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EDISON & CO.

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Author: Günter Burkhardt

Publisher: Goldsieber 1998

Awards: none

EVALUATION

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Itīs the century of great inventions. Citylights wherever go go. Inventors of the "Edison Society" are looking for the vehicle of the future. The roof of the inventors building is the place where the first test with oddly-shaped vehicles takes place. But one question is drawing the discussions of the assembled inventors: Which of the ingenious vehicles will prove to be the best ? Everybody has his own opinions and favourites. A final test shall bring new insights about this....

In Edison the players donīt have just one favourite vehicle, but instead they will get points from three of the four possible vehicles. At the beginning of the game each player is secretly assigned a card showing his ranking of the vehicles. One vehicle will be at factor "3", one at "2", one at "1" and the last at zero. Each player will have a different ranking of the vehicles. In addition, each player gets a set of "Choice-cards" (always showing two vehicles in different combinations), six "Movement-cards" with values from "1" to "6" and a set of "Direction-cards" for forward or backward movement.

At the start all four vehicles are placed at the starting line, and the game begins by a player playing any of his cards. The following two players both will have to add a card of a type which was not already placed by the player(s) before. A typical combination of cards may be:

  • "Steamrocket / Turbo Flyer" (Choice-card)
  • "5" (Movement-card)
  • "Forward" (Direction-card)
The last player looks at all these cards and decides which of the vehicles shown on the Choice-card he will move. Then he performs the movement and the turn is over.

Whenever a player has played a Movement-card with value "2", the game is stopped after the turn and each vehicle receives "Construction-points". The points are distributed according to the space the vehicle occupies. Thus a vehicle may get up to "10" positive or negative points. After all vehicles were evaluated, the game continues.

This goes on until a player cannot play a card he has to play because he already used up all cards of that type. At this moment, a final evaluation takes place and then the players decide the final standings. Now each player multiplies the scores of each vehicle with the factors he has been given at the beginning of the game and adds all his scores up. The player with the highest total wins the game.

A normal game of Edison needs four players to go, but materials and rules needed for a two- or three-player-game are also provided. Additionally, itīs possible to give the spaces on the gameboard changing values from game to game, and also rules for an advanced game are provided. In the advanced game each player decides on the multipliers for his vehicle, and this offer some more strategy on how many vehicles to concentrate.

"Edison & Co" is a game which is very difficult to evaluate. As we know from Goldsieber, the game comes at a high degree of perfection concerning the design. The look of the game perfectly captures the atmosphere of the inventors-contest, and very beautiful are the lead-miniatures of the four futuristic vehicles. Unfortunately I must add that I think that Edison is the weakest game in a long line of very attractive games coming from Goldsieber. If I compare "Edison & Co" with games like "Missisippi Queen", "Löwenherz", "Linie 1", "Carrabande" or "Entdecker", I come to the conclusion that it is unable to get a ranking as high as any of these games. Most important, I donīt think that the abstract mode of moving the vehicles provides much fun for the average gamer. Let me point out that the rules certainly are well constructed and that the game "runs" without any problems, but this alone doesnīt automatically provide for an exciting game. "Edison & Co" certainly will attract gamers from the group of people who like abstract games, but it doesnīt seem that it will become a game liked by the greater part of the gamers. The game-priciples simply are too abstract and the game is too uninvolving for the players to get into the top ranks of gaming.

To sum it up, Goldsieber certainly has done better before !


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Copyright © 2006 