferengi.

#76 Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.

The rules are simple but robust enough to support variants & house rules. The negotiations are tense and the choices are tough. The pricing structure in the game is mostly rock solid (I think I like the player variant that I read in these forums where if the price is set to the base value to undercut the other players then there is no bonus on the sale). The action cards are rare but seem to shake things up effectively. I think 5 or 6 players would probably provide the best play experience, though 10 rounds might go to long (Tom Vasel recommends you consider playing 8 rounds at the lower player counts too). I'm unsure how this would play with 7 or 8, but I'd actually really like to try.

#48 The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.

It's a fun game, a good game, but certainly not great one and maybe never had a chance with this theme and low effort production. I had low expectations going in but was so shocked by the quality of play that I had to jump into BGG and post the only review the game has had there since it came out. If you like economic/negotiation games then this is an easy recommendation to play, but maybe harder to recommend a purchase unless you really like backstabbing your friends and are a Trekkie to boot.

DUNE

HE WHO CONTROLS THE SPICE, CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE! - Baron Vladimir Harkonnen

Up until last year, if you'd been around the tabletop scene for any appreciable time you may have heard whispers about the DUNE board game from 1979 by the designers of classic board game COSMIC ENCOUNTER based on Frank Herbert's enormously influential 1965 Science Fiction novel DUNE, which had basically been unavailable since the 1984 David Lynch film adaptation bombed at the box office. People would pay big money for original copies and others would homebrew copies based on the original.
But in 2019, publisher Gale Force 9 finally gave us an affordable reprint, no doubt hoping to cash in on the upcoming 2020 DUNE film from Denis Villeneuve (who gave us the amazing Bladerunner 2049, a sequel no one wanted that was better than anyone could have imagined).

And it's everything you'd have hoped for from an thematic, complicated, inaccessible giant of tabletop gaming. It's not often that I recommend reading at 500+ page novel prior to playing a game but... it will probably help. The same way GAME OF THRONES the board game can still be a decent experience for newbs but is immensely enriched by familiarity with the novels or TV series, so too will you engage easier with DUNE if you're familiar with the setting that spawned these factions and their convoluted powers & interactions.

Below is a basic overview of this Area Control game with Traitors, Variable Faction Powers, Alliances, & Auctions mostly for the Advanced game, which is the only one that matters.

A BEGINNING IS A VERY DELICATE TIME - Princess Irulan Corrino 

First off you need to know about The Spice - Spice is the only resource that matters and it will pop up around the board and need to be collected. It will be used to do basically everything, and depending on what action you're taking you'll pay it to the bank (or another player Faction). Amount of Spice you have will be secret information. You can also use it to bribe other players, spice bribes go in front of the bribed player to be collected afterwards and all deals are binding.

Cards from the TRAITOR DECK will be dealt out, 4 to each player, and you select 1 to keep and return the other 3 to the box, except the Harkonnen player who keeps all 4. These TRAITOR cards correspond to the 5 leaders every faction has for use in battle, contributing different amounts of force towards a victory. Revealing the TRAITOR card of the faction using that leader against you in a battle is an immediate, brutally unfair victory that negates the rest of the battle before it begins. The 3 that you return to the box will also be information you have that no one else does.

Every player starts with an amount of Spice and forces on the board dictated by their faction sheet and 1 card from the TREACHERY deck - this is a separate deck from the TRAITOR deck comprised of a wacky variety of cards played mostly in battles but also throughout the game.
You place your matching faction token in the circle around the board near your seat as turn order will proceed

LONG LIVE THE FIGHTERS! - Paul Atreides
Factions: (good luck with this if you're not familiar with source materials)
ATREIDES - The Good Guys (but also kind of Bad), gets access to advance knowledge of available TREACHERY & SPICE cards, and can force opponents to reveal an element of their battle plan. Kwisatz Haderach ability boosts leaders.
HARKONNEN - The Bad Guys, extra TRAITOR cards, extra TREACHERY cards. Can share TRAITORS with Ally, and can capture opposing Leaders if victorious in battle.
EMPEROR - Rule of the Known Universe, paid for TREACHERY cards. Can pay for up to 3 extra revivals of Allied units. Special Sardaukar troop units are worth x2 against all but Fremen.
SPACING GUILD - Cartel controlling space travel, paid for SHIPMENTS, special movement abilities that are shareable, and can draw out the game for a win.
FREMEN - Natives of Arrakis, fearsome warriors. Spice-poor but use it less and more mobile. Doesn't ship from off planet and knows where the Storm will hit next. They also have 3 Fedaykin Death Commando units that are worth x2.
BENE GESSERIT - Master Manipulators, drops untouchable Advisors with other players' Troop Shipments if they choose, flips them to fighters when moving or after SPICE BLOW (&NEXUS) phase before SHIPMENT & MOVEMENT, or Fighters to Advisors when another Faction enters their space. Basically Jedi, can force opponents to play cards into their Battle Plans w/ VOICE ability. Can predict winning faction/round for a special victory steal that is heartrending.

