Acquire

Also called "Hotel Konig" in German?

A game of buying stocks and hoping your investments pay off (through corporate mergers). There is a gameboard which developed blocks of land in a fictional area of real estate that is zoned only for commercial buildings (in the original 1962 game from 3M, it was all hotel chains, but the Milton Bradley reprint has more technology-sounding companies). Each turn, a player can develop one block of land. As adjacent territories are developed, they form a corporation which players can buy stocks in (marked with a colourful cap that matches the stock certificates). If developing a block of land joins two corporations, then the larger corporation has "bought out" the smaller one, and offers to buy the stock certificates held by each player for cash; the players holding the most and second-most number of shares get a buy-out bonus (this is where the real cash is made). The game is over when the remaining corporations are too large to be bought out, or no new independent corporations can be formed.

Players can only develop the blocks of land that they have in their "hand" of six tiles, drawn blindly from a bucket at the start of the game and refreshed after every turn. This gives each player limited knowledge into what corporations will grow larger, or merge. The game is won by predicting what companies will be bought out early, and buying as much stock in that company as possible.

The rules suggest that each player's collection of stock certificates is to be kept hidden, but purchases of stock are made openly; this makes the hands open for even the most amateur card-counter. For experienced players, open stock portfolios save a bit of time.

--Moses_Moore?

BoardgameGeek page for Acquire <- it's game #5 at BoardgameGeek!

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