Players: 2-4
Time: 45-60 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)
Buy Low, Sell High was previously released in a slightly different form in German as "Palmyra", a game of trading Greek vases.
The Components
Buy Low, Sell High comes with a collection of very pretty components. These include:
- 1 game board
- 45 cards
- 36 stock markers
- 4 player markers
- 1 rule book
Game Board: The game board is a bright, full-color, four-panel board, printed with linen texturing. The board is largely abstract. There's a circle of 13 rectangles in the middle of the board, intended for the playing of cards. In three of the corners are price lines for the the three major types of stock--tech, retail, and oil--each running from 2 to 30. Along the edge of the board is a money track which runs from 0 to 100.
When I say this board is bright, I'm not kidding. Some of my players thought it was a bit excessive, but I thought it was generally appropriate for the wild world of stock market trading. Overall, everything on the board is obvious, and thus easy to use, though I wish the board contained some additional info, as I discuss below.
Cards: The cards are all printed at half-height on medium-sturdy, linen-textured cardstock.
The 45 cards are divided into 15 for each class of stock, with each of those classes clearly marked by colors (e.g., green for retail) and icons (e.g., a shopping cart). Within each class of cards are five specific card types: bulls (+1 to +3); bears (-1 to -3); dividends; fees; and breaking news. They each have good icons that make it obvious what they do, except some players had initial confusion between the fees and dividends, until they really looked at the artwork.
The artwork on all of the cards is cartoony, computer-generated art. It's all good quality, but the bear and bull cards are notable because they're entirely hilarious. For example the +2 bull card for oil shows the bull surfing on waves of oil, while the -2 bear card for oil shows a ship run aground on a rock, with oil pouring into the ocean, and the bear looking down, absolutely aghast. I appreciate the art on these cards every time I play.
Unfortunately there's no text on any of the cards, and this made the game harder to play for a beginner (more on that momentarily).
Plastic Markers: All of the markers in the game are colored, hard plastic bits that are fairly sculpted. The stock markers depict red oil wells, yellow computers, and green shopping carts (the same icons and colors used throughout the game). The player markers, which are used on the money track, are molded as motley fool caps in cyan, white, mauve, and black. In the one 4-player game I played I had trouble keeping track of who was who because the colors are so non-standard (and thus no one was playing their "normal" color) and because there was no other marker to show you which color belonged to which player.
Overall, the plastic markers are nice and contribute a lot to the attractiveness of the game.
Rule Book: A four-page, full-color, glossy rulebook with ample, full-color illustrations. It looks good, was easy to read, and pretty good at reference.
Missing Information: Unfortunately I thought that the cards missed some important information which could have made the game easier to play. It's all in the rulebook, but this isn't very accessible to the average player. In particular, I felt like the following should have appeared either on the cards or the board: a listing of the potentials returns for dividends; a reminder of the cost of a fee ($2); amd a reminder of which stocks were more volatile (tech) and which were less volatile (oil).
In every game I play I understand that I have some advantage in a first game because I've usually read the rules; however here I felt like it was more notable than usual because so much of the critical play info was only in the rulebook. In particular, every game I played I felt like no one had a handle on the valuation of the dividends other than myself.
Overall, The Motley Fool's Buy Low, Sell High has beautifully produced components that are good quality and look good on the table. Most of the game works smoothly, but there are a few usability issues that could have been addressed by making information more available to players. That's brought the Style rating of the game down a little bit, and thus I've limited it to a high "4" out of "5"; based on the quality and beauty of the components alone it would instead have rated "5".
The Gameplay
In this game your object is to buy low, sell high, and otherwise manipulate the stock market in order to achieve maximum profits.
Setup: Each player is given one plastic piece for each of the stock classes (retail, oil, tech). These represent shares of stocks in the appropriate classes.
The remaining stock markers are placed on the board along the price track for that stock, with the first piece being placed at "24" and the rest in the spaces below it. This chart represents the price for each share of stock, so the top share of stock would cost "24", the one below it "22", the one below it "20", etc. In a three-player game the last piece of stock is placed at "12" on each chart, meaning that each stock costs $12 to buy at the start of the game.
Each player also starts with $50, which is his money to buy additional shares of stock.
Each player also gets 5 cards at start.
Order of Play: On his turn each player does the following:
- May buy or sell stock(s)
- Must play a card
- Must draw cards
Buy or Sell Stock(s): The buying and selling of stock is all done with those handy price tracks. When you buy a share of stock you take it off the bottom of the track, and pay the price revealed; when you sell the stock you place it at the bottom of the track, and receive the price covered up. This is a really clever mechanic because it simulates supply and demand--the more people want a stock, the higher it goes in price, the more people sell off, the lower it goes.
On a turn a player can sell or buy two of the same stock; or buy or sell no more than one of each of the three types of stock. Somehow this rule for what you can do (2 of 1; or 1 of up to 3) is unintuitive, as I've had to explain it multiple times for every game I've played.
Play a Card: Now a player must play a card from his hand into the next space for a card on the board. (There are up to 13 spaces for cards, which denotes how long a round can be.) There are five potential types. Remember that each type of card is color-coodinated to a specific class of stock.
