Container (board game)
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Container is an economic simulation
board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a co ...
for three to five players, released in 2007, and re-released in a special edition in 2017. The game was designed by
Franz-Benno Delonge Franz-Benno Delonge (1957 – 2 September 2007) was a designer of German-style board games. He has been nominated for multiple best game awards, including Spiel des Jahres and International Gamers Awards. '' TransAmerica'' won the Mensa best min ...
, Thomas Ewert and Kevin Nesbitt. The game is themed around the
shipping industry Maritime transport (or ocean transport) and hydraulic effluvial transport, or more generally waterborne transport, is the transport of people ( passengers) or goods (cargo) via waterways. Freight transport by sea has been widely used thro ...
, and the primary pieces in the game are
shipping container A shipping container is a container with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. Shipping containers range from large reusable steel boxes used for intermodal shipments to the ubiquitous corrugated boxes. In the context of ...
s. The players produce, buy, sell, ship and store containers with the general goal of maximizing overall profits. Economic considerations such as supply and demand, cash management, return on investment and efficient use of resources are natural consequences of the game's buying and selling rules.


Gameplay

Each player owns a shipyard with an attached production facility for goods, as well as a ship that can be used to transport goods. The game uses five kinds of (unnamed, but colour-coded) goods, which are represented as a miniature
intermodal container An intermodal container, often called a shipping container, is a large standardized shipping container, designed and built for intermodal freight transport, meaning these containers can be used across different modes of transport – from ship ...
(shipping container). Each player's ship can carry up to five containers. Initially each player has the means to produce one container in a single action; actions may be used to expand the player's production capacity (which also costs money). At the time of production, the player pays the player to his right a union contribution, and must place his newly produced goods in his factory store priced at between 1 and 4 currency units. Once containers are produced, another player—not the same player—may use an action during his turn to buy some or all of the containers, placing them on his dockside store priced as he chooses at between 2 and 6 currency units. Players can initially only keep one container in their dockside store, and must spend actions (and money) to buy more
warehouse A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities ...
s to increase their capacity. Each player's ship begins the game in the open sea. A player can use an action to move his ship between the open sea and another player's (but not his own) dockyard; when he arrives in another player's dockyard he may buy some or all of that player's containers. A player can also use an action to move his ship between the open sea and a small, industrialising island that the shipping companies hope to make money from. When he arrives at the island, a
blind auction A first-price sealed-bid auction (FPSBA) is a common type of auction. It is also known as blind auction. In this type of auction, all bidders simultaneously submit sealed bids so that no bidder knows the bid of any other participant. The highest bi ...
takes place between the other players; the player who triggered the auction chooses whether to sell the goods to the highest-bidding player (at which point he also receives the same amount from the bank as a government subsidy, and the buying player places the containers in his own space on the island) or buy the goods for himself at the highest bid, at which point he places the containers in his own space on the island. Thus there is a difference of three times the highest bid in allowing the containers to go to another player instead of taking them for one's self. The game ends at the end of a player's turn when the pre-determined supply of containers runs out of two types. At this point, the containers on the island are evaluated. Each player is dealt, at the start of the game, a card telling him the values (to him) of each of the different types of containers, from 2 to 10. However, the type of container that he has most of (or one of the types of containers that he has joint most of) is deemed to be oversupplied, and hence worthless—creating a situation whereby he wishes to have the most, or joint most, of his least valuable container. There is also a mechanism by which a player benefits from having at least one of each type of container in his space on the island. Containers remaining on players' ships or in their dockside stores, but not in their factory stores, are also worth money at game end. The player with the most money at the end of the game is the winner. The game encourages players to compete economically. The convoluted route that the containers take to their eventual destination means that players can lose track of whose production facility an individual container originally came from, and focus only on its immediate and future value to them.


External links


Container
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{{Intermodal containers Board games introduced in 2007 Economic simulation board games Intermodal containers