Plot: Far East colonies and spice trading. Completely slapped on theme, so ignore it.
Goal: It's a game about victory points.
Mehcanics: Combination of auction and and actions.
In the auction you acquire things that help you, whether it is spice storage, a recurring resource, or something else that furthers your infrastructure/VP total. The currency for the auction is ONLY used for the auction.
During the action phase, every player gets 3 actions (extra actions can be earned via auction buys or infrastructure upgrades.) Actions can earn you resources for the auction, for infrastructure upgrades or the actual upgrading of your infrastructure.
Game ends after 8 rounds, most VPs win. You earn VP's in several different ways
Auction buys; When you buy something at auction, it might give VPs at end game.
Found a Colony. This happens during auction phase. A successful colony founding helps you store more resources and gives a VP. There's quite a lot of luck involved here, although there are ways to minimize it.
Deeper into the auction:
The auction occurs on a 5X5 map of items. The "Flag holder" places the "Flag" by a auction tile that has a open border (in other words, tiles must have an exposed outer edge). The Flag placer puts a "1" circular token marking his auction item. The player to his left then selects something adjacent to the flag as his auction item, placing a "2" marker on it. The player left of "2" drops a "3" marker onto a tile adjacent to the "1". then so on down the line. The "Flag" also gets to choose an item to auction, so he is selling 2 things, the flag and a tile.
The player that wins the flag goes first AND receives an additional action during the action phase.
It is a one pass auction. The player to the left of the guy who played the numeric auction token makes a bid and that continues around till everyone has had a shot. If no one bids, the player who laid the token gets it for free.
Some of things you can buy are increased storage (called plantations), a recurring resource add (ships, money, spices or colonists), a one shot resource bonus or VP tiles.
After the auction, proceed to the Action Phase.
During the action phase you can:
Grab resources. This includes money for the auction, or ships and spice for infrastructure upgrades.
Found a colony: This will both increase your spice storage capacity and earn you a VP, so not as important as upgrades, but still important. It's also semi-random. You can earn 'colonists' via upgrades and tile buys, but if you don't reach the minimum threshold to found the colony this action is nearly wasted. (you do earn a colonist to help you reach the threshold in the future).
Review: The only thing remotely innovative about this game is the auction map. It's a neat selection mechanism, but I really have no idea how to game that. Seems to me that randomly choosing the auction items would work nearly as well. Having said that, the tile picking doesn't take all that long and the rest of the game fits together well.
This wasn't a game I fell in love with on my first playing but it's something that I can play again several more times.
Tips:
*Do not let the flag get bought too cheaply. The extra action is worth at minimum 4$. The flag itself is probably worth more than that because it also lets you sell 2 things next round.
*The recurring resource tiles went fast in the game I played, I did not buy any yet was still competitive. That leads me to believe that in some ways they were over valued, but I don't actually remember what the final bid was.
Meh. I would play Goa again, but I won't buy it. Interesting but not much more than that.
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