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Travis Cooper
United States
Salt Lake City
Utah
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I had the opportunity to play Giganten a while back at a game night at a FLGS. I really enjoyed the game, especially the ability to bluff your bid. After playing the guy that owned the game told us that it was being redone and that it would be printed in English this time around as well. So, I started watching for it to hit the shelves. I didn't pick it up right as it came out, but again at the same FLGS another guy had a copy and so I got a chance to play the new version for the first time.
Black Gold
The game I'm talking about is Black Gold. The game all about prospecting for oil. Each turn you will choose (from the remaining options when it gets to your turn) a card. On the card it tells you how many license cards you will get, and how many movement points you will get. Some of the cards also have another special action you can do at the end of your turn. The movement points are spent driving your truck around the board. Hopefully this ends in you buying a derrick and drilling for oil on one of the designated spots on the board. Of course, there is no way to know the depth of an oil well before hand, so these values are variable, and the tiles all start face down, so sometimes you have to gamble. The other thing you can spend movement points on is moving your train up the track. This is important so you can transport your oil.
After everybody takes their turn, each derrick you have yields one plume of oil. If your train is far enough along you can transport it for free, if it isn't and there is another train far enough, you can pay that player money to transport your oil for you. Then in player order each person will place all of their oil among three different companies. At this point an auction occurs once for each company. To win the auction you will be using your licenses that you have left over from previous turns, as well as the ones you got that turn. As I mentioned in the intro, you are allowed to bid more than you actually have to try and make people pay more than they want. However, if you get caught you will lose a lot of cards and the auction will then start over. The person who wins the auction is the only person allowed to sell their oil to that company. After the auction at each location, anybody that has more than 2 plumes at any given spot has to sell the overflow for a nominal price, so not winning the auction can mean losing a ton of money.
This repeats until the black train (it progresses 1-3 spots per round) gets to the end of the track. This signals that all of the big oil companies have arrived in the valley and buy everything out. You will get some more money for derricks in play (more to those that have their trains further along the track) and for each plume of oil that hasn't sold yet. The players then count up their cash and see who wins.
Does this work for lunch?
I'm a little torn on this. Can you finish an entire game in a lunch hour? Definitely not. However, it is very easy to modify this for a shorter game, and I don't think it hurts the game too much to shorten it. We just pick a spot that is the new ending point and once the black train crosses that we finish. As far as the quality of the game, I think this is a great one to pick up. I love all the different mechanics and the work nicely together to really make the theme feel right. I highly recommend this game.
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