Game: Executive Decision

Thread: Re: Play by Web

chaosbreaker — 2008-10-20T00:46:35+00:00

little late...

yes, would love PBW of this game.

Thread: Rules Q

magnno — 2008-10-17T06:11:57+00:00

Is it allowed to pile up raw materials for months and then sell off everything or are the raw materials considered "fresh" for the month bought only? Cant find anything about it in the rules.

Thanks

Thread: Re: EXECUTIVE DECISION - Reseña en Español (Review in Spanish)

fuckdreams — 2008-10-12T11:37:01+00:00

¿Has conseguido hacerte una copia de este juego para que lo podamos disfrutar?

Thread: Re: Executive Decision back in print

jaalto — 2008-05-11T18:00:10+00:00

The link is http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2968069

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ForbiddenDonuts — 2008-02-27T23:15:24+00:00

New version back in print (2008)

Thread: Executive Decision back in print

CameronL — 2008-02-06T19:17:19+00:00

I was browsing toysrus website and was suprised to see this:

After some digging, I found that it and Facts in Five are being produced by University Games.

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ponchera69 — 2008-02-02T19:51:28+00:00

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ponchera69 — 2008-02-02T19:50:28+00:00

july-december

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ponchera69 — 2008-02-02T19:49:08+00:00

january-june

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justrag — 2008-01-07T07:43:16+00:00

Polish edition broker logs

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justrag — 2008-01-07T07:42:31+00:00

Polish edition box cover

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justrag — 2008-01-07T07:41:59+00:00

Polish edition board

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justrag — 2008-01-07T07:41:18+00:00

Polish edition resource cards and money

Thread: Re: EXECUTIVE DECISION - Reseña en Español (Review in Spanish)

ArtEmiSa64 — 2007-10-27T22:02:10+00:00

Greedo wrote:
Mi equipo de la pesca está en la cocina.

I must agree you make me laugh.

Thread: Re: EXECUTIVE DECISION - Reseña en Español (Review in Spanis

Greedo — 2007-10-25T03:35:03+00:00

Mi equipo de la pesca está en la cocina.

Thread: EXECUTIVE DECISION - Reseña en Español (Review in Spanish)

ponchera69 — 2007-10-24T07:31:35+00:00

Executive Decision - Sid Sackson (3M, 1971)

Suele comentarse en el mundo de los juegos que cada año que vivimos es un mejor año para los juegos. Yo comparto plenamente esa observación y soy un fiel creyente de que los juegos cada vez mejoran más, cada día los hacen más interesantes, no sólo por sus mecánicas sino también por los temas elegidos. Sin embargo, hay comentarios que rechazo de plano como aquellos que dicen "yo no compro/juego juegos anteriores al año X", algo que he visto en distintos lados. Suelen subvalorarse los juegos anteriores al año 80', diciéndose de ellos que sirvieron para ser la base de los juegos de hoy. En parte es cierto, en parte no y quiero hacer hoy comentar sobre un juego en partícular: Executive Decision.

Esta antiguo juego, de la clásica línea Bookshelf de 3M, es el clásico ejemplo de lo subvalorado y menospreciado por su edad. La mecánica de este juego, no obstante ser simple y reiterativa, es capaz de mantener una matemática tensión tan poderosa entre los jugadores que uno se olvida de que fue hecha hace más de 30 años por quizás el creador más prólifico de la historia de los juegos de mesa: Sid Sackson. No es su mejor juego (creo que el I'm the Boss y el Sleuth están en lo más alto) pero creo que es un tremendo aporte a mi colección y espero que algun día a la de ustedes.

Este juego lo compré en una liquidadora (o thrift store como llaman los geeks). Había sido desechado por varias personas y se encontraba escondido bajo muchos juegos pero en gran estado de conservación. El precio al que lo compré es tan irrisorio que llega a ser ofensivo por lo bajo. Era el desecho de la liquidadora y ahora adorna la escalera de mi casa. ¿Saben que es lo que más me gusta de este juego? La originalidad. Los juegos de hoy son generalmente un sinnúmero de mecánicas recicladas de otros juegos, cero riesgo, todo probado. En cambio en la época del 70' el riesgo era lo que impulsaba a crear, y las mecánicas realmente eran únicas en su especie y muchas no han podido volver a reproducirse en juegos actuales, como es este caso.

