We had a new face at our session this week. Dean joined us for the first time and seemed to have a good time so I expect we may see him again. This boosted our numbers to six and, as I hadn’t brought anything that played with that number, Mark K brought out a number of older games for us to choose from. First up was Acquire, which is rightly considered a classic and is a game I’m always happy to play. This was a great game, not because I won, but because the whole complexion of the game changed on one turn.

Money was pretty tight as takeovers early on were few and far between. Mark K and Nige managed to boost their cash as everyone started to run out of money and I just managed to force a takeover in time to get me a second place majority in the defunct chain and some vital cash, before my cash dried up completely. However, in doing so, I damaged Dean’s chances of any cashflow very badly and he then suffered greatly as a result. Despite my cash reprieve, Nige and Mark K continued to benefit from later mergers, but the game changed when Tower (a chain of 10) was taken over by Continental (also 10) to allow Mark G to get hold of some cash. Now Tower had been the early battleground for shares and I had managed to grab first place with Mark G second with all the other shares having been sold as well. Few Continental shares had been sold up to this point and everyone was keen to exchange 2 for 1. As Continental now looked very strong, the next turn was mine and I immediately merged American into it to again exchange shares and guarantee me the majority in Continental. Nobody had seen the Tower takeover coming and it was really interesting to see how great an impact that one move had made. Until that point, my instincts put Nige and Mark K ahead of the rest whereas at the end of the game, I won by a fair margin. Good stuff.