Now I appreciate that the idea of playing a board game that is trying to simulate one of the driest professions known to man may not immediately appeal. Then again who would have thought buying property and renting it out to you fellow competitors would become the best selling tabletop game of all time. As of the time of writing, there are 1144 versions of monopoly on the market. Stick with me on this, because a couple of the games mentioned here are genuine highlights of the collection, and go down a storm, even in a family setting. For anyone who has read this header and decided that monopoly is more up your alley I could highly recommend Monopoly Mega edition, with more property spaces, more money and even skyscrapers, for when houses and hotels just don’t cut it!
Playing panic on Wall Street board game around coffee table
Panic on Wall Street
This was the game that got me into Stock Market themed games, this game is for ages 14+ and due the fast paced action and cut throat negotiations I can see why.
it supports up to 11 players, which is incredibly rare especially considering a game can be over in as little as 30 mins.
Roughly half the players are investors and the others brokers, the action takes place over 5 timed rounds. The brokers are trying to outbid each other on company holdings that can then be sold, to investors for profit. colour coded cards makes it clear that some holdings are more risky than others, but of-corse risk can equal rewards.
Investors then try to acquire holdings in companies from the brokers whilst trying to get the best possible price. This stage of the game is the highlight, its frantic, people are shouting across the table from all sides, hold tokens are being flung at the brokers to try and secure an investment and there is nothing more thrilling than outbidding a fellow investor at the very last second leaving them with scraps and no time to fix their situation before the timer runs out.
Dice rolls then determine the stock movements, followed by the inevitability that someone will have just made a lot of money and someone, in turn has lost not only a wad of their paper money, but also the likelihood of stealing a win.
It’s out of print now but occasionally is still available here.
Stockpile & expansion packs
In contrast to Panic On Wall Street, Stockpile isn’t a game where there is any need to rush your actions, some of the mechanics are shared, There are still 5 fixed rounds, stock prices move up and down with every round, and players still bid for stock (Players are actually bidding on small card decks which contain stock cards and modifiers which can help move the prices up and down)
This game is surprisingly deep and can be very tactical, especially if you are playing with the expansion games which add commodities to trade, like gold, oil and cattle.
I would highly recommend this expansion pack – Continuing Corruption, not only does it add the commodity cards and a couple of new characters, it also enhances some of the components used for play replacing some card shuffling for dice rolls as an example.
Power Grid – The stocks company
The base game of power grid isn’t a stock market game, you and up to 5 other players battle it out to dominate the map in becoming the biggest energy company, the game mixes economics with auction mechanics and with the right crowd is a solid recommendation. So what’s all this got to do with the stock market? Well I’m 2015 a new expansion – ‘The Stocks Company’ was released board game geek tried to describe it here.
The expansion Power Grid: The Stock Companies offers players a completely new game experience, specifically three new ways to play either Power Grid or Power Grid Deluxe.
The main game is The Stock Companies: As shareholders, the players want to get control over different stock companies so they can acquire the greatest wealth.
The two variants are a little bit closer to the well-known Power Grid experience.
• The Biggest Electricity Distributors: In this first variant the players are shareholders who try to get shares of the most successful companies: the companies that supply electricity to the most cities.
• The Competition of the Private Companies: In this second variant the players control their private stock companies and try to establish them successfully on the electricity market. They sell shares of their own companies to generate more cash and they are able to buy shares of other players’ companies. Thus, they can also earn a portion of the other players’ successes.
More readily available in the USA than it is here in Europe it may be worth checking out.
I appreciate that all of these games can be quite hard to get hold of now. I have featured some related games below that may still wet your appetite for financial based tabletop fun.
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