Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 90-120 minutes
The Components
As is usual for the Treefrog Line, Automobile comes with a board and a set of wooden components.
The Board: A 6-panel linen-textured gameboard. I have mixed feelings on this gameboard, because it tries to encode a lot of information, and I feel that it has somewhat mixed success.
The board contains an outer ring of cars, which features beautiful artwork by Mike Atkison of period cars from 1896-1930. Within that ring is a ton of other information, which detail most of the other mechanics of the game. Various charts depict turn order, car demand, car cost, car sale, executive options, and a few other thing. It's just about everything that you need to play the game. Unfortunately, the resulting gestalt isn't that attractive.
For first time players, I think the usability is also somewhat mixed. The "turn sequence", which shows exactly what to do in what order each time is superb. Every game should have something like that. However in both games I played there were some players confused by other gameboard elements, namely how the demand-by-turn chart worked and what all of the dealer spaces meant. I think in a second game, all of these elements would be entirely obvious, but for first-time players, I have to believe some of these could have been more intuitive.
Though my thoughts on the board are mixed, I only needed to discuss them at all because Wallace so regularly tries so hard to make his games very usable thanks to board designs like this one.
And, my ambivalence with the components ends here ...
The Wood Bits: As has been true with all of the Treefrog games to date, the wood bits are great. You have a lot of pieces that are pretty normal: cubes for R&D and losses; discs for loses, bonus sales, and various role markers; and rectangular bits for factories. There are also some attractive pawns for keeping track of where you are in the game, and nice wooden tiles with numbers on them, which are used to determine demand. Though that's all pretty normative, it's also a lot of wood for a game of this size. The next bits are simple little "distributors" which imply people with a circle atop a triangle. However, the real prize of the game is the car bits. Each player gets 28 tiny vintage cars in his color. They're very cute.
Money: There's also paper money in a variety of denominations (and colors).
Rulebook: Treefrog's rules continue to be some of the most attractive in the industry, featuring full-color interiors, great layout styles for the text, and plentiful illustrations. This rulebook also includes two of my favorite elements: a page of designer notes and a back-page player aid. I wish everyone did their rulesbook designs like Warfrog does.
Overall, Automobile has a lot of grea- quality components--though I have some problems with the beauty and the first-time usability of the board. It still scores well, though, thanks primarily to that car art, those wooden components, and that beautiful rulebook. I've thus given Automobile a high "4" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
Automobile is a game of carefully managing supply and demand to earn the most money over four turn of play.
Setup: At the start of the game each player is given $2,000 and between 3 and 5 R&D cubes. A random player order is determined.
Order of Play: The game is played over four turns, each of which contains the following phases:
- Draw Demand Tiles
- Select Characters
- Take Player Actions
- Sell Cars via Howard
- Sell Cars via Distributors
- Make Executive Decisions
- Sell Cars via Demand
- Take Losses
- End Turn
On later turns, each player will draw two demand tiles, one of which will be used to determine the demand for low-priced cars and one of which will be used to determine the demand for mid-priced cars. Which one is used for which type of car changes from turn to turn.
Select Characters: Now, in player order, each player selects one of the characters, from Ford to Chrysler, to help him that turn. Each character has three attributes. First, his position will determine the play order for the rest of the turn (until player order is reset during the executive decisions phase). Second, he may provide zero, one, two, or three R&D cubes. Third, he may have a power which you'll get to use this turn. Two of the guys help you build factories, two help you reduce losses, and one lets you sell extra cars. (There is a sixth guy, Kettering, but he only provides R&D cubes ... and a pretty early space in the play order.)
Take Player Actions: This is the heart of the game. Each player gets three actions each turn, taken one at a time, which he must use to slowly build up his automobile empire and prepare for the demand this turn. There are five possibilities for each action:
Build Factory. To start a new factory you choose an empty space in the ring of automobiles. This space will show what type of car the factory can build (medium, low, or high price). It also lists a cost.
If the new factory is out in front of all the other factories, you have to pay some R&D cubes. Then you can build one or two factories, each at the cost shown on the board, from $200 to $750.
Instead of building factories on a new space, you can expand factories in a space you already control. To do so, you just pay the cost--but you can only have a maximum of three standard factories in a space.
You can build a "parts factory" instead of one your factory builds. Instead of controlling how many cars you can build (like a normal factory does), parts factories reduce the price of each car built on that space.
Place Distributors. You can place 1-3 distributors on the board, which you'll later be able to use to sell cars, irrespective of demand.
Take Two R&D Cubes. You add two cubes from the general supply.
Produce Cars. You may build cars on some or all of your factory spaces.
Each factory space designates what type of car you can build there. The number of factories you have determines how many you can build. This sets both a maximum and a minimum. For example if you have two factories in a medium-car space, if you activate it you must produce 4-7, no more and no less.
