Auction Systems
Brent Ross
Canada
Waterloo
Ontario
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"Auction/Bidding" as a mechanic doesn't tell the whole story. There are many ways that people have come up with to sell things via bidding. This list isn't a list of the best auction games, but rather a list of different and interesting ways that games have implemented auctions.
I'm particularly interested if anyone knows of games which use Vickrey auction (sealed bid, highest bid wins but pays second highest bid amount) or Double auction (sellers and buyers both submit bids which are then matched highest to lowest).
The M.U.L.E. computer game (from the 1980s, it's sort of a computerized boardgame) had a real-time Double auction that's one of my personal favourite auction implementations.
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Brent Ross
Canada
Waterloo
Ontario
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English (aka Going, Going, Gone)
One of the most popular forms of auction. Players are free to enter or re-enter bidding at any time. The auction ends when no player is willing to enter a higher bid.
I'm not sure if Monopoly says what auction system to use, but everyone I've played with always uses English.
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Brent Ross
Canada
Waterloo
Ontario
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Dutch
Seller starts with a very high price and counts backwards until the first (and winning) bid is made. Merchants of Amsterdam comes with an auction clock to add even more jumpiness to an already jumpy system.
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Brent Ross
Canada
Waterloo
Ontario
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Die Macher has two auction systems in it.
Sealed Bid (highest price)
The auction for choosing the starting player of a round is a sealed bid with the highest price.
Turn Based English
It also has an open bid system for the opinion polls. In this case, bidding is done in turn (no free calling) and passing once will prevent you from bidding again.
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Brent Ross
Canada
Waterloo
Ontario
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Dollar Auction
The Dollar Auction is a game theory case study where a dollar is auctioned (normally english style) with the top bidder winning, but the top two bidders paying. It's representative of real life situations where all bidders invest towards a single prize (for example, all canidates pay for their campaigns in an election, but only one can actually win). As such, it's not really a model for selling something, but it's certainly a good mechanic for auctions for abstract concepts like turn order in a game.
The Age of Steam turn order auction features a similar system, where the first two players pay their full bid, the last player pays nothing, and everyone in between pays half their bid.
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Brent Ross
Canada
Waterloo
Ontario
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eBay Auction
Okay, I've never played this game so I really can't comment on this game's system. However, I thought I'd just make a quick mention of the real eBay's system here.
The real eBay appears to use an English system, except that the auction is set to end a specific time (ignoring "Buy now" options). This allows the bidders to collude by not bidding until the last minute, and thus avoid the escalation of price that usually happens in the typical English system (which only stops when the bids stop). Early bidders are prone to such sniping if they're not paying attention.
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RUSH May 21st 2011
England
York
North Yorkshire
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This Knizia game uses a closed fist bidding, with the highest bid winning, but only pays the second highest bid. Not quite the eBay/Vickrey system, this has a high element of bluff. Fairly good game too.
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Clay Blankenship
United States
Owens Crossroads
Alabama
That's a moray!
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This game has 4 types of auctions: Open (English), In the Fist (Sealed), Name Your Price (not really an auction but an offer to sell), and Once Around (Turn-Based English).
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8.
Board Game: Don
[Average Rating:6.20 Overall Rank:1667]
Clay Blankenship
United States
Owens Crossroads
Alabama
That's a moray!
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You bid on numbered cards (0-9). You cannot bid a value that ends in a digit whose card you own. At the start, when no one owns any cards, proceeds are divided among all players. Later, they go to any player (or are divided among players) who owns the card with the last digit of the bid. This leads to some interesting situations. E.g. I can bid 12 and pay it to the guy with the 2 card; I can't bid 13 because I have the 3 card; I can bid 14 and have it split among the people with 4 cards.
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Clay Blankenship
United States
Owens Crossroads
Alabama
That's a moray!
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The system for distributing the proceeds in an auction can have a substantial effect on play. Some auctions, such as in Monopoly, are paid to the bank. Others are paid to whichever player is doing the selling. In Traumfabrik, the winner distributes his or her bid to all the other players.
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Clay Blankenship
United States
Owens Crossroads
Alabama
That's a moray!
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In phase one of Princes of Florence, players are competing for several items, but each player may only win one auction. You have to decide whether you want the current item at the going price, or if you want to retain the right to bid on another item (but at who knows what price). If you are the last bidder left, you get your item cheaply, but can only choose among the unsold items.
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11.
Board Game: Evo
[Average Rating:6.98 Overall Rank:326]
Clay Blankenship
United States
Owens Crossroads
Alabama
That's a moray!
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This also has a one-item-per-player auction, but it is simultaneous. A chart shows the current bid on several genes. On your turn to bid, you can bid on a new gene or raise an existing bid. If the latter, that player may then raise someone else. Once no one wants to raise, all players get their gene for their bid price. The more cutthroat variant has N-1 genes for N players.
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12.
Board Game: Mogul
[Average Rating:6.53 Overall Rank:1455]
Clay Blankenship
United States
Owens Crossroads
Alabama
That's a moray!
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You can pay money to the pot to stay in, or take the pot and exit the bidding.
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Brent Ross
Canada
Waterloo
Ontario
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A simple closed fist bidding system, where all bids are spent. The truly interesting part of this auction system is in the silver coins. Gold and fairy gold (fairy gold is similar to a per round "income") can only be used for bidding... Silver coins are only used for a second bidding round in the case of ties (and gold is useless there). So it's useful to have silver, but worthless if you never tie.
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Ken Shoda
United States
Washington
Dist of Columbia
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Turn Based English auction. Great mechanism is that when you get a project card by winning an auction, you put your bidding chips on that card. After every turn, those previously used bidding chips will be back one by one and become available again. Does enyone know if any games use this system?