Bears & Bulls. Bears and bulls adjust stock prices. They run from -3 to +3. At the end of a round all of the bears and bulls are summed for each type of stock, and the stock is adjusted accordingly (more on that momentarily).
Dividends. Dividends pay out cash to stock holders of a specific class of stock at the end of a round of play. The payout is per stock held and is either $1, $2, $4, $8, or $12 per stock, depending on how many dividend cards of that class are out.
Breaking News. Breaking News is played on top of any of the above cards of the same class. It cancels that card.
Fees. A fee costs every holder of the specified class of stock $2 per stock. Unlike all of the above cards, this happens immediately. The player of the card must then play a second card unless the round has already ended.
The Differences Between the Stocks. Each class of stock (oil, retail, tech) has a slightly different distribution of cards. For example oil is the most stable: it has no +/-3s, just 1 breaking news, and 5 dividends. Tech is the most volatile: it has two +/-3s, 2 breaking news, and just 3 dividends. Retail is, meanwhile, in the middle. I'm not sure how big of a difference these variations make in a game, but they're definitely colorful.
Draw Cards: Finally, a player gets to replenish his hand to 5 cards.
Ending a Round: A round of play ends when the appropriate number of card spaces have been filled. It's between 9 & 13, depending on the number of players, and is very clearly marked. At this point a number of actions takes place.
Netting the Bears & Bulls. The plusses and minuses are summed for each class of stock, and then the stock is moved appropriately up or down on its price track. For example, if tech has summed to +3, and it was currently running 20-22-24-26 on its price track, the bottom three stocks would be pulled off the board, leaving 26, then placed at the top of the chart, resulting in new pricing of 26-28-30-30. Because of good news the minimum price for tech jumped from $20 to $26.
Paying Dividends. Next, dividends are paid out depending on the number of cards and the number of stocks held by each player.
Card Reshuffled. Now there's a lot (perhaps an excessive amount) of reshuffling done. First all the cards are reshuffled. Then each player can discard what he wants from his hand and redraw. Then everything is reshuffled again.
Finally a new round of play begins.
Ending the Game: The game ends after three rounds of play. At this point all the players sell all of their stock one share at a time. The player who ends up with the most money wins.
Relationships to Other Games
The Motley Fool's Buy Low, Sell High was originally released in Germany in 1996 by eg-Spiele as Palmyra. In that original game, players traded in vases along three different trade routes leading to the Grecian city of Palmyra. Uberplay has received some flack in the past for their retheming of games, but this time they hit their target dead on. I have to believe that this game was originally intended as a stock market game, because that's exactly what it simulates. If that's not the actual case, than this retheming is brilliant.
Other than the retheming of the game, BLSH is identical to the original Palmyra with one exception: the variation of the three classes of stock. As I said above, I'm not sure how much this impacts actual play, but it does ad a lot of nice color to the game.
At heart BLSH is a logistical game of supply and demand. In other words, it's a pretty pure economics game. There are a few other games that try and model these same economic ideas. Die Fugger is another that I've reviewed recently.
Thus far, The Motley Fool's Buy Low, Sell High game is the best economic-modelling game that I've played; it should be used in High School Economics classes.
The Game Design
The main strength of The Motley Fool's Buy Low, Sell High is in its superb economic modeling; as I've said a few times already, I think it does a great job of showing how supply and demand work, via simple, intuitive, and clever game systems. The two-pronged idea of stock prices first moving due to other players' purchases and sales and second due to upcoming news and dividends provides enough depth of play to keep things interesting.
The cards themselves supplement this by allowing for some good bluffing & strategy; you can try and wait out other players, or encourage them into certain purchases & sales if you plan to move the market in a certain direction in the future.
Finally, the game has interesting interactivity. You don't directly interact with other players, but the method in which you can indirectly affect them through your purchases and sales is effective.
On the downside, the game is a little simplistic; I played it four times in the week leading up to writing this review and the fourth was one time too many. I'll still be very happy to pull this game out every once in a while, but it isn't deep enough to sustain constant play.
I also occasionally, but not always, thought the randomness was a little high, mostly related to fees cards and when rounds happened to end. However, these elements are at least somewhat controllable, since you can try to diversify to avoid fees and use fees & breaking news to control when the round ends. It's just not 100% under your control, as much of the rest of the game feels like it is.
I also had the good fortunate to play this game with the entire range of player possibilities: two to four. The game seems to work best with 3. 2 works surprisingly well, but just doesn't have the same excitement level. 4 was a little too chaotic for me, because there was so much more opportunity for your plans to get messed up. I'd say it plays quite well for 2-3 and OK for 4.
Overall, Buy Low, Sell High's very clever simulation and solid economic modeling make for an unusual and interesting game, with its only real limitation being its repetitiveness which will somewhat restrict additional plays. It's still well above average, and earns a low "4" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
The Motley Fool's Buy Low Sell High is a beautiful stock market simulation by Reiner Knizia that also makes for an interesting game. It is a little dry, and you won't want to play it constantly, but it's well worth bringing out for an occasional play--and I think it should be used in economics classrooms too.