A PROCESS CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD BY STOPPING IT. UNDERSTANDING MUST MOVE WITH THE FLOW OF THE PROCESS, MUST JOIN IT AND FLOW WITH IT. - The First Law of Mentat, quoted by Paul Atreides to Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam
Phases: (this will actually go smoother than you think)

STORM - this will affect the board state and player order. The board is in pie slice sections, and the STORM marker moves 1-6 sections based on a card draw from the STORM deck (which the Fremen player will draw the turn before and so have that advance info), wiping out forces & spice present in Sand areas.
Rocky areas & Strongholds protect your forces, but spice will never appear here and you can never SHIP/MOVE in/out/through areas totally within the pie slice where the STORM marker lands for that round. The Fremen player only loses half their forces when affected by the storm & shipping/moving through Storms.

SPICE BLOW (& NEXUS) - Cards drawn from the SPICE deck will direct where Spice appears on the board. If the Shai-Hulud card appears it goes into the previously drawn territory.
It destroys all forces (except Fremen) & Spice present, and there will be a Nexus when all Spice has been placed. The Fremen player can then ride the worm to any sand space on the board and even hop off into an adjacent rock space should they wish. If a 2nd Shai-Hulud card is drawn, the Fremen player can put it where they want on the board, devouring any non-Fremen troops & spice present.
In the NEXUS you can make and/or break Alliances by giving or taking back your Faction Alliance card to/from another player. Allies can support each other with certain abilities throughout the game and the sharing of Spice during BIDDING and SHIPMENT & MOVEMENT phases.

C.H.O.A.M CHARITY - If you ain't got 2 Spice, you take up to 2 Spice. Bene Gesserit player will always get 2 spice now.

BIDDING - Cards from the TREACHERY deck will be drawn for a blind auction, 1 for each faction that hasn't reached their hand limit, up to 6 TREACHERY cards total. The Atreides player gets to look at each immediately before it goes up for bidding in turn order (use this advantage, Muad'Dib!). Players bid Spice to acquire Treachery cards. SPICE FROM WINNING BID IS ALWAYS PAID TO THE Emperor PLAYER.
Hand limits is 4 for everyone except Harkonnen, who has a hand limit of 8 and takes a treachery card from the top of the deck whenever they win one. If you're at your hand limit you

REVIVAL - Players may revive up to 3 forces that had previously been destroyed in battle and removed to the Tleilaxu Axlotl Tanks space. Faction sheets will note how many will be revived for free. The remainder (up to 3 total) must be revived for 3 Spice.
Some Faction Revival abilities can be shared with Allies.

SHIPMENT & MOVEMENT - Atreides player can look at the top of the Spice deck now for some reason. Proceed in Turn order with 1 shipment & 1 movement each. SHIPMENT is from off planet to any space on the board where 2 factions are not already present (ignoring B.G. Advisors); 1 Spice into Strongholds, 2 Spice anywhere else on board. Multiple factions can be present in the middle Polar Sink space and no battles are fought here. The B.G. can deploy 1 of their advisors into the Polar Sink or the target space (as long as their aren't B.G. fighters already there) on another players Shipment.
SHIPMENT PAYMENTS ARE PAID TO THE Spacing Guild, who can also take this turn in any order they wish, and ships for half-price with special shipment options (shared with Ally).
Movement is however many of your forces present in 1 space to 1 adjacent space UNLESS you're the Fremen who move 2 spaces, or have forces currently in Carthag or Arrakeen strongholds (not B.G. Advisors who don't count for control/spice collection, etc.), which have 'Thopters and give you a range of 3 instead.
Are you confused yet? Good. 