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15.
Board Game: Ra
[Average Rating:7.60 Overall Rank:48]
Gabriele Stecchi
Italy
Unspecified
Unspecified
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The Ra auction system is the single round, bid-or-pass type, with the following special rules:
1. If a Ra tile is drawn or the tile track is full, an auction occurs, but the bid is not mandatory.
2. If a player calls for Ra, he/she will be the last to bid, but his/her bid, if possible, must be the winning one.
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David Bush
United States
Lexington
Virginia
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About a third of the pieces are "independent" and the two players fight for control of them by secretly bidding with their allottment of diplomacy points. Then, during the alliance phase, if a player wants to claim an independent, players reveal higher and higher amounts until one player backs off. The mechanics are similar to the old game "The Sigma File."
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Michael Van Biesbrouck
United States
Mountain View
California
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There are two types of auctions in this game. At the start of the game there is a one-item-per-player auction. If you have a bid on one city you must pass. If you do not have a bid on a city you must exceed the current bid on one of the cities, removing the current high bid.
At the end of every week a new city is auctioned. Each player must bid or drop out of the auction. Half of the poker chips bid (round up) are stacked on top of the city and one chip is removed every week. The city is only available for use once the chips are removed. (Similar to The Big Cheese, also by James Ernest (Cheapass Games).)
The currency being bid is fame, which are also victory points. (The cities are worth some fame once they are active, but most fame is generated by rocket launches.)
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Michael Van Biesbrouck
United States
Mountain View
California
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Ben Hvrt (BGG spelling is incorrect), currently only available in PDF format.
Before every race each player auctions one card for every lap in the race. After revealing a card the current Auctioneer can buy it for the `Quick Sale' price on the card. (Money goes into the pot.) Otherwise it is auctioned. The auction consists of bidding rounds; on the nth round each player must add n Ducats to the pot to stay in the auction. The last player to bid wins.
The rules explicitly warn about the bidding being vicious. According to Dave Howell, people have a tendancy to `grossly overbid' ( http://www.ludism.org/scwiki/CheapassGames), so he made players at a convention use real money ($0.05/Ducat). Allegedly this is how James Ernest plays it, but the rules do warn about it being too easy to cheat....
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Brent Ross
Canada
Waterloo
Ontario
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Queen's Necklace has a sort of turn based dutch auction. Each turn the current player can buy cards at their current listed price, and any cards which are not bought are lowered in price for the next player (eventually, they hit bottom and are removed from the market).
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Michael Van Biesbrouck
United States
Mountain View
California
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Another game that auctions N items to N players. In this case the first buyer selects one of N cards to be auctioned first and places a bid according to the price marked on the card. It is auctioned in a turn-based English auction. The highest bidder drops out of subsequent auctions for the N cards so that each player takes one card. After each set of N auctions the first buyer moves one seat over.
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Michael Van Biesbrouck
United States
Mountain View
California
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This game has multiple-unit sealed bid auctions. A card is revealed showing the number of available raw materials units available and a reserve price. Players secretly mark up to two price/quantity pairs. Units are sold in order of decreasing price in the requested quantities. The sale of manufactured goods proceeds in mirror image.
The `Corporate' version of the rules adds a dollar auction variant to the sale of manufactured goods. Players secretly commit advertising money. The total over all players increases the demand for the good. The advertiser who spends the most receives an extra $300 per unit sold (assuming that this person sells any units, of course). For reference, it takes $1000 to sell an extra unit and at most four can be added ($7000 in a non-linear scale).
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Michael Van Biesbrouck
United States
Mountain View
California
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Another auction of N goods to N players. Everyone places a sealed bid and players choose goods in order of decreasing bids. Each person pays what was bid.
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Michael Van Biesbrouck
United States
Mountain View
California
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Still another way to auction N items to N players. (20/N times, and then do it again differently.) Each player in turn must match or exceed the previous bid to stay in the auction. If a player that drops out of the auction he pays half of his most recent bid and takes the worst item available. The last player in the auction gets the best good for the full amount if his bid.
These goods (numbered 1 to 20) are then used in a second set of auctions of N items each. This time it is a sealed bid of a single good from the first auction and the highest bidder takes the best item from this auction, etc.
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Michael Van Biesbrouck
United States
Mountain View
California
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The game starts with a standard English auction for animals. The second half of the game consists of trades that are worthy of note. If two players each have Y animals of a particular type then they arrange a trade. Both players make a sealed bid. The high bidder gets the animals and the low bidder gets the money.
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Michael Van Biesbrouck
United States
Mountain View
California
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This game uses sealed bid auctions in which all players pay their full bid. The interesting auction occurs when Wildlings attack. If the sum of all the bids meets or exceeds the strength of the Wildings then the highest bidder is allowed to return a card to his hand. If the target is not met then every player loses two points of units except the lowest bidder who loses four points worth. This is most interesting when the attack strength is high, players want to conserve their strength and at least one player wants the attack to succeed (but not to have the lowest bid in that case).
About 1/3 of the turns there are sequential auctions for position on three tracks, the Iron Throne (turn order), Fiefdoms (tie breaks in battles) and the King's Court (number of special orders allowed). The highest bidder in each category receives a special power; in the case of the Iron Throne it is the ability to decide all non-combat ties including bids on the tracks and Wildling attacks.
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Owens Crossroads
Alabama
Eden Prairie
Minnesota
N. Canton
Ohio
culver city
CA
These are free print and play boardgames version of the M.U.L.E., the 80's classic computer game.
The M.U.L.E. computer game fan page
http://www.worldofmule.net/
culver city
CA
http://muttoo.on.ca/mulemanual/