LogFAQs > #933670047

54. For Sale (1997)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Bidding, simultaneous action selection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 20 minutes
Experience: 10+ games over 7+ sessions with 4-6 players (2015-19)
Previous ranks: 14/100 (2016), 22/80 (2018)

Summary - During the first half of For Sale, players bid on property cards that are ranked in value from 1 to 30. Each round, the same number of properties as players is revealed as the offer. An auction then starts for the highest valued property. Passing means you get the lowest remaining property and that you only pay half your current bid, while the person who wins (and gets the highest-valued property) pays full price. Then, with the collected property forming their hands, all players simultaneously blind-bid on money cards, with the player who chooses the highest property taking down the largest money card. Your score is the sum of your money cards and any leftover money from the first half of the game.

Design - For Sale is about evaluation. Evaluate the worth of a property correctly and you're likely to win. However, it's also deeply interactive; you need to consider what opponents are likely to bid, what you think you'll need to win, and how high you think you can go without being forced to win before placing your bid. The decisions are juicy due to the benefit you gain by passing, meaning that the other properties on offer are very important. Say the bid is at four already on 28-27-22-4 - you really want not to take that 4, but if you bid five, odds are that everyone will pass on you and you'll be out the full five for a rather marginal benefit compared to the people who spent only two (rounding down from that four). The choice is fairly simple, but the points of consideration are many.

The second half of the game features blind bidding, which features yet more evaluation. Here, there's another nice mix of luck - in the clustering of the numbers that come out - and basic strategy. Because there is no turn-by-turn evaluation, there's something of a press-your-luck element, where you might really want to win at least second place in a 15-14-2-0 spread, but your best number is 28 - will both 29 and 30 place those numbers? Will you blow your 28? Most decisions aren't that extreme, but it's cool to see how your decisions in the first half of the game impact the rest of it.

Experience - For Sale is yet another game that I first got into during the "fear the euro" phase. It was one of the great palette-cleansers of its time and had the bonus of playing five players extremely comfortably and stretching to six if need be. Lightning-quick decisions and a simple skillset (evaluation/some gambling/some interactivity) made it a favorite of mine whenever it reared its head at game night. Since then, I've become happier playing those heavier euros and need less of a "filler-ish" palette-cleanser, often preferring something either a little more "tableau"-y in its class or a little more party-ish (but for a small player count).

Future - I requested For Sale at a game night last year to introduce new gaming pal to it, and she thought it was... okay. It seems therefore not the likeliest that I'll actually request For Sale much in the future. And that's fine - playing it once a year could probably slake my entire thirst for it. It's had a good run in my top rankings, but as time goes on, it may continue to slip.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness