Fast commodity speculation game by the designer of Empires: Age of Discovery where players produce, sell, and build to create an engine and score victory points based on sets and building tiles. Each player has 3 cards. On your turn, you play a card, change the market and collect resources. Than you draw a new card.

[b]What makes it special?[/b]

• Unusual, Victorian, anthropomorphic theme and artwork
• Economic commodity speculation gateway / family game that is simple and still strategic

[b]I like:[/b]

• Artwork on the cards.
• Clear icons.
• Components (laminated paper money, custom wooden resources).
• Timing is a big part of the game: selling, buying commodities, cards (initiate bidding), or tiles.
• Simple mechanics but they still offer different strategies. Each game feels different.
• Dual-used cards let you gain resources but also manipulate the shared market
• Expansion adds more variety and scoring opportunities (and six player option).
• Dual-used cards let you gain resources but also manipulate the shared market
• Set collection railroads cards and town cards to score victory points
• Buying towns, railroads, and buildings (first come, first serve)
• Bidding for railroads is triggered by the players (timing)
• Engine building buy building tiles
• Expansion adds more variety and scoring opportunities. There also some tweaks to the building tiles and a six player option.
• Simple, streamlined core game
• Easy to teach: family / gateway game (but still with some depth)

[b]Neutrals:[/b]

Unusal setting (Victorian animals) but could easily be replaced with something else.

Player interaction: Bidding for railroads. Manipulating the shared commodity market. Buying towns, railroads, and buildings (first come, first serve)

Luck of the draw: Drawing new cards. There are only two public railroad cards and one public town card per time (some players may get lucky when drawing a new card).

Interesting river variant for buildings tiles (the newer a tile, get more expansive) which mitigates luck of the draw

Plastic paper money (durable)

Expansion adds component improvements, balancing tweaks, and more strategies

Game length could be a bit shorter. (English) auction mechanism takes some time (variants have been suggested in the forums)

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2160914/article/32744545#32744545

[b]I do not like:[/b]

• Giant box due to oversized player tableaus (not necessary in my opinion). Requires a lot of space.
• Artwork on the building tiles (why is there such a big difference to the artwork on the cards?)
• Insert is not sleeve-friendly.
• Better with higher player counts (3-5)

[b]See also:[/b]

• Lizard Wizard (successor, fantasy, more complex gateway game with mini games)
• Clans of Caledonia: more complex, common resouce market

:thumbsdown: [BGCOLOR=#FFFF33]Win condition:[/BGCOLOR]: [b]Points[/b]

Contains: The Fat Cat expansion (which includes the Jack Rabbit Railroad and New Town promo cards mini-expansions - as well as the Emily's railroad kiddie card deck which is stored in my expansion tote because they don't fit in the Big Box)

[b]Expansion: Racoon Tycoon: DeepThought PossumBot for solo play[/b]

6 - Ok, will play if in the mood. 7 - Good - usually willing to play.

After 1 play: not as fun as I'd hoped. I'm finding I really prefer games where you win or lose, versus counting points at the end. I also prefer cooperative. After the 4th play, it was sort of fun. The end was too long in coming and I was wanting it to be over.

Keep

includes Fat Cat Expansion