Container

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Price: $174.00   

Product Feature

• 3 to 5 player game
• 90 minutes to play
• Complete artwork by mike doyle
• Economic strategy game
• Island shipping theme

Product Description

VLY201 Container by Valley Games

Container is a game about big ships and big production. Each player will play both the producer and shipper of goods. Players will decide which products they want to produce, and which of the OTHER players goods they want to ship out to a remote island. During these phases, players will be able to set the prices for their goods and try to maximize their cash!

Once the goods have reached the island, players will play the part of the purchaser for their tiny island. Players bid for the goods arriving each day by ship, and the highest bidder collects these goods for conversion into points at the end of the game.

Sounds simple? It is! But the real challenge is turning heavy industry production into goods for your island. Your government is willing to subsidize your purchases, but just how much money do you want to give to your competitors for that lovely crate of goods your island desperately needs?

Container Review

Disclosure: I purchased Container a few weeks ago and since then I have been able to play 4 or 5 games. All the games I played were 4-player, so my knowledge of the 3 or 5 player experience is inferred only.

Container is a Euro-style board game. For those unfamiliar with this genre, Eurogames are generally defined as games involving no player elimination, low randomness and only indirect player conflict. You are a shipping company owner, producing, trading and stockpiling goods as you strive to turn the highest profit. The theme of the game, shipping containers to a mysterious island, is about as abstract as the game is itself. It does a good job of giving some sort of structure and metaphor to the game actions, while not being too distracting.

Physically the game is simple, but elegant. The boards are sturdy and visually clear, the containers are made of wood and shaped as one would imagine. The factories and warehouses are wooden as well. The boats are pretty notable, as they are very nice to hold and made of a very sturdy material. I'm uncertain if it's plastic or some sort of stone, though plastic is much more likely. Color, however is my only complaint. There are five colors of resource: White, Black, Orange, Tan and Brown. Unfortunately, Orange/Tan/Brown are all very close in shade and can be tough to tell apart. Colorblind players or players with impaired vision might have some trouble here.

The rules of Container are pretty straightforward. The nicely printed rulebook looks thick at first, but it's actually just reprinted in many languages. The rules are concise, well-worded and clean; there won't be any hour long arguments about a poorly worded statement, nor will there be days of pouring over the rulebook before you get a handle on how to start to play. Here's a rough overview of game play, please note that some details are omitted:

Container simulates a multi-tiered market structure, which I'm going to walk through very carefully because it's a little complicated. A player produces goods, which he assigns a price to and stores in a factory. Other players can purchase those goods from said player at his asking price. Once purchased, those goods are re-priced (with a markup, of course!) and placed in the purchasing player's harbor for resale. Each player has a boat which he can "sail" from harbor to harbor, buying goods at each harbor. When the boat is full, or when the player decides it's time, the boat heads for the central island. Upon arrival, the goods are auctioned off to the highest bidder - although the player has the option to keep the goods for himself if he pays the highest bid!

Scoring at the end of the game is simple - whomever has the most dollars wins! Cash-on-hand is counted, as are resources you own but haven't sold. The key to scoring, however, are the containers you've purchased on the center island. At the beginning of the game, each player is given a hidden scorecard that determines how much each color of container is worth to him. The endgame value of each container varies from player to player, and as this information is hidden it can be tough to predict who is looking for which resources. Additionally, the first step in scoring is to eliminate the container type of which the player has most, forcing players to adopt a strategy more complicated than "collect the most of my most valuable container". Diversification is key to victory.

The player-oriented nature of the game means player skill will shape your game experience to a large extent. While expert players are not required for fun, beginning players can bring some difficulties to the game. One player in an early game of mine had a bad habit of putting together boatloads of goods he wanted, then buying them himself. Because he was giving up the income from selling his boatloads to others, he quickly found himself deep in debt, and basically broke. Unable to buy or produce goods easily, the economy got worse and worse for the other players. Eventually we had to "bail him out" by deliberately buying goods from him. Once he had some capital he was back in the game, and the economy got itself started again.

I'm not going to sugar-coat it, your first game of Container will probably be rough. The market system is complicated and it's tough to know how your actions will manipulate it. When and what to produce, how much to spend on goods, bidding on incoming boatloads of containers - all of these choices are going to be pretty difficult the first time you run into them. This is because the general "flow" of goods and money is very player-dependent, as both price and availability of goods are determined by you and your compatriots. With a little bit of thought and experience, though, you should be able to keep your head above water. Keeping a good eye for profit, as well as remembering that dollars are victory points (i.e. when you pay someone for their goods you are also shifting the final score), will see you through your first few games.

Overall, I really like Container. It reminds me of other economy games I've played (Puerto Rico comes to mind) but with its own very unique direction. Like those other games, decisions can both be evaluated for immediate gain, or speculated upon for future profit. However, the closer player interactions in Container mean that you need to be thinking about what the other players would find beneficial as well. You can price your goods however you want, but you need someone to be willing to buy them! While the initial learning curve is a bit rough, it's not as daunting as it first appears, and if your playgroup doesn't have an aversion to numbers or business acumen, I'd recommend it.

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