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Tag: 1997

**** For Sale (1997) – Stefan Dorra

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…