Game Profile: Automobile

 Any color you like… as long as it’s Black!
 
 
Mechanics Commodity Speculation
Theme Economic, Auto Industry
Publication Mayfair Games, 2009
Ages 13+
Time 120 – 150
Players 3 – 5
Description
Automobile is a Martin Wallace game with a beautiful board
and high quality components.  Automobile
carries you back to the birth of America’s car industry, when inventors,
craftsmen, and entrepreneurs created a wild array of marvels and misfortunes.
Players select one of
six pioneers from the industry, such as Henry Ford or Walter Chrysler to help
them along in each of the four rounds. 
Players must build factories in order to produce the three general
market classes of autos; mass market, middle-class, and premium-class.  Accumulating Research & Development cubes
will be necessary in order to build new factories that in turn will produce
newer makes of cars.  As new factories
are built, older ones will need to be closed because, as in real life they
become costly to maintain.  Adding a
parts factory will reduce your auto production costs.  Additionally, there is a supply and demand
factor.  Players must balance the number
of auto’s they produce with the changing demand within each market
segment.  Produce too many and you’ll
incur loss cubes that cost you money.
Now that you’ve produced
fleets of cars, the question is can you sell them all?  There are several methods available to make
the sales, but the number of sales per method is limited.  Some limits are obvious while other limits
are not so clear until after the autos are built.  Executive decisions allow players to get advertisement
markers and discount markers. 
Advertising increases your car sales. 
Discounting increases your sales, but reduces the income from those
sales.
As in any good economic board game the player with the most assets at the end wins.  Money management is critical at every step in
the process.  Strike the best balance,
shift the right gears to best your rivals, and you’ll be rich. Now, roll up
your sleeves and start making cars!


From the publisher, Mayfair Games, here is “Glover’s” game overview.




We have an open copy of Automobile available in our Store Demo Library for you come in and try out.


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Come and visit us at 30 NW 2nd Street in Historic Downtown Gresham. We have a full range of family games, strategy games, Euro-style games, war games, card games, dice games and more. Also for the puzzle enthusiasts we carry quality puzzles from Ravensburger, White Mountain, and Cobble Hill.

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