It's okay for learning the game but really diminishes the game a lot. One bad (high) dummy tile draw early and you're hosed.

2-player variant is not bad - we play it frequently.

3rd player has only once beaten either of us, however, it serves a role in making us 'compete' as much with the card-count as with each other. It gives a 3rd-player feel to the game, even if that player is not likely to win.

I don't think the 2 player variant works well at all. I think there is little or no incentive to collect UP stock. It has the same flaw as two player Acquire.

The two-player variant in the rules is not very good, but there was one at http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Metro/5303/unionpac.htm... (it's a dead link now) that is truly excellent.

In this latter one, there is definitely an incentive to trade for UP stock. It is not a competition for the UP dividends themselves, which are negligible, just a $4 difference in the final round between the two players except for the rare instance when one player is first and the other third. The real incentive is to give cards to the bank so that you can try to get the bank to be in second place, thus making a monopoly in that stock with respect to the other player.

Does anybody have a copy of the two player variant posted on the dead link http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Metro/5303/unionpac.htm... ? Is there another place where I can find it?

http://web.archive.org/web/20021028190913/http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Metro/5303/unionpac.html

the wayback machine is your friend.

Great suggestion! We have now played this several times & like it with "Dirk"...for us, it is a very different game with the ghost than with 3 live players - we like both ways equally well which makes this game a good value. The more often we play, the more we like it.

It is teams. If I own the blue team, to identify my team the body of each car is blue. However, the shifter and spoiler are different colors so I can match the car to the shifter.

Why not play 4 cars each?

(Sidenote: I once held a game of regular FDé where 5 players had 4 cars each... Great fun, but a bit tiresom to sort out all crash rolls)

Thanks, saulsehy!

Hm. I've only played this once, but I think having a dummy third-hand drawn at random defeats some of the strategy of the game. If you know your opponents, and can keep track of the cards, then you can outguess and outplay when possible. With a randomly drawn card thrown into the mix, I think it would make the game very different, as far as end-game satisfaction goes.