This is a reprint of an article written in October, 2006 for first publication in the March, 2007 issue of the now-defunct Knucklebones magazine. Because of its origins, this article is more introductory and (hopefully) more polished than many of my online writings. Despite the original source of this article, this blog is in no way associated with Jones Publishing or Knucklebones Magazine.
This article continues on from Part One, which discussed the various types of auctions found in games. This second Part highlights eight of the best auction games that were available for purchase in late 2006.
The Family Game Closet
Auctions in games aren’t a new thing at all. They’ve been around for several generations.
Monopoly (1935) is one of the earliest games to feature auctions. According to the official rules you auction off properties that the current player doesn’t want to buy, properties owned by someone who went bankrupt, and houses and hotels if the supply has become limited. There aren’t really rules for the auctions, which they just say go to the “highest bidder”, and most families seem to ignore them anyway — but they’re there in the rulebook.
Masterpiece (1970) was a popular game from the 1970s where players bid on works of art in auction. Here the rules for the auction were a bit more specific, but the auctions were much more random because no one actually knew how much a painting was worth. You had to hope to get lucky and receive a good deal.
Four Great English Auctions
If you’re look for a serious auction game that can be the centerpiece of a night’s gaming, the following are some of the best:
Goa (2004), by Rüdiger Dorn combines elements of auctions with resource-management. In this Indian-themed game you’re trying build plantations and colonies while improving various technologies, all with limited monies. The auctions are simple once-around English affairs which provide you with various resources. The auctioneer gets all the money from a sale, unless he buys it himself, forcing another hard choice: do you auction stuff you want, so you get the last bid, or do you auction stuff other people want, so you get lots of money?
Reiner Knizia’s Hollywood Blockbuster (2006) has been around in Germany for years as Traumfabrik (2001), but was just recently published in the United States. In this game players are trying to film movies, but they must win around-the-table English Auctions in order to collect their actors, directors, special effects, and music. Uniquely when a player wins an auction his bid is split among the other players.
The Princes of Florence (2000), by Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich, is one of the heaviest auction games around. Players are ultimately trying to be the patrons for beautiful pieces of art, but to accomplish this they must purchase landscapes, freedoms, jesters, and other items to make their artists happy. Each player chooses an item to put up for auction each turn, then bids on it in an around-the-table English auction. Managing resources is just as important as the auctioneering.
Ra (1999) is another Reiner Knizia auction game, this time featuring once-around English auctions. In this Egyptian-themed game players bid “sun” tokens in order to win tiles representing pharaohs, gods, monuments, civilization advances, and more. At the end of the game, each of these types of tiles earns points through various mechanisms. The gameplay is light, fun and very replayable.
Three Hybrid Auctions
Several auction games combine multiple types of auctions, constantly keeping players guessing.
Reiner Knizia’s Modern Art (1992) allows players to sell paintings to each other in the hope that they’ll rise in price through later sales. Each painting has the type of auction that must be used printed on the cards. The four possibilities are: freeform English auctions, once-around English auctions, sealed auctions, and a “fixed-price” auction, where the auctioneer selects a price and each player has one option to take it. The auction types introduce a tiny bit of strategy, as you might find certain auctions more lucrative at different points in the game, but they also introduce variety, which is crucial in an auction-only game.
Reiner Knizia’s Beowulf: The Legend (2005) replicates this idea of different auctions being somewhat randomly interspersed throughout a game. Here players are bidding resources that Beowulf needs in order to complete his saga, and depending on a player’s standing in an auction, the results can be good or bad. Most auctions are around-the-table English auctions, but every once in a while there’s a sealed auction to break things up. The auctions all include Poker-style payments too: whatever you bid, you lose.
Michael Schacht’s For Sale (1997) is a short game that uses two types of auction in sequence. First players purchase property through around-the-table English auctions, and then they sell properties through sealed auctions. Whoever is able to manage this give-and-take best wins.
Vegas Showdown: An American Entrant
Whereas the previous seven games were all designed by Germans, Vegas Showdown (2005) by Henry Stern is one of the best American auction games released in years, and was named GAMES Magazine’s 2007 Game of the Year.
Players are each trying to build the best casino in Las Vegas, but because of limited contractors they must bid to get workers to build their casino rooms. These bids are made through constrained English auctions, wherein players make bids in specific increments depicted on the board, and can jump from bidding on one item to another if things get too expensive. Starting prices for the most expensive rooms also decrease from round-to-round like a Dutch auction.
Henry Stern says that this method was the core of his design: “When I began designing Vegas Showdown, I had not seen this mechanic used in a game before … and from the very beginning, I knew that I wanted to use this mechanic. The intermediate incremental bids were [an] added layer to add a bit more finesse to the bids.”
Stern entirely agrees with Knizia and Faidutti about the purposes of auction games. He says, “First of all, they force interaction among players. When you know that other people might be bidding on something, you have to ask yourself, not only how much is this worth to me, but how much is it worth to that other player as well. The second major function is that they greatly help to balance out the game components. That is, when you use a bidding system, the players will pay what they feel is the right price, instead of what they are dictated to play. So if the designer happens to miscost something, the auction will force it to be costed correctly.”
Author’s Note: I think that the newer worker placement and deckbuilding genres have somewhat overshadowed auctions, which were truly once the core mechanic of eurogaming. Still, they remain popular with designers and they remain a frequent element in my own gaming as well. —SA, 9/6/12
