Arcane Wonders | Furnace | Board Game | Ages 14+ | 2-4 Players | 30-60 Minutes Playing Time Multicolor,AWGAW08FN

Product Information

It takes a lot of work to sort out your engine, often you’re performing several conversion actions for small gains. You’ll use oxygen to program a safe route down, hoarding valuable tokens on the levels where they think there’s something particularly tasty. Every other card in the game shares this “all business” aesthetic, with five characters and five different starting factories to choose from, draft, or deal randomly. There is a variant in which you place newly acquired companies in your tableau on the left or right and then must produce in a chain from left-to-right which ratchets up the intensity a bit.

Each is distinctly different, with abilities that change the game in very powerful ways in their favour. But has enough depth to explore a few different strategies thanks in large part to a unique mechanism.

Enhance two-player and single-player games with new Agents and abilities for a dynamic and engaging experience.

Variant rules can increase the complexity if you want them to, but otherwise, this is a bidding/auction and engine building game that you can set up, teach and play through to completion well inside an hour. During the production phase players work through their company cards, producing goods, converting goods and hopefully earning money. Win or lose, if you create an engine that is running smoothly, and churning just the right number of resources you need to convert into money; you will be left with a huge sense of achievement at the end of the game. Players take turns placing one of their discs on one of these cards, but you cannot place a disc on a card if a disc of the same value or colour is already present. It’s not just that getting another card or pile of resources each round means that the Production phase takes longer each round, but the Auction phase is almost doubled (granted, it was short) due to the time players will take to think through the implications of the new bidding disc.Let’s say yellow now places their three-value disk onto the same factory, knowing they will not be able to win it. On these spaces, players are bidding not on a Company card but on a token that can amplify Company or Startup cards they already have. A business that produces coal, another that lets you exchange coal for oil and a third that can cash in oil - the most valuable resource - for money. These cards either give you resources or allow you to convert resources into different types, like coal into oil.

It’s high stakes too: with only four rounds, you need to take every opportunity to make money or you’ll fall behind fast. Gameplay: At the beginning of the game each player receives four bidding discs with values from 1 to 4, as well as a random Company. Normally, players bid with a 1, 2, 3, and 4 of their color, using Furnace’s simple and clever bidding rules: no card can have two of the same number or the same color. Between them, they provide a variety of guide rails for how you’ll begin building your supply chain. Win or lose, if you create an engine that is running smoothly, and churning just the right number of resources you need to convert into money, you will be left with a huge sense of achievement at the end of the game.The expansion includes 24 new Company cards, which it says to mix with 24 original Company cards (⅔ of the original amount), resulting in a bigger deck, half of which is new. Winning a new company card is obviously the best outcome, but earning resources times the number on your bidding token is still pretty sweet.

You want to lose that card, yet not without bidding the highest possible for it, namely a disc with a value of 3.You will mess your competitors up by bidding on companies that nobody else bid to deprive them of compensation, yet that new Company might ultimately not be as useful as another one on the board. Players play in turns, putting one of their discs on the cards until no player holds any discs in his hand.