Shrodinger's Wine: Revisiting the Counterfeit Wine Theme

Wine Bottles

Several months ago, I posted this little idea for a game about the counterfeit wine market. To recap: There's a big business in wine collecting, for various vintages and vineyards. There is also a big business in forging wine bottles, artificially aging the labels and even faking the corks. The counterfeits are so good that a real bottle and a good fake are worth the same amount until the bottle is opened. Sounds like a game to me!

So yes, I originally had this rather complicated auction mechanic in mind, but I think this could be much simpler. The cards are still double-sided, with the back side showing a value range. For example, $1 – $15. The front of the bottle shows the true value, for example $2.

Cafe Riva White Wine Labels
Thematically, this could be depicted as a front and back wine label.

Each player is dealt a hand of cards. Let's say seven cards for now. Cards are always dealt and held so as to never reveal the true values to the other players. So players vaguely know each other player's true values, but not for certain.

To start a round, each player takes one card from his or her hand and places it face-down in the middle of the table. This represents the lot of wine bottles that is up for auction in this round. Players are competing to get the first choice of bottles from the lot.

Wine Auction

Each player takes turns. On your turn, you may bid or pass.

  • Bid: Reveal one or more cards from your hand face-up, exposing the true value of the card(s). If you've bid in a previous turn this round, your new cards are added to your previous cards for a new total. Your total bid must be higher than the previous bid, otherwise you must pass.
  • Pass: You choose not to bid or not continue bidding this round.

Continue taking turns until all but one player has passed.

Starting with the highest bid and descending, each player taking turns. On your turn, you may take one card from the lot. If you did not bid at all this round, then you may not take any cards, which itself might let you dodge a counterfeit! When you take a card, you can look at it and do one of two things with it.

  • Archive: Put the card face-down in your collection.
  • Sell: Put the card in your hand.

This ends the round. Discard any unclaimed bottles. At the end of a round, deal one card to each player's hand from the deck. Continue playing one round per player. The player with the highest value collection at the end of the game is the winner!

The tension here is that the most valuable bottles are valuable in two orthogonal strategies. Do you put the high value bottle into the lot, thereby weakening your bidding position? Or do you keep it so you get first pick at a potentially less valuable lot?

And even after the auction, there is a bit of double-think as you watch your opponents. Did your opponent just put that bottle into his hand because it's worthless? If so, you should avoid taking that bottle if it comes up for auction. But maybe he kept it because it's very valuable, in which case it could be dangerous to get into a bidding war with him next round.

As with any light, minigame of this sort, a lot will come down to balancing the cards against each other. It'll take some mathy refinements, but I think this is a pretty solid little system.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has...
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results tha...
Read more

One Thing to Avoid in Game Design

Image
When game designer Paul Peterson was interviewed for the upcoming Titans Series of games from Calliope Games, there was one segment at 1:55 that really caught my attention (emphasis mine): "A couple years ago I was teaching people how to play Guillotine and I hadn't played in a while. The first thing I did was say, 'The first thing you gonna do when you open your game is you look through this deck and you take this card.' I pulled out the Callous Guards card and threw it over my shoulder. Everybody laughed. I said, ' That's the biggest mistake I ever made as a game designer in my life.'" Oof. Those are strong words. What's the big deal? For context, the game Guillotine is all about collecting the heads of French nobles during the revolution. There is only one guillotine, with a line of nobles waiting for their grim fate. On your turn, you play action cards to change the order of the line, then take the Noble card from the front of the ...
Read more