Executive Decision es un juego Económico: La idea del juego es conseguir las mayores ganancias haciendo el menor esfuerzo posible. Los jugadores son ejecutivos de grandes empresas que manufacturan materias primas para venderlas procesadas a mejores precios. Para esto, subastarán materias primas, luego verán si el precio de mercado varía en virtud de la demanda por bienes, y por último venderán los bienes procesados, también cuidando no pedir demasiado por ellos y esperando que los demás jugadores no intenten vender mucho de ellos, porque sino el precio de venta puede bajar estrepitósamente.
Así, la mecánica del juego se resumen en lo siguiente:

1) Cada jugador anota en una hoja cuanto apostarán por cada tipo de bien (hay de tres tipos), que cantidad de bienes quieren y cuanto están dispuesto a pagar por ellos. Luego de que todos han hecho eso se muestran los resultados y se comparan éstos con una tabla dada por el juego. Así, mientras más jugadores apuestan por un bien, el precio de este sube, y si es al revés, este baja. Si los jugadores apuestan por un precio más bajo que el precio de mercado no podrán comprar el bien.

2) Cuando ya han comprado materias primas, los jugadores anotan que bienes van a producir, cuantos y que precio es al que quieren vender. Se muestran los resultados y siguiendo otra tabla se ven los precios finales. En este caso, al contrario del anterior, los jugadores pueden vender sus productos finales sólo si el precio ofrecido por los jugadores es inferior al que se transa en el mercado.

Como pueden apreciar, esto es economía básica.

Executive Decision es un juego estratégico: una de las gracias de este juego es que puedes planificar relativamente a largo plazo. Claro, nunca podrás adivinar cuanto apostarán los demás jugadores y será difícil preveer jugadas ilógicas o desmesuradas, pero siguiendo ciertos patrones uno puede "anticiparse" a lo que puede pasar, especialemente si se pone atención a los bienes que disponen los jugadores contrarios.

Executive Decision es un juego matemático: la base de este juego está en las matemáticas. Una anotación mala, un cálculo errado y puede ser catastrófico. Por otro lado, es desafiante y agotador, y las especulaciones y los "yo pensé que..." están a la orden del día. El juego no es apto para la gente que sufre de hipertensión.

Lo malo: La duración. El juego es excesivamente largo.
Lo bueno: La duración. El juego puede ser acortado en la mitad sin romper un ápice su esencia.
Lo excelente: que espero "hacerme" una copia en el computador, para que ustedes lo puedan imprimir desde sus casas. No se necesitan componentes fuera de lo común y creo que si tengo tiempo en un par de semanas/mes lo puedo tener listo para que lo puedan descargar.

Les recomiendo no desechar a los "abuelos" porque sorpresas traen y muchas.

Mi nota: 7.4 de 10.

Thread: Re: Component list

Osprey — 2007-08-18T19:25:17+00:00

As best as I can tell, here's the component list:

1 Rulebook
1 Executive Decision Price Level Board w/Charts
1 Pad of Tally Sheets
1 Crayon
60 each of play money in denominations of $1s, $5s, $10s, $50s, $100s & $500s. (some games may have tossed in a couple extras as replacements)
28 each Raw Material Cards in the categories Standard, Fine & X-Fine
1 Plastic tray for holding money and raw materials
1 Bookshelf style box

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Lgb-JohnDoe — 2007-06-12T16:49:33+00:00

Executive Decision - 2-Player - Game in action

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puppi — 2007-02-05T19:35:32+00:00

Thread: Re: Rules

AngusBull — 2006-10-27T17:02:31+00:00

Posted in a .txt file. Web Browsers may not word wrap so download a copy and print it that way.