BATTLE - Whew. Here we go. Battles are resolved in turn order wherever there are 2 factions present on the board. Remember all of the losing faction's units will be removed, along with however many forces you committed to the battle.
Every faction has 5 leaders (round tokens which fit into a cutout on the Battle Wheel) that count for a certain amount of force, I believe ranging 2-6. The leader will slot into the Combat Wheel where you select how much force value from your troops present that you wish to commit at the same time as the other player.
Treachery cards can be played, but only 1 of each type.
It's best to consider the battle between leaders, with the # of troops as a bonus you select and this makes battles very interesting. It's 1 spice per unit to get it to count to full strength, otherwise it is worth half it's value. It is possible for a player with a huge stack of units to cheese it with a low-value leader and not enough force committed, and thus be wiped out by a single unit with a high-value leader and maybe some good treachery cards helping out.
The Fremen player doesn't pay Spice for their committed force.
IF ON REVEAL OF THE BATTLE PLAN YOU CALL 'TREACHERY' AND REVEAL THE MATCHING TRAITOR CARD TO THE OPPOSING LEADER, YOU WIN AND WIPE THEM OUT WITHOUT RESOLVED THE REST OF THE BATTLE. This will make battling Harkonnens and their ally a bit scarier.
This phase is often breathtakingly edge-of-your-seat exciting and horribly disappointing for the loser.

SPICE COLLECTION - If you have units present in sand spaces with spice, you collect 2 Spice per unit UNLESS you have forces in Carthag and/or Arrakeen, in which case you get 3 per unit.
You also get free spice just for having units in Carthag/Arrakeen/Tuek's Sietch. Yeah, it's like that.
You're gonna need that Spice though, because as you've seen by now, you used it for everything.

MENTAT PAUSE - Did someone win yet? (Faction controls 3 strongholds or a Faction Alliance controls 4 strongholds). "Control" means you're the only faction there, ignoring Bene Gesserit Advisors.
If you won, but the Bene Gesserit player predicted your faction would win in this particular round, they simply win instead of you. I know you just spent hours playing the game but try not to cry, as they do not give water to the dead on Arrakis.
This all goes on until the end of the 10th round, where if no one has won yet then the Spacing Guild wins automatically. Or the Fremen may win instead if their conditions for forces occupying certain strongholds are met.

I MUST NOT FEAR. FEAR IS THE MIND-KILLER. FEAR IS THE LITTLE-DEATH THAT BRINGS TOTAL OBLITERATION - from the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

Typing all that out was almost as exhausting as playing this game for hours as you probably will, and if you're an inexperienced player of games wary of fiddly rules, know then that this game is a whole dang orchestral Strings section blasting theme into your face.
DUNE one of the best experiences in gaming for some of us, and a mountain best not attempted by the rest. I look forward to many plays.

GASLANDS

So I have spent a lot of money on Fantasy Flight's Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures game.
I collected all the little, beautifully detailed starfighters... and collected them frequently in triplicate.
I bought all the medium size ships flown by all kinds of scum & villainy pulled from the now defunct Expanded Universe books of Star Wars.
I even bought the Huge ships, only playable in special Epic & Cinematic play scenarios, and I never played those damn things.

In fact, I didn't play X-Wing Miniatures much at all. I had a lot of X-Wing stuff and I didn't like transporting all the cards & dice & templates & tokens & minis around. I'm not really into the competitive scene at the Friendly Local Game Stores anyway. Occasionally I'd play with my brother-in-law or get a group together for a free-for-all using my extensive collection. And we'd have fun and everyone would agree that the game was really cool, but I mostly just collected the game. For all my love of those tiny ships, I wasn't really getting much bang for my buck. My many bucks. So many bucks. 

Then I heard about Gaslands . If you're looking for more bang for your buck, Gaslands is a 99 cent thermonuclear blast.

It exists as a very thin paperback book from Osprey Publishing, purchasable online or in any well equipped FLGS for between $13-20. From there, you can cobble together some D6 dice, pencil & paper, some movement templates out of the book, and the final ingredient... some tiny cars you got from somewhere. Like old Hot Wheels from your childhood sandbox, or stolen from your 5 year old son, or purchased for $1 from any department store.

With these items you are ready to enter the Thunderdome of Post-Apocalyptic Vehicular Combat on any flat surface in your household.

In a recent game we gleefully rammed and machine gunned each other as we raced through gates (paper cut-outs) towards the finish line, taking damage and eventually falling in quick succession. At the climax, I set the only other surviving opponent's car on fire with a Molotov cocktail and accelerated away, thinking I was now cruising to an easy victory. Except the flaming hulk of his Hot Wheels car careened ahead and exploded, killing me too. No one won the game, and everyone had an amazing time.

A big part of this comes from the round structure and activation system, where you commit to a certain movement based on what gear you are in, then may roll Skid Dice based on your car's handling value to Shift up & down, gain or cancel Hazard Tokens accruing to your vehicle, and Spin and/or Slide. Next step, complete your movement and attack if you can with whatever weaponry you have crew aboard able to fire, rolling hits & evades. Finally if you've accrued too many Hazard tokens then you start rolling to see if you wipeout. The wipeout step can be fun for everyone to watch unfold too!
You keep going around activating for each gear you are in, 1-6, so if you're going fast you'll get to do more than players in a lower gear than you but you're also in danger of losing control and have less maneuver options available to you.

All this is a tremendous amount of fun, and you will feel fast.

The skinny rulebook is comprehensive in explaining gameplay, stats, teams, scenarios. The mechanics are tight and wonderfully thematic. The pace is relentless and engaging, even cinematic in places. It has amazing community support across the Internet and at Gaslands.com. You can engage with the game at your preferred level, whether firing up some old Hot Wheels across paper gates with D6s, or driving custom painted Murder Machines with mounted weaponry and blood splatter through 3D printed gates using laser cut acrylic movement templates and custom Skid Dice (all available in various Etsy stores).
You will spend more money if you start investing in custom dice, templates, terrain, & painting minis. But you absolutely don't have to.

If you want to get into miniature wargaming this is a great gateway. If you want to avoid a more hardcore wargaming scene but still want to get a bit of that thrill, this is a great game on the periphery of that scene with an incredibly low barrier to entry. If you're a regular tabletop gamer looking for something a little different and a bit wacky to try out with friends, this game is a bit of novelty that you can really get some mileage out of.

Theme:  Post-Apocalyptic Vehicular Combat
Gameplay: various racing scenarios maneuvering Hot Wheels with custom stats using movement templates.
Components: It's just a rulebook, man. Everything else is on you.
Replayability: Soooo much of this.
Rulebook: Outstanding, comprehensive.

BRASS: BIRMINGHAM

I did not have the good taste to back this game on Kickstarter when I had the chance but my brother-in-law did, and within a few weeks of trying out his KS edition I would obtain my own copy of the retail edition. A few weeks after that I caved and bought the premium chips (they come in the bigger box of the KS edition) to use as money in the game. I then made my friends play it with me several more times in 2018 as my new obsession. And I will continue to do so unapologetically because it's simply a fantastic game.

Birmingham is a reimplementation of board game classic BRASS, which I admit I did not find appealing. The art of the old game looked old & tired and the mechanics needlessly complicated, the kind of game that The I.T. Crowd made fun of in their spoof of board game YouTube reviews. Well, this new edition fixes the art problem with double-sided, beautifully detailed night & day boards of the sooty English Midlands circa the Industrial Revolution. And after playing several games, I will say that the mechanics are needfully complicated in order to craft the experience the designers want you to have.

And that experience is one of a competitive race to efficiently develop a network of varied industries across the board connecting to a selection of different markets (which are variable from game to game) where you'll make your sales, driving your income and eventual victory point gains.

Your player board will present you with your different industries as tiles in their own hierarchy of development. You'll pay money and resources using the BUILD action to get those tiles on the board into your network, which are cities you've connected by your canals (railroads in the 2nd half of the game) using the NETWORK action. You can burn lower level tiles off your player board with the DEVELOP action in order to get to the good stuff above it. The SELL action is where you go big time, flipping tiles on the board to get the income boost and access to their VP. Level II and higher industries may score twice, at the end of the canal phase and then again at end game in the railroad phase. BUT you can only sell if you're networked with a market that accepts those types of goods and IF you have a barrel of beer for each tile you flip. Beer is the lubricant that keeps this machine going, and Breweries are an industry tile you can build onto the board for yourself and other players to sip. Beer, Coal, & Iron will actually come out onto the board on their respective tiles... be careful with placement & intended use because they're available to everyone who's connected to them! But when those resources are used up off the tile, it will flip as in a SELL and the owner will get its income & VP.
You can also take a LOAN action for £30 or SCOUT to get a Wild city & industry card.
You can only do two of these actions on your turn, and you'll have to discard a card from your hand to do each action. I should point out that when you do BUILD, you'll need cards from your hand that actually match the city or the industry space on the board where you intend to place the tile. It gets tough.
The end of the canal phase will see your network scored and canals wiped from the board along with your Level I tiles. Railroads are the new big thing and they're expensive, so I hope you've got income to work with and that you can make something new of the industries you've still got on the board.

