![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
viktor_haagDespite being called Power Grid - Factory Manager, Friedemann Friese's new game isn't all that related to Power Grid: it has auctions (although, in Factory Manager, the auction currency is tempo and not victory points--money), it's a game about the tension between infrastructure investment and profit-taking, and the player with the most money in the end wins.
My first try at the game last evening was about 90 minutes with five players: all the others had played before, but I expect that would shave down to between 60 to 90 with repeated play. Set-up for the game seems fiddly: the game depends on a suite of industrial improvement tiles (machines, automation suites, manufacturing space, control systems); like the building tiles in Puerto Rico, these must be sorted and arrayed on a playing board.
Over the course of the game, players spend tempo (measured in worker tokens) to compete for turn order, make available a set of improvements, purchase and deploy improvements, and operate their factories to generate profit (victory points). Players will also spend money on purchasing improvements (so, a player must have tempo and money to purchase an improvement). So, Factory Manager, unlike Puerto Rico, is one of those games where you have to relinquish victory points, in order to get (you hope) more victory points: it is an accelerating economy game, and as such, suffers one of the pangs those kinds of games tend to suffer: it can perhaps be over in the first ten minutes (especially when playing in groups of mixed experience). At least (unlike, for example, Scepter of Zavandor), Factory Manager has the decency to be reasonably short.
With our play last night, it seemed that the general running order established in the first third of the game lasted through until the end, with little opportunity for catch up. However, in the final analysis, the game ended up tighter than it seemed. The only randomness in the game is the starting turn order, and the only effect this has on the game is to affect the order in which the first auction for the real turn order positions takes place.
I would like to play the game a few more times before forming a fuller opinion, but one thing about the game really disturbs me. Since people essentially bid tempo for turn order (you "pay" for your auction with worker tokens, which limit (a) the number of improvements you can contribute to the turn's purchasing pool, and (b) the number of improvements you can actually acquire), it seems to me that the most vital resource in the game is tempo and thus making sure that you secure one of the improvements that reduces the number of workers you must dedicate to machines is very powerful indeed.
I'm not sure how much replay is in this game; after one play, I'm more interested in buying the latest Power Grid expansion before buying Factory Manager. But I would be happy to trade for Factory Manager, receive it as a gift, or play it again.
Should you buy it? If you like these economic building games where "the rich seem to get richer", and you like ones that play more quickly rather than more slowly, then you might quite like Factory Manager. The components are nice and the game is not too expensive. If you really like Tom Lehman's Phonecia, then I would highly recommend this game to you. Otherwise, if you quite like Power Grid, then you might like this as well -- it's not precisely the same kind of game, but it shares a similar senisbility. I prefer Power Grid myself, but Factory Manager is most probably Friese's most solid effort since Power Grid.
My first try at the game last evening was about 90 minutes with five players: all the others had played before, but I expect that would shave down to between 60 to 90 with repeated play. Set-up for the game seems fiddly: the game depends on a suite of industrial improvement tiles (machines, automation suites, manufacturing space, control systems); like the building tiles in Puerto Rico, these must be sorted and arrayed on a playing board.
Over the course of the game, players spend tempo (measured in worker tokens) to compete for turn order, make available a set of improvements, purchase and deploy improvements, and operate their factories to generate profit (victory points). Players will also spend money on purchasing improvements (so, a player must have tempo and money to purchase an improvement). So, Factory Manager, unlike Puerto Rico, is one of those games where you have to relinquish victory points, in order to get (you hope) more victory points: it is an accelerating economy game, and as such, suffers one of the pangs those kinds of games tend to suffer: it can perhaps be over in the first ten minutes (especially when playing in groups of mixed experience). At least (unlike, for example, Scepter of Zavandor), Factory Manager has the decency to be reasonably short.
With our play last night, it seemed that the general running order established in the first third of the game lasted through until the end, with little opportunity for catch up. However, in the final analysis, the game ended up tighter than it seemed. The only randomness in the game is the starting turn order, and the only effect this has on the game is to affect the order in which the first auction for the real turn order positions takes place.
I would like to play the game a few more times before forming a fuller opinion, but one thing about the game really disturbs me. Since people essentially bid tempo for turn order (you "pay" for your auction with worker tokens, which limit (a) the number of improvements you can contribute to the turn's purchasing pool, and (b) the number of improvements you can actually acquire), it seems to me that the most vital resource in the game is tempo and thus making sure that you secure one of the improvements that reduces the number of workers you must dedicate to machines is very powerful indeed.
I'm not sure how much replay is in this game; after one play, I'm more interested in buying the latest Power Grid expansion before buying Factory Manager. But I would be happy to trade for Factory Manager, receive it as a gift, or play it again.
Should you buy it? If you like these economic building games where "the rich seem to get richer", and you like ones that play more quickly rather than more slowly, then you might quite like Factory Manager. The components are nice and the game is not too expensive. If you really like Tom Lehman's Phonecia, then I would highly recommend this game to you. Otherwise, if you quite like Power Grid, then you might like this as well -- it's not precisely the same kind of game, but it shares a similar senisbility. I prefer Power Grid myself, but Factory Manager is most probably Friese's most solid effort since Power Grid.
