Acquire

Acquire is the best-known game by the immortal Sid Sackson, the preeminent American boardgame designer of the mid-20th century. First published in 1962 as part of the 3M line of games, it remained in print when 3M got out of the game business and sold their line to Avalon Hill. Unfortunately, as with most Avalon Hill games, it went out of print when Hasbro took over the company, though they republished a version in 1999, in a huge box with expensive plastic pieces (and changing the hotel theme of the original for an Internet corporation theme, which was somewhat irritating).

The new version reverts to the hotel theme, and also appears to use cardboard counters rather than plastic pieces, which may not be elegant, but means the new version is $24, a very reasonable price these days.

Acquire is played on a 9x12 grid, with each space identified by letter-number combination (e.g., A-1 is the upper left space). Counters exist for each space, and are mixed, upside down, before play. Each player begins with six, held secretly; during your turn, you play one, optionally purchase up to three stock certificates, then draw one.

When two counters are orthogonally adjacent, a new corporation is formed; the creator gets one stock certificate in it. Counters played adjacent to counters that are part of a corporation become part of it. If a counter is played in such a way as to link two corporations, a merger is forced; the largest and second-largest stockholders of the merged company receive a cash bonus, and then its stockholders may either sell shares back to the bank at value prior to merger, hold onto them with the expectation that the company will be reformed, or exchange them for shares in the merged company on a 2-for-1 basis. The "current value" of a share depends on the number of tiles in the company, as does the payout for largest and second-largest stockholder.

At the end of the game, all corporations pay out to the largest and second-largest stockholder, all shares are sold at current value, and the richest player wins.

As is typical with well-designed strategy games, emergent behavior is somewhat more complicated than this brisk recitation of the rules suggests; players' starting cash ($6000) is by no means sufficient to allow them to purchase stock at every opportunity through the game. Consequently, the optimal strategy, if you can manage it, is to be majority stockholder of corporations that are submerged in mergers in the early game, thereby providing you with cash you can use to exploit opportunities in the end-game, and ultimately wind up with large ownership stakes in the few large corporations that survive to end-game.

As you can see, the hotel theme is basically irrelevant, but that's typical of Sackson's games, which are in fact abstract strategy games with themes bolted on for marketing purposes. Also typical of his work is the use of a random element (in this case, drawing tiles) to ensure repeat playability and different play each time, but in the context of an otherwise non-random but stochastic style of play in which careful planning and strategic analysis most often leads to victory.

Acquire is without question a superb game, and something anyone with an interest in boardgame design should study.

N.B.: See also Kevin Maroney's article on the contentious issue of whether or not shareholdings are public information.