This whole mishmash of rules, actions, & phases will present you with a tense and fiddly, deeply engaging, competitive puzzle that will absolutely reward the experienced gamer. And the experienced gamer is absolutely the target audience for this handsomely updated version of a classic game.

As an aside, I did create a Spotify playlist in an attempt to create an engaging atmosphere for the game, which you can find HERE should you want to check it out to use in the future.

QUICK HITS
Theme:  Industrial Revolution
Gameplay: Economic hand management.
Components: Just fantastic even without the premium Iron Clay money chips.
Replayability: Complexity might make it harder to get to the table, but rewarding experience.
Rulebook: Really good.

Link to Brass: Birmingham on BGG...

51st State: Master Set

"This isn't even my final form!"

When I saw the new Master Set release of 51st State announced I was pretty excited. It had the distinction of being one of my favorite games in my collection which had been played the least due to its inaccessibility. Originally released in 2010, it caught my eye due to its elegant red, gray, & blue multipurpose cards and was purchased as a birthday gift for me off my Amazon wishlist. I fell in love with the Mad Max style game even as I struggled to understand the poorly translated rule book, complex iconography, & messy structure.

Shortly after that it received a backdoor-2nd Edition in the form of it's "standalone expansion" "New Era" - additional cards, a new faction, all around better components, more intuitive iconography, player interaction, and the same messy hard to teach structure. I appreciated the updates and hunted down a copy of New Era for myself and it got several more plays which were still frustratingly difficult to teach.

I would also hunt down every promo card I could get my hands on, a hard to find copy of "Winter" - an expansion to both 51st State & New Era that I never played despite its good reputation, and Ruins, a small expansion pack that also went unplayed. I loved this game, and acquired every bit of it that I could knowing how darn unlikely it was that it would actually get played. There was always hope. 

Then in 2014 the Polish designer went back to the 51st State well yet again and came back with "Imperial Settlers" - a streamlined version cartoonishly re-implemented as a family game of different competing world cultures and it was good. It got all the attention and praise from across the board game world that the 51st Family in its hardcore niche had never received, and perhaps hadn't really earned due to its flaws.
And you really have to give it to designer Ignacy Trzewiczek, because he doesn't give up on a good idea. He went back again and gave us ANOTHER new edition of 51st State, with better iconography & card design, a rule book that was actually understandable and made it accessible by streamlining its rules similar to Imperial Settlers. And it was good. He even had the cojones to include cards from New Era & Winter as expansions within the box but leaving out Ruins to re-release later as "Scavengers" and still call the big box the Master Set.

And why is it good? It's all in the cards.
Those beautiful red, gray, & blue multipurpose cards representing a filthy, hard-knock post-apocalyptic America and how your faction of survivors chooses to interact with that world. Because every card can be interacted with in 3 ways by spending corresponding red, gray, & blue contact tokens equal to the distance value of the card.

• You can incorporate the card by spending gray token(s) to place it next to your player board in front of you and making it a upstanding member of your [51st] state. This will give you access to its production of goods or special actions or abilities. Cards built into your state can be redeveloped into better cards for V.P., but are also potentially vulnerable to being used or razed by opponents.
• You could also spend blue token(s) to make a deal with the card, so it'll produce one reliable benefit every round that can't be tampered with by opponents
• You can burn it to the ground by spending red token(s) and take the spoils, a one-time benefit listed on the card.

It's an incredibly satisfying foundation for the rest of the game. Each faction uses different resources to produce contact tokens in different amounts, so there is some variety there as well as in the cards you'll draw from the base set and any expansion set you choose to shuffle in. 

The rest of the game is laid out more or less straightforwardly. There's a Draft phase at the beginning of every round to get more cards, followed by a Production phase to get resources from your player board, deals, & production cards in your state. Then in the Action phases you go from player to player, taking one action at a time until you can't do anything anymore - a lot of these actions will be struggling for additional resources and converting those resources to contact tokens or putting points on the board. Victory Points go on the score track as soon as they're generated, and once someone hits 25 V.P. that indicates you are now in the final round. Once everyone has passed the round is over and you discard unspent resources, so as I tell players when I'm teaching the game, you'd better use it or lose it.

