What We're Playing

What We're Playing

Tinner’s Trail

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/35570

DesignedBy:
Martin Wallace

PublishedBy:
Warfrog (including Treefrog)JKLM Games

By special client request this month we’ve been playing Tinner’s Trail. You may not have thought about designing a board game around the economics of copper and tin mining in nineteenth century Cornwall, but Martin Wallace has.

The game sees you as a mining entrepreneur looking to use your time and money to maximise your investment. Unlike many other board games being the best miner won’t bring you victory, you have to end the game with the best long term investments. You’ll need to make money mining then invest that money for maximum return before it becomes uneconomic to extract copper and tin.

You’ll be doing this against a backdrop of unpredictably fluctuating commodity prices, erratic property prices, fierce competition and limited time to implement your plans (sounding familiar?).

You can take a confident lead on investing in the most productive assets, or choose the recessionista strategy of leaving other people to blaze a trail whilst you pick up what’s left cheaply and make the most of the bargains.

One useful mechanic which is perhaps underused in both games and life is the ‘Pasty Seller’. If you don’t have the money to invest in new plans, or the resources you want just aren’t available when you want them, you can send your workforce out to sell pasties and raise cash, rather than complaining about the economy and the restrictions you’re working under. Whilst your business may not have pasty baking facilities, it always pays to make the most of any slack time to get out and talk to customers to see what opportunities are out there.