a short ranking of the tabletop games i played in 2021

21. Acquire

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5/acquire

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Tile-laying, hand management, economic
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 45-90 minutes
First played: 2016
Experience: 5-8 plays with 4-6 players

In Acquire, each player is a real estate investor, founding, expanding, and investing in different hotel companies in a mostly undeveloped city. On each turn, you must lay a square tile from the six in your hand. The tile gives you the coordinates in the city where it goes. Lay a tile next to a single other tile and you found a hotel, gaining stock in it. You can then buy additional stock in any hotel. Lay a tile so that you join two hotels, and an acquisition happens; the smaller hotel is acquired by the larger, and the largest two shareholders receive additional buyout money. The bigger a hotel is, the more valuable its stock at the end of the game.

Acquire is perhaps the oldest game on this list - it dates all the way back to the 1960s. But it carries many unmistakably "modern" design sensibilities - strong focus on player agency, mitigating luck, and indirect player interaction. The primary focus of interaction in Acquire, beyond the actual acquisitions, lies in which hotels you choose to expand (helping those shareholders) and which companies you choose to buy into (creating competition for ownership of those companies). These forms of economic interaction can be deeply satisfying and appear in many beloved modern games as well.

The process of a hotel getting acquired is also a fun procedure that creates some pomp and circumstance and gets many players involved. Obviously, being one of the top two shareholders gets you a cash payout, so that's always a win. But after that, players can choose to sell their stock (the only source of *getting* liquid money from the game!) or trade the acquired stock at two-for-one for the acquiring stock. Anyone who bought in at this point gets to have some fun.

One of the key points of tension that makes Acquire so delightfully tough - just like Food Chain Magnate, people will usually have a chance to react to your move before you can chain stuff together. Here, I'm referring to the tile-laying/stock-buying order. You can't buy stock and then immediately lay a tile, making that stock more valuable. Instead, your turn goes lay tile, then buy stock. So if your plan is to expand the Continental chain and gain value on your stock, you'll need to buy stock into Continental a turn before you actually expand it - and in so doing, give everyone else a shot at Continental as well. How do you stop yourself from tipping your hand? Hard decisions!

If there is an area in which Acquire shows its age, it's probably in its production. The grid and the artwork are very bland, and it uses paper money for transactions. That said, the stocks themselves are printed onto nice thick stock that feels good to manipulate.

Performing well at Acquire eludes me still. After half a dozen or more plays, I've yet to win a game, and I think I've yet to come in even second place. There certainly is some element of strategy - the companies you want to invest in and grow, of course. While you can pick among six tiles in hand to play, admittedly there is a fair bit of luck; holding the right tiles means that you can angle yourself perfectly for a merger or to found a hotel when it's your turn, while others do not have anywhere near that degree of control. And while you clearly want to be majority/minority holder in as many companies as you can, my last game - in which I think I might have led payouts - I still performed highly mediocre. What exactly is the secret sauce preventing me from doing better? Is it that you really want to be holding the most valuable hotel, even if it means not being able to wheel and deal throughout the game?

The one sad part about Acquire is that you can get blown out. It shouldn't happen that often, but making a big mistake with liquidity early (i.e. buying a bunch of stock that doesn't get acquired) can mean you have very little else to do in the game, especially if you don't have the tiles to ensure those companies get acquired. This was exacerbated in a six-player game, which is probably one over the sweet spot of five. Often there will be one player feeling left behind. But I think the game overall isn't particularly rough-edged and is pretty beginner-friendly. - definitely worth trying, in my eyes.