Goal: This is not a game about victory points. The winner is the player with the most cash at the end of the game.
Mechanics: Go to the restroom first; this is going to take a while.
Generalities: you build and sell cars, some via salesman and some from a semi-randomly determined demand. A factory infrastructure retains value, whenever you close a factory you receive back cost - $100 for each factory in the square (capped at 3 + parts factory). At the end of the game you add the full value of open factories to your total. Every time you screw up, have unsold cars or unemployed salesman you get a loss cube. A loss cube makes you pay money at the end of the turn, and the amount goes up as the game goes on.
There are like a dozen phases here, and a lot of them only do a single thing. Approximate order as how they occur. I am willing to be imprecise because I don’t think we have played the game correctly yet.
Phase 1: Pick a consultant. Choose one of the 6 or 7 consultants available. They do something to help you out. Like Durant allows you to start a new factory, Ford lets you add to existing factories, Kettering doesn’t do anything but give extra influence tokens, there’s a salesman and a couple guys who help with loss cubes (explained further in the clean up section). This also picks the turn order, from here on out, Ford goes first and Chrysler goes last.
Phase 2: Draw demand tokens. These are how many cars will be sold to the mass market. Keep yours secret; you only know a portion of the demand. You use these to estimate how many cars will be sold and plan construction accordingly.
Phase 3-5: Action phases. You can perform a number of actions here.
Build Factories – with this action you can build up to 2 factories (including the parts factory.) Price is set by what style of car you are building, price and location is shown on the outer track. A new factory costs both money and influence tokens (game term is R&D cubes). R&D cost is determined by how far in front this new model is from the next most advanced. It’s exponential, I don’t recall the exact formula but practically speaking it’s difficult to build more than 3 spaces ahead of the leader. A factory built behind the leader costs no R&D cubes. The parts factory always costs $500.
Hire Salesman – You may hire 1-3 salesmen and put them in the holding queue for allocation in a later phase.
Build cars – There’s a chart on the board telling you how many cars you can make. There is both a minimum and a maximum based on how many factories you have. The cost is constant, but can be reduced by $50 a car if you have the parts factory.
Take two R&D cubes.
Phase 7: Allocate Salesman – remember those salesmen you hired in the action phase? Now you put them on lots. There are three car types, economy, midrange and luxury. There are a set amount of salesman spots, and they fill one at a time in consultant order. Also salesmen have limited mobility, if a salesman last sold luxury cars, next turn he can’t sell economy and vice versa.
Phase 8: Salesmen sell cars. If you have a salesman paired up with the correct car type, congratulations! You sell that car for full price. Salesmen without a car to sell, or ones who didn’t make it into the allocation spots are removed from the game and you receive a loss token for each disgruntled employee.
Phase 9: Reveal demand tokens. You now see how many cars will be sold by general market.
Phase 10: Strategic decisions. You can market or discount cars to increase sales. The total demand does not change but the allocation to that demand can. These actions take R&D cubes. Also, one person can close a factory during this phase. When done making strategic decisions, place a player token onto the turn order section of the board. The first person done gets first choice of consultants next turn.
Phase 11: Sell cars. This is important; cars are not sold in consultant order. Cars are sold from most advanced model to least advanced model. Cars are placed one by one into the ‘sold’ squares, marketing allows that model to place an additional car, and discounts allow one or two (depending on which discount you took) extra cars to be placed. Discounts drop the price. Duh. Multiple marketing campaigns and multiple discounts are not allowed on the same model, although the same player can have multiple marketing campaigns and discounts amongst all his holdings. Each unsold car earns you a loss token.
This brings us back to phase 1. You repeat this 4 more times or so, with the salesmen spots and demand tiles changing. The later in the game you go, the higher the demand for economy cars and the lower the demand for midrange.
Tactics: I really don’t know where to start. I mean that quite literally. The rules are such an incoherent mess that I’m doubtful we have ever played the game in the correct manor. It seems like closing factories is an important decision and one that you should do quite often. R&D cubes are handy but a fistful of them isn’t really necessary. Loss cubes are inevitable; a lot of loss cubes are not. Managing these looks pretty important too.
Tips:
*Do not, under any circumstances, be lured into offering Mike C. any advice whatsoever. In all cases you will be blamed for steering him into an ill fated strategy (probably for your own benefit)
The best tip I can give you is to make sure the executives get as many perks as possible all the while negotiating hard to keep the 'labor costs' down. If you can squander enough resources paying a handful of executives exorbitant sums to live like kings and eventually collect ALL the loss cubes you will win when the taxpayer is required to bail you out 'for the good of the nation'. After that you can really put the screws to the few not-yet-impoverished people for not wanting to live in your capitalist utopia, the damn commies.
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