You must pay for cars when they're produced. Low-price cars cost $50, medium $70, and high-price $100, but there's a discount of $20 if you have a parts factory on the space.
Close Down Factory. You remove all of the factories from a space and mark it with a black rectangle (so that no one else may build there). You get back the money you put into your factories, minus $100 per factory. You also lose half of your loss cubes, rounded up (which is a good thing!).
That's the last of the actions. When everyone is done, play continues on through several more phases ...
Sell Cars via Howard: Whoever took the Howard character gets to sell two cars at full price, irrespective of demand.
Sell Cars via Distributors: Players with distributors get to use them one at a time to sell cars at full price, irrespective of demand. However, only a limited number of distributors can sell each sort of car each turn.
If you end up with a distributor who didn't sell anything, he's returned to you and you take a loss cube.
Make Executive Decisions: Players get to take certain benefits from the "executive decisions" menu. There are three options: close down a factory; sell extra models of a car (at a cost of R&D cubes); and sell extra models of a car (at a reduced cost). Players will get the option to take these items one at a time, but can choose to pass at any time. When they do, they're placed preferentially in a new player order (which will determine the order of character selection next turn).
Sell Cars via Demand: At long last, the demand tiles are revealed to determine the demand for mid- and low-priced cars. Each player will contribute a tile showing a number between a 2 and a 5 for each space (except on the first turn, when there's no demand for low-priced cars). Totalling those numbers up shows the total demand for each type of car. There's then a tiny bit of demand for high-priced cars, determined by one random tile.
Players now sell off cars one at a time. This is done in order of how new the model is. When the turn order comes to a model that has bonus discs on it from the executive decisions round, it'll get to sell off more than one car. This continues until either all cars have been sold or all the demand has been met.
All cars are removed. Cars that were sold generate money for the player, while cars that weren't generate loss cubes.
Take Losses: Finally, each player takes loss for his older factories. If a factory isn't the first of its type (low, medium, or high-cost) then it generates one or more loss cubes.
At this point each player has to pay $10-$40 for each loss cube (depending on which round it is).
End Turn: Finally, everything is cleaned up, and the players start a new round of play.
Ending the Game: The game ends after four turns. Each player now gets the full value of his remaining factories. The player with the most money wins.
Relationships to Other Games
After my first play of Automobile I said somewhat flippantly, "It's Martin Wallace's mathiest game yet." That may be hyperbole, with the classically tough Steam in Wallace's ludography, but Automobile is certainly an economic game. I haven't seen many games go straight after supply & demand as Automobile does, though there's the occasional stock game that gives it a shot, such as The Motley Fool's Buy Low, Sell High Game, but even among those, Automobile is pretty unique.
The Game Design
I find Automobile to be a pretty fascinating economic simulation. There are a lot of cool little tidbits in the game, for example the tipping point between mid-price and low-price cars that occurs between the second and third turns, and the gradual introduction of low-price cars and luxury cars that occurs over the course of the first couple of turns. I think they create an interesting environment where you have to say constantly on top of the changing forces in the market, not just keep repeating the old strategies.
This need for dynamism is multiplied by the fact that all of the other players are affecting market supply too. Because supply and demand are divided into three types (low-price, mid-price, and luxury), you have to constantly be aware of which players might flood the market, and where opportunities might have arisen (thanks to factory closures).
Overall these changing economic realities, meshed with the five action options you have, result in a game that is both tactically and strategically rich. Automobile is a thinker's game and sometimes a calculator's game too.
I'll also raise one other element that I think is a good point in most Wallace games, including Automobile: this tend to move fast, primarily thanks to the threaded actions.
One disadvantage of Automobile's complex economics is that it doesn't produce results that are entirely intuitive. For example, when you determine demand on later turns you actually do so by each player drawing two tiles, putting the high one on one sort of car and the low one another sort of car.
Now, many gamers could immediately determine the expected value of five randomly drawn tiles that range from 2-5. (It's 3.5 * 5 = 17.5.) Though the lower of two tiles will produce a lower expected value and the higher of two will produce a higher expected value, the exact numbers won't be readily available to most players--and perhaps that's what intended, since you are trying to fight against supply and demand.
I think Automobile has one other limitation, which is that it's almost pure economics, without some of additional color and variability that I see in other Wallace economic games like Brass and Steam.
That limitation keeps me from giving Automobile a perfect score, because I think it limits it to more occasional play, but nonetheless the game is a fine offering, and I think the heaviest gamer's game that Wallace has produced under the Treefrog label (or perhaps it's just the only heavy gamer's game from the label). In any case, I've given it a high "4" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Automobile is a fine heavy gamer's game from Martin Wallace's Treefrog line and probably the most complex Euro game that he's produced since Brass. Anyone looking for an economic brain burner will like this new release.
