Kingdoms is a decent game but does suffer because you only get one action per turn. That means you put down a good number and everyone else gets to take advantage of it before you do. Or if you put down your marker your opponents all get a chance to stick you with negative points before you get another turn.

I do like it better than other games that suffer from this problems. I dislike Who Stole Ed's Pants for that reason and I avoid Bonobo Beach because of the same issue.

It's a math game AND a word game, since you try to create longer words to maximize their cash value. My family likes this game -- the funny money adds excitement and it's a great break from Scrabble. (A Sid Sackson game for those making note of such things.)

Evidence that this is a word game includes the fact that my beloved has been kicking my butt all around our townhouse at this game in the last couple of days -- even once you know the math, you still gotta come up with the words.

Perhaps more discouraging is the fact that our scores (and I fancy myself good at word games) are much lower than the scores I have seen routinely posted by Randy C and others on the Buyword page. I'm hoping they're playing some variant that leads to higher scores than the one we're playing (the basic version). I seem to have a knack for rolling 5 and the combined tiles costing 169 points, without permitting the construction of any words that come close to that in value. I wouldn't say we pass up the tiles we draw "a lot," but it seems like it happens enough to hold our scores down.

also a good exercise in accurately determining opportunity costs and comparative advantage.

Though they (badly) express it that way in the rule book, Oasis merely has addition, not multiplication.

Simply put: Each tile is worth as many points as your best matching group on the board. If your largest desert area is 7 spaces, each desert tile is worth 7 pts. And you have played 4 desert tiles, you get 28 points.

Oasis has no more multiplication than saying 1830 or Acquire has "multiplication" in calculating your total vlaue of company's stock by multiplying the share price by how many shares you own.

That sounds like multiplication to me. All simple math is addition. You have eight oranges and I take two. How many oranges do you have? Do you subtract two from your previous total? No, you add eight plus negative two.

Your example of addition where you add 7 four times is simply 4 x 7.

Yes, but tough, on-the-fly addition. Gotta love the no-change rule.

One of the reasons its sometimes called "Tax Britannica!"

I played that one a lot as a kid.