It's still not a perfect game. It's fiddly-ness has been drastically reduced but can never be eliminated. Development should have been better explained in the rules and put on the player boards too, as it's such an important part of the game. You might prefer the theme of Imperial Settlers or some of the unique parts of that game to the post-apocalyptic rat race of 51st State. I can also tell you that sometimes when I'm playing the Master Set, I get the impression that it's missing just a tiny bit of the anarchic feel of its predecessors; I can't nail down why but the feeling is there.  

QUICK HITS Theme: Post-Apocalyptic
Gameplay: Tableau building, multi-use cards that make for interesting choices
Components: Unique card art, cool resource bits,
Replayability: Streamlines the original so it's not so hard to teach newbs making it more likely to hit the table.
Rulebook: Solid

Link to 51st State Master Set on BGG... 

CHINATOWN

Left to my own devices, I may never have played Chinatown.

Luckily I have a weekly game group in which we have implemented what we call our Host system. It proceeds in a regular order allowing each member of the group in turn to act as Host, basically a Tyrant that selects that evening's venue and what game(s) we shall be playing. This has allowed everybody to get their games to the table while experiencing the varied tastes of the group.

So along comes a host's copy of Chinatown one evening, and the next day I would purchase a copy of my own at my FLGS. 

To my eye the the box art was well done but not striking. The board itself I found serviceable if a bit drab. The cards were, uh, cards. Thematically I found it mildly interesting from an American History perspective (the same sweet spot that games like Tammany Hall, Tesla vs Edison, & Academy Games Birth of America series hit) where you play as Chinese immigrants making a go of it in 1960s New York, developing small businesses in Chinatown. But these businesses are also not super compelling, laundromats, antiques shops, take-out joints, photography shops...

An overview of the phases of the game round also does not immediately reveal the magic of the game.

The first 2 phases are merely drawing Building cards (basically numbered cards acting as Deeds to matching property on the board) and then draw Shop cards. Numbers drawn depend on Player Count and what Round this is (there are 6 rounds in every game).

• FIRST ROUND(and 2nd and 3rd Rounds @ 5 players):  Draw X and keep Y Building cards, then draw X Shop tiles from the bag.
• SUBSEQUENT ROUNDS:  Draw (X-1) and keep (Y-1) Building cards, then draw (Y-1) Shop tiles from the bag.
• this looks like algebra, i hate myself, ignore this bullet point.
• Discarded Building cards go to common discard pile to be reshuffled into draw deck later.
• Once everyone has their Building cards, place your player tokens on the corresponding square on the board to denote ownership.

The Third Phase is TRADING.

In the Fourth Phase you may choose to place PLACE TILES, or not, whatever, I'm not the boss of you, but you're going to need to place tiles to make money, each Shop tile displaying a number showing how many Shop tiles of that kind need to be adjacent in order to complete the business. Once placed, shop tiles cannot be moved, although ownership is fluid*.

Phase 5 - EARN INCOME - is the most important really, because this is where you, uh, earn income. You get money for your completed businesses and also substantially less for your crappy little incomplete ones too. 

And whoever has the most money at the end of the 6th round wins. 

That is the game on the table and it basically shows how everyone is performing.

But the game above the table, between all the players, takes place in that 3rd Phase -TRADING - and it is absolutely NUTS because this is a game of negotiation, and you got the luck of the draw for both Building cards & Shop tiles, and now everything you need to win is scattered around the table in the possession of the various players, and anything goes. 

You can trade tile(s) for tile(s) between players, maybe throw in a cash bonus to sweeten the deal or offer to buy a tile outright. Maybe someone has ownership of a space on the board that you need to acquire to complete one of your businesses (or vice versa) so that's up for grabs. So are owned shop tiles already on the board - *it's as easy as an agreement and then swapping out the player tokens on the board denoting ownership. I've been in 3 and 4 way trade deals (although these usually fall apart before they can be completed) and I remember everyone's jaw-dropping the first time someone completed a trade with someone else proposing FUTURES on potential tiles being drawn. I've even read on BGG of players making loans. It's all up for grabs, and everyone is doing the math, calculating the benefit to themselves vs the benefit to their prospective trading partners over time. 

Emotions come into play frequently in my groups, where gratitude is earned or antipathy built between players (hopefully only lasting as long at the game). 

All these interactions and calculations are occurring simultaneously and chaotically, with frequently frantic babbling trying to get the best deal possible before you get edged out by a competitor. And you might get what you want but did you overpay, or give up too much? Did you hurt your long-term chances of success while boosting another player's? 

When no more agreements can be reaching, the Trading Phase ends and you're all dumped back into the regular game until the next Round's Trading.

It is beautiful. It makes you see the possibility of games. It is a great game.

QUICK HITS: 

Theme: Immigrant Small Business Owner
Gameplay: Tile placement & *heavy* Negotiation element.
Components: Drab art but thick, quality components
Replayability: This was extraordinarily easy to learn and fun to play, it's a classic for a reason.
Rulebook: I've only been using the tiny little reference cards provided for so long I don't remember if it's a good rulebook or not. Maybe that means it's a great rulebook.

Link to CHINATOWN on BGG

MODERN ART

My association with the game Modern Art resembles the 5 Stages of Acquisition according to Ferengi culture.

INFATUATION: This was on my radar for years. Something about the simplicity of its auction mechanics just fascinated me, and I began the long, slow dance of...
JUSTIFICATION: Earlier this year CMON released a beautiful new edition, but still I prevaricated until Shut Up & Sit Down gave it a glowing review and I knew that I must act while it was still in stock for a reasonable price on Amazon...
APPROPRIATION: I bought it on Amazon. Sorry FLGS.
OBSESSION: That SU&SD review went up on 9/29/2017, and I've got multiple plays under my belt since then, teaching it to several appreciative groups of both hardcore and not-so-hardcore gamers. I bought high quality over-sized sleeves for the Art cards. I'm thinking about buying a gavel. A GAVEL.
RESALE: Far into the future, if ever. Maybe someday if they announce a new edition...

Of all the games I wanted to write about when I started this blog, this is the one I've owned for the shortest amount of time, played the least (though I've played 3 different editions of it now), and wanted to gush about the most. But mine is not the excitement of Stage 4, mine is a loving appreciation for a beautifully executed game.

GAMEPLAY
There are painting cards from 5 different Artists and each Art card has 1 of 5 different type of auctions on it. Everyone starts with 100k.
Each player takes a turn by auctioning a card from their hand. Auctioneer gets the money (or pays the bank if they bought it themselves), and buyers place the purchased Art card in front of them.
When the 5th Art card comes out of any artist, it is not scored but rather ends the round.
The paintings by the 3 most popular Artists are valued 30k, 20k, or 10k on the scoring board. Players sell those cards for money from the bank. YOU GET NOTHING FOR PAINTINGS BY THE OTHER TWO.
You get new cards (variable for player count) on the 2nd & 3rd rounds, but none on the 4th and final round.
The person with the most money at the end of the 4th round wins.

The tricksey part is that the value builds from round to round, so say an Artist's work has been the 3rd most popular every round - at the end of the 4th it would be worth $40k for each painting you sold from that Artist.
But again, if an Artist wasn't popular that round, YOU GET NOTHING!
After the first quick round, you can actually witness the cognition of the players around the table, glancing at their hands, looking up at the scoring board, and the down at the table to see what's out there right now, calculating values, bidding, frequently over-bidding... jockeying for advantage in a entirely subjective market that they're creating as they go.
[oh please go watch the Adam Ruins Everything clip about the Fine Art Market on You Tube]

By far my favorite little moments in the game are the BBG-inspired house-ruled flourishes preceding every auction that we've implemented in the games I run, where the auctioneer pulls the Art card from their hand dramatically announcing the {Style of Auction} for, say, Ramon Martins' Skinny DTF Buddha, or Sigrid Thaler's Sad About You, or Manuel Carvalho's Finger-Blast-Superstar... it goes on and on, players interpreting the Art in hand and giving it a name, a wonderful window into your friends' psyches that everyone would have been better off without probably.

Quick Hits:
Theme: Art Gallery Auction Extravaganza!
Gameplay: Jump on the bandwagon buying/selling Art. Get Money.
Components: {version we played was dated and ugly} *UPDATE* CMON version is outstanding quality!
Replayability: Gameplay was excellent, and the mechanics are a wonderful commentary
Rulebook: *CMON* outstanding

Link to Modern Art on BGG