This is part of a series of bloody matches to the death. Show support for your favorite game so it will do better in the fight. You can support it by writing why you think its the better game and more importantly by betting (i.e. voting for) it. Please make it clear for when I check the bets later. You have until Friday when I tally the bets and declare the winner. I will reserve my bet for any tie-breakers.
Although you should be familiar with both games, there is no rule that says you have to have played both of them. The only rule in Trashdome is this;
Two games enter! One game leaves!
Trashdome: Speculation edition - Acquire vs Modern Art
I'm back with another Trashdome! Apparently these are running Tuesday to Monday. Today we're here to determine whether Acquire or Modern Art is the king of speculation!
In one corner we have The Good Doctor Reiner Knizia defending his satirical take on the modern art world as he faces off against Sid "the kid" Sackson with his clean and concise take on property expansion. Superficially both games are in different genres but at their heart they are both about looking at your hand, placing some strategic bets and manipulating the board/table into making you the richest one at the table.
It's time to place your bets; what's the best way to speculate? If you want me to count your vote make sure to include the title of the game you prefer in bold in your post.
Both games have elegant and easy to explain rule sets, a fantastic run time with all killer and no filler and I'd almost never refuse a game of either. Making plans in Acquire requires some spatial reasoning but it's generally not that complex. My preference for Modern Art is how the game is very much above the table. The cards you draw don't matter nearly as much as the tiles you pull in Acquire as in Modern Art you're playing the players. I enjoy that Modern Art lets me play from my gut and the math falls into the background. When I'm playing Acquire I feel like I have to do more arithmetic in general. With 5 players I'm playing Modern Art. Acquire is probably the better game at 4p. I'm not sure either game is great at < 3.
My preference is slight but clear, consider this a vote for Modern Art.
I like both games a lot, but I gotta go with Modern Art, and I don't think it's very close. Acquire is a great game about speculation, but the amount that you as the player can actually do to manipulate the situation is actually pretty limited. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just a matter of knowing a little about what tiles are going to get played, and you only know what you have in front of you. It's very easy to end up in a situation where you bet on the wrong stock because you had to bet on something, and that's pretty much it for you. Also, it wants 3-4 players and that's it. Playing with 5 or 6 is just asking for a couple of people to have a trash game no matter what.
Modern Art, on the other hand, is a thing of beauty. It's one of those rare games where I wouldn't change a blessed thing. It's true that it's easy to throw the game out of whack by over-bidding, but to me that's part of the soul of the game. The whole idea is to manipulate people that way. While Acquire has a very approachable core, Modern Art asks you to play the people around you to a much greater extent.
I think I've only played MA once. It was fine but didn't grab me in any way, unlike other Knizias. I should try it again but it's not one that has taken off in my group; I don't know anyone who owns it or brings it.
Acquire I own and love, though Chartered is a nice spin on it.
I own both, and both are in my top ten of all times. I have owned Acquire for more than 30 years.
As has already been mentioned, when I get screwed in Modern Art, it's usually by another player, while in Acquire I sometimes get screwed with noone to blame.
Today I vote for Modern Art, but that could change any minute.
Bonus points for anyone who opines on the best version of both games. I'm partial to the CMON version of Modern Art even if treating the art as real modern art with artist histories downplays the satire, I think it's a knockout production in all other dimensions. The Oink German version is super portable and easy to play with some excellent paste up files available on BGG (yes, I own two versions of Modern Art).
For Acquire I landed on the 3M bookshelf version with plastic pieces from the 70s. I have no idea if it's the best version but it's very good, only cost me £20 and is eminently playable.
Legomancer wrote: Acquire I own and love, though Chartered is a nice spin on it.
When trying to track down a version of Acquire I considered picking up Chartered but decided (without trying it) that the extra rules overhead would detract from the pure simplicity of Acquire. Thoughts?
Normally I would abstain from voting on a couple of euros that somehow snuck into trashdome, even if I had tried both games. Or abstain if I hadn't played one of the games. But I got into this hobby due to my dad's obsession with Acquire, so I feel the need to stand up for it despite the fact that Acquire is not my kind of game. The rules are so clean and simple that they fit on the inside of the box cover. The board is an odd abstraction of this narrow segment of the stock market, but provides a visual and intuitive grasp of what is happening. The random draw of the tiles would seem to offer a significant element of luck in the game, but I watched my father win countless games despite that random draw. There a few basic strategies, but the randomness of the tiles creates a different play environment each game. The worst that I can say about Acquire (aside from fundamentally being a somewhat abstract euro) is that there can be a number of dead turns before the first merger, when everybody has run low on cash. But the game recovers after that point. I've have played hundreds of games of Acquire, so I can vouch for the replay value.
Vote: Acquire
Last edit: 29 Nov 2022 13:18 by Shellhead. Reason: tiles not styles
I will concede that Modern Art is probably the "better" game for its amazing purity. But I gotta go with my heart, which is Acquire all the way. Probably my most-played game, although most occurred before I tracked.
Best versions
Acquire: 3M bookshelf edition with the brown cardboard mat with clear overlay. I have the wooden tile version 3M as well, but strangely the tiles don't work as well. The giant AH version is pretty, but the tiles are too large and impractical.
Modern Art: The original Amigo(?) version with the Lichtenstein-esque airplane on the cover. The cardboard chits are truly awful, but everything else makes up for it.
sornars wrote: When trying to track down a version of Acquire I considered picking up Chartered but decided (without trying it) that the extra rules overhead would detract from the pure simplicity of Acquire. Thoughts?
It's not considerably more meatier than Acquire. The main difference is that payoffs happen even without mergers, so you don't get that dead time when nothing is happening because mergers aren't happening.
I must abstain because I haven't played Acquire (although I've always been keen enough to).
But, I find it hard to imagine it would top Modern Art for me.
It's all about the players. When I haven't played it for a while, I start to forget. In my mind I start thinking, all those different types of auctions, it's a bit clunky like that, it's a bit unstable or whatever..... then I play it again and remember why it's so great. One of those games that transcends its rules. It starts with nothing on the table, no situation, no information. IMO the very best games do this, or close to it. Everything that comes after is created entirely by the players. A whole organic economic little system of values that can't exist without the players creating it and navigating it. And then you overlay the satire over it, which is genius. I mainly play this with teenagers and (because!) they eat it up, and get so in to it. They get within minutes that that's where the joy of it is. YES, someone overbid and fucked it for everyone. That's not a bug that's a feature, it's hilarious. WHY DID YOU DO THAT?? Because it's Christian P dude! Look at it!
I won't vote, it would be unfair to Acquire which I need to get played. But I really don't think it would beat Modern Art.
Oh, editions, I'm a firm believer in the idea that the art needs to be shit. Still a great game with real artwork but I find it more amusing to be discussing really bad artwork like it's good and finding details and comparisons when trying to sell them. "A new direction for Yoko here" etc etc.
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