Acquire

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Acquire is an abstract board game of investing in hotel chains (the most recent edition replaces the notion of hotel chains with "corporate conglomerates", but the actual play of the game is unchanged). It was designed by the renowned game inventor Sid Sackson in the 1960s, and is currently owned by Avalon Hill.

It is well-suited to family play because the rules are simple, no one gets eliminated, and each game takes only about an hour and a quarter. On the other hand, it also attracts hard core gamers because there are many opportunities for skilled players to gain an advantage over less-skilled players. The random drawing of tiles keeps the game fresh for everyone and gives weaker players an opportunity to triumph, but does not prevent stronger players from winning most of the time.

1 Contents
2 Rules
3 Strategy
4 Variants
5 Awards
6 External links

[edit] Contents

The game board, a rectangular array with room for one tile per location, as in Scrabble. The twelve columns are labeled 1 to 12, and the nine rows labeled from A to I.
108 wooden tiles (later versions having plastic), one for each space of the board. Each tile has its location such as 7A or 1H printed on one side; that is the only location in which the tile may be played. Each tile represents a hotel, and adjacent tiles represent hotel chains.
Six racks in which the players hold the tiles they have drawn.
Seven markers for hotel chains: two indicating relatively cheap chains, two indicating relatively expensive chains, and three indicating medium cost chains.
Twenty-five shares of stock for each of the seven hotel chains.
A supply of play money.

[edit] Rules

From three to six may play comfortably. It is possible to play with two, but not very interesting. Standard tournament games are played with four.

The game starts with one tile per player picked randomly and placed in their locations. This doubles as a convenient way to determine which player goes first: each player draws one of the tiles for the initial setup, and the player with the lowest-numbered tile goes first.

Each player begins the game with $6000 in cash and six tiles picked at random for their starting racks. On each turn of the game, the player whose turn it is

must play one tile
must deal with the merger or founding of a new company if one results
may buy stock
must draw one tile

Whenever a player places a tile horizontally or vertically adjacent to a tile which is not already part of a hotel chain, that player has the option of founding a new hotel chain, unless all seven hotel chains are already in play. The player may choose to found any chain not already in play, and receives one share of stock in the new chain at no charge.

Each player may, after playing a tile on his turn, purchase up to three shares of stock in existing hotel chains. Only the player whose turn it is may buy stock.

When a new tile is placed adjacent to an existing hotel chain, the chain becomes larger and its stock increases in value and price. When a new tile is placed adjacent to tiles from two or more different chains, those chains merge into a single hotel chain, with the largest chain taking over. If there is a tie for the largest chain, the player placing the merging tile chooses which of those will take over.

When a hotel chain is merged out of existence, the players with the most and second-most shares receive cash bonuses. Then each player decides what to do with their shares in the now-defunct chain. They may:

Trade them in for cash at face value
Trade them in at a ratio of two to one for shares of the chain that took over
Keep the shares in the hopes that the hotel chain will be founded again later.

Hotel chains with eleven or more tiles are deemed too big to be merged out. A tile which would connect two chains of eleven or more is unplayable, and may be placed face-down in its location at any time in exchange for a fresh tile. The game ends when one hotel chain reaches forty-one tiles, or when all chains are too large to merge. At the end of the game, all hotel chains pay bonuses to the largest shareholders as if they were being merged out, and all shares of stock are cashed in for face value. The richest player wins.

[edit] Strategy

Cash flow is the critical element of strategy. On one hand there is pressure to buy stock in order to become the largest shareholder and receive a bonus, but on the other hand holding only stock and no cash prevents one from buying into lucrative new chains as they are founded. The winner is often not the majority stockholder in the hotel chain which acquires all the others, but the player who contrives to have several of his small chains acquired while holding a majority.

The mergers of hotel chains are the critical junctures of the game because those are the only times cash comes to the players. Stock can't be traded or sold except during a merger. On the other hand, some games (and some players) will be more cash rich than others, which decreases the importance of holding cash and increases the importance of holding stock. At such times it may be wiser to hold onto stock or to trade it in two for one.

The cash flow of a game is greatly affected by the number of players involved. All players can sell during a merger, but only the player whose turn it is can buy stock, so five- or six-player games have relatively many opportunities to sell, whereas three- player games have relatively many opportunities to buy. Experts consider the four-player game the best for creating critical cash flow decisions.

Whenever cash is plentiful, which tends to happen towards the middle of the game, but will happen at different times for different players, and sooner or later depending on the relative number of mergers, it becomes more important to think about the shareholder bonuses when the game ends. One must consider that all twenty-five shares in each company will probably be bought before the players run out of cash.

At the crux between the game-end bonuses and the short-term need for cash is the decision whether to increase the size of a chain by playing next to it, or to withhold adjacent tiles. If your chain doesn't grow, your shares don't increase in value, and you could conceivably be forced to cash out at exactly the price you bought in at. On the other hand, if you play all the adjacent tiles you have, you will not be able to create mergers when you need them; the timing will be in someone else's hands.

[edit] Variants

Some players play with all information (except the tiles held by players) open at all times, while others play that the cash and stock holdings of players are kept secret. Various versions of the rules indicate which method is to be used. The inventor said that his original intent was for holdings to be hidden, but that either open or secret was acceptable; the last version published during his life (the 1999 Hasbro edition) explicitly states that the players should mutually decide before beginning, but the default is secret.
There is also a variant of the game in which play is simultaneous, instead of players taking turns. For each phase of a turn, the players prepare their moves and then announce them when everyone is ready. If players try to make moves that conflict with each other (such as two people trying to buy stock in the same chain when only one share is available), they must bid cash to decide the outcome. This variant tends to be faster-paced and less predictable than the standard rules.
One variant is to begin play with all tiles, except the ones the players have on hand, placed out on the board in their proper places, but placed upside down. The player then picks freely any one of these tiles at the end of his turn. This decreases the element of luck in game play.
A nice touch is to grant a player who just created a new chain a one-time opportunity to buy four shares of that chain instead of three (no shares of other chains may be bought). This makes for an extra incentive to start a new chain.
Four players score as two teams of two. Although the strategy is quite different, rules and procedures are identical to normal variant except that 1st and 3rd players combine their wealth at the end, as do 2nd and 4th players. Discussion or revealing tiles between partners is prohibited but, as in contract bridge, plays may have conventional meanings if disclosed to opponents. By one such convention, founding Continental or American (when alternative exists) suggests that founder has a merger tile for that chain.