WBC: Acquire and acquisitions

Early in our game of Acquire.
I had a majority holding in Worldwide
(the purple hotel to the right), but
that wasn't enough to prevail

One of the great things about game conventions is that I get to play games that I never play at home.  One of those is Acquire (designer Sid Sackson, artist Kurt Miller, publisher Wizards of the Coast), which I played at WBC last week with Roger B. of Providence, Rhode Island, and the GM, Cliff Ackman of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  I first learned Acquire in a demo at PrezCon some years ago, and even bought a copy on eBay, but didn't give it much thought until my friend Rebecca E. remarked on it in comparison to Chicago Express last year.  That comment, plus a Little Metal Dog Show endorsement as a "stone cold classic," re-fired my interest, and I made a point to play Acquire at PrezCon last February.  I am definitely on a learning curve with this game.  I love the tense jockeying for majority shareholder investment, although I think that the tile draw aspect can introduce too much of a luck factor sometimes.  In our game last week, Roger couldn't draw a tile to start a hotel chain to save his life.  I thought I played reasonably well, but not well enough to beat the experienced Cliff.  I do very much enjoy Acquire, though, and I hope to get to play it more often.

One of my WBC goals was to buy at least one new game, and I did so in triplicate.  All of these were very high on my wish list, and I picked them up at very reasonable prices:

• Chicago Express (designer Harry Wu, artist Michael Menzel, publisher Queen Games), my introduction into the realm of railroad investment games
• Leaping Lemmings (designers Rick Young and John Poniske, artists Rodger MacGowan, Leona Preston, and Mark Simonitch, publisher GMT), which I played once at PrezCon and thought the kids would like
• St. Petersburg (designer Bernd Brunnhofer, artist Doris Matthaus, publisher Rio Grande), one of the best Eurogames, which Kathy had played once and enjoyed and which I hope will become a cocktail-hour regular

I am looking forward to playing each at the earliest opportunity.

Sunday morning I ran a Trains Planes and Automobiles (designer Paul Owen, artist Sean Cooke, publisher BlueSquare) event in the Juniors Room for six kids who had a great time.  It was a little crazy, but worth it to see the game played with such energy and enthusiasm.

This post concludes my series of recaps on this year's World Boardgaming Championships.  I must thank Don Greenwood (convention director), Kaarin Englemann (web and publicity), Tim Hitchings (Wooden Ships and Iron Men tournament GM), Joel Tamburo (Ethics in Gaming seminar leader), and Laurie Wojtaszczyk (Juniors Room) for their contributions to making WBC such a great boardgaming event.  I can't wait till next year...