If I were to put together a university curriculum on modern board game design For Sale would be included in the first lesson of Introduction To Game Structure. Its implementation is an immaculately clean 1-2 punch of set ups and pay offs which is nearly as addictive as some of the more dangerous illicit substances floating around these days. I don’t think I have ever, in the dozens of times I have brought For Sale to the table, played only a single game of it before boxing it up again. It’s practically impossible. No one I have ever introduced to the game has disliked it, and I’m talking upwards of 20-30 people. For my money, this is about as universally enjoyable as a modern game can get. Its clarity of intent and surgically precise execution of its ideas is a standard by which most other light-weight games should be measured by.
For Sale is an auction game. In many ways, it’s the auction game (at least as far as entry-level ones go; I’m not forgetting about you Knizia!). Players act as aspiring real estate moguls trying to buy properties for cheap and flip them for much profit. It is split into 2 highly distinct phases: Buying and Selling. At the beginning of the buying phase, players are injected with fat stacks of cash. Then, a set of “Property Cards” is dealt to the center of the table. Each property card has printed on it a numeric value between 1 and 30. Charmingly, all 30 cards contain unique illustrations which highlight the great disparity between the properties players are attempting to purchase. While property 30 is a literal space station, property 1 is a wet cardboard box. I love it. On a player’s turn they have two options: 1) make a bid for the highest value property on the table, or 2) pass and take the lowest value property on the table. Bids must be of increasing value, so if one player were to bid $5,000, other players would have to bid at least $6,000 or pass. Furthermore, if a player passes but had already made a bid on a previous turn they lose half of that bid to the bank. This goes on until all but one player has passed, at which time that player receives the highest value property and pays their bid to the bank. Another set of properties are then dealt and this process repeats until the deck is depleted.
Next comes the selling phase. At this point, players each have a hand of cards they’ve acquired — likely a mixture of garbage and excellence. Instead of properties, now sets of “Currency Cards” are dealt to the center of the table, which have monetary values between $0 and $15,000. After each set, players secretly select properties from their hands and lay them face down in front of them. These are simultaneously flipped and revealed, and the selected property cards are then mapped to their corresponding currency cards by order of value, i.e., the lowest value property receives the lowest value currency, the second lowest property the second lowest currency, and so on. Sets of currency cards are dealt until all properties have been sold, after which the player with the most amount of total money wins the game.
For Sale may be dead simple mechanically, but there are a surprising amount of considerations to face throughout the course of playing it. The buying phase is a delicate balance where getting caught overspending on a single property or playing too conservatively and ending up with no high value cards can both spell your doom later on. Staying the course and letting your opponents’ funds dwindle so you can make your move at a later time can be very effective… unless others are thinking along the same lines you are. The various spreads of property values also add a lot of diversity to these proceedings. Auction rounds with all high value cards except a single piece of garbage will have players holding out for anything but last place, whereas the opposite scenario often turns into a game of chicken between two big spenders. Each auction is just different enough to not feel like a repeat which keeps the anticipation for the next set of cards consistently high. This process is even more compelling in the selling phase, where the spreads between currency card values are even more consequential. Every round is interesting and suspenseful, because merely having high value properties doesn’t guarantee your victory; you also have to know when to use them. Flipping an outhouse for $8,000 because that happened to be the lowest value card in a set is a wonderful feeling, but the real fun in the selling phase is when those $0 cards make an appearance. Trying to get a read on the properties your opponents are going to throw out so you don’t get caught with a big fat zero on your hands is a breezy waltz of psychological warfare. It’s kinda like 6 nimmt! but much, much more satisfying when you get it right.
One of the most impressive things about For Sale is the way both phases are entirely unique when it comes to player actions — turns of bidding/passing vs. simultaneous card selection — but coupled very tightly together in terms of their structural cadence — dealing sets of cards to the center of the table which dictate a spread of values that inform player choice. The modal alignment of these mechanisms paired with an immediately digestible theme makes For Sale about as intuitive as a game can get. Even more, the elegance of its distinct two-phase approach also lends a touch of narrative weight to an ultra-light design that takes less than a half hour to play. Frankly, I find that pretty amazing. Its theming may not be 100% perfect — losing half your previous bid when you pass is purely a necessity of the design and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense thematically — but it is good enough that the game by and large makes immediate sense to new players. Seeing as rule codification is the primary purpose of a game’s theme anyways, I’d consider that a success.
Is For Sale a game that is going to keep enticing and tantalizing its players with promises of new, unexplored experiences across dozens and dozens of plays? No, probably not. And it’s probably too chaotic to be truthfully considered a proper game of strategy or skill or whatever, but that’s really not the point. This is one of those rare, illustrious “gateway games” that is good enough to still satisfy players with high levels of gaming experience. It is a paragon of structural elegance and design clarity, and probably the single best game there is for demonstrating the fundamental building blocks of auction mechanisms. If you are — or have the inclination to become — a student of game design, this is one to commit some time and thought to. Even if you aren’t, For Sale is simply a terrific game — and a terrifically simple one at that.
For Sale gets a rating of FOUR out of FIVE, indicating it is RECOMMENDED.