Thread: chart

martin47 — 2006-10-19T18:14:41+00:00

Does anyone can tell me or send me the chart that indicates how prices vary in this game? I´m trying to make a computer version and I don´t have that information. Thanks ahead!

Thread: After months of trying, I get a game of this in...

i7dealer — 2006-04-07T18:44:31+00:00

I had bought ED about a year and a half ago when I was trying to pick up a few of the Sid Sackson games that were printed long long ago. However, the completely dated box and picture on the front stopped many people from playing this game with me, and I was sure I would never get a game in. However, I just needed to be a bit sterner with the people in my group and basically force this game on them, and lo and behold the game got played.

It was John, Phillip (not Phil), Steve and I starting kind of late in the evening for what turned out to be a long game. I had read the rules and it seemed fairly simple. I figured we could knock out the game in an hour maybe 90 minutes tops. The actual game length was a little over 2 hours, much longer than a game of this simplicity needed to be.

Anyways, the game. Phillip bid high enough to be the only purchaser of X-Fine goods in the first month, and actually picked up 6 of them and 3 Fines. Everyone else tried to cut it too close on the various goods and ended the month with a few Fine and Standard materials out there. No one built anything.

For the next several months, Phillip kept requesting 9 XF goods at prices that could never be satisified (something like 3 dollars per good or something), driving the price of these goods up by 6-8 dollars a turn and denying us these goods. Steve took on the approach of bidding inefficently to ensure success at getting the goods he wanted and at least turning some profit. John and I were guessing to close, and with Phillip's antics, couldn't seem to net any goods. This came to a stop when I decided I guessed some absurdly high value for the XF goods and got 3 or 4 of them to make some B goods (the prices for goods was incredible given that no one but steve was making any goods).

As it came down to the end of the year, John had been hoarding Fine goods (and managed to pick up a few standard and XF along the way). In the last month he sold everything for monster profit and came within 2 dollars of winning. Steve's buy and sell for any profit, never mind the craziness made him just over 1100 dollars. John's buy very early and hold until the end idea got him just shy of Steve. Phillip's strategy of denying others XF goods until mid game might have hurt him, who knows? He came in last, but only because of a math mistake that prevented him of turning another 80 dollars profit. My riding the line as close as possible for maximal profit didn't work so well, Phillip and I had in the neighborhood of 850 dollars.

It was a decent game, I want to play the printed variant (if you bid off by a dollar or two you aren't completely screwed, there is a sliding scale of screwage) next time. People might have just been being nice, but I think they had an ok time with it. The theme is terrible, practically non-existant.

Thread: Rules

RollinIMF — 2005-12-17T17:56:32+00:00

I was given a second-hand copy from a friend who knew I liked 3M games, but the rules were missing. Is it possible for someone to post them somehow?

Thread: Play by Web

Akke — 2005-12-16T12:06:27+00:00

this should be an easy game to play on the web, I think even I could manage a simple version in PHP.
Is there an online version available? If not, would anybody be interested in playing it online?

Thread: Re: Session Report

AngusBull — 2005-12-15T17:15:48+00:00

Chuck -- $1,1315

WOW Chuck, If that comma is just in the wrong place ($11,315) then you really crushed them!

Thread: Session Report

Chuckles — 2004-09-21T19:08:36+00:00

We had a bit of a confused game of Executive Decision to begin the evening. Ron hadn't played it before, so we explained the rules to him, and got started. We originally intended to play the full 12-month schedule but our game moved so slowly that during the game, by agreement, the players shortened the game to 9 months.

Executive Decision is a really simple game in concept: you bid on items, more bids drives the price up, fewer bids drives the price down, and you have to have bid enough to meet the buying price. On the selling end, the reverse happens -- you combine the materials into products, and make selling price bids, and must have been willing to sell for the market-determined price, or less.

It's a fun game, but it can be repetitive, and slow if the players take too long to make their bids.

For the first time in our Executive Decision experience, we had a few rules-enforcement glitches. Both Ron and Ed, at different times, made bids that they couldn't fulfill. Normally what happens is that this precludes the faulty bidder from participating in any transactions on that turn, but in our game it led to a few weird situations. In one instance, the faulty bid (Ed) ruined the market price for another bidder (Ron), which didn't seem fair, so we excluded the faulty bid from Ed to allow the market price to go where it would have gone without the faulty bid. In another, Ron bid the prices up to where he himself wouldn't have been able to afford them if all of them succeeded, but it turned out that he could afford the items he actually got, so we let it stand. In retrospect, this might have been a mistake, because it had a significant influence on the outcome.

Also, strangely, we found out at game's end that Ed had $1271, which was absolutely impossible given the game's events. In checking, we found out he should have finished with only $784. This meant that he was given a big cash-flow bonus throughout a portion of the game, which could have a big impact on one's bidding prospects. Come to think of it, we probably should have voided the game, so many things were going off, but that didn't occur to us.

At game's end, the scores were thus:

Ron = $821
Ed = $784
Ben = $733
Chuck = $666

E.D. does seem to have a flaw, or at least a challenge, in that the players have to monitor one another for math mistakes; without this, a screwup can tilt the game. Our winners were the two players who made errors and thus either gave themselves additional liquidity or impacted the markets excessively. It was all quite innocent, but it didn't add up to a very meaningful result.

Ron indicated afterwards that he liked the game a lot, which I can understand, given his enjoyment of outpsyching games.

Thread: Session Report

Chuckles — 2004-01-21T21:35:58+00:00

We took a "Five Guys" cheeseburgers lunch break and returned, refreshed, to play Executive Decision.

We'd only tried ED once before, with two of the players in the group who least like math. Ben, Ed and I like a few quick calculations now and then, so we figured that it was a good time to try it with the three of us present.

From the beginning, the game got off to an odd start. Ben failed to make the bid price for X-Fine materials in his very first round -- something that happened repeatedly.

Fine fell in price in the first few months, and soon was less expensive than Standard. Meanwhile, the cost of X-Fine kept going up through the roof, as Ben kept bidding up the price, sometimes filling his order, sometimes not.

I sat on some of my materials for a while, knowing that I had more than either Ben or Ed did. I missed on a sale bid now and then, but hit my purchase bids with more regularity than did they. By Autumn, I felt as though I was in a position to win.

At one point, both Ben and Ed made bids that they lacked the money to fill, voiding all of their purchases for that month, and leaving me in a commanding position.

Executive Decision can be repetitive, but I really enjoyed it today. I felt that I was doing well in out-guessing my opponents. Perhaps the game is more enjoyable when one is winning (which, for me, isn't so often true, as I tend to be more intrigued more often when I am struggling with a game.)

Final totals (in millions?)

Chuck -- $1,1315
Ed -- $1,149
Ben -- $990

Thread: Re:General Comment

Bribaba — 2003-12-24T22:58:00+00:00

Mark ma (#6057),

There isn't one listed in the rule book, but roughly:
1x Price Level Board
1 pack of tally sheets
Red, green and blue Raw Material cards - they are all the same value so photo copy if you need more
1 crayon
1 rulebook

Hope this helps

Thread: Component list

Mark ma — 2003-02-10T01:20:35+00:00

I've just purchased a used copy of Executive Decision at a local game convention. Can someone please post here a component listing for this game?

Thanks.

Thread: Quick Comments

jfrands — 2002-08-20T21:36:49+00:00

We gave this old Sid Sackon game a try this weekend... a friend of mine collects 3M games.

The mechanics of the game are very simple. Buy raw materials, make a product and sell it. Since the prices for buying and selling depend on what other players do, the entire strategy is in anticipating what your fellow players will do and calculating accordingly. Not for someone who doesn't like playing with numbers and outcomes.

One could spend a long period of time planning each possibility so we made sure that the turns had a strict time limit of a couple of minutes. With that, the game was fun, but a real brain bender. Definately not a game that you can chat during. The interaction between the players is limited to the effects on the numbers, though you could add a rule to enable people to buy and trade from each other.

Like most Sid games, the machanism is pretty simple and numbers based, but the strategy is complex. A good way to exercise the old noggin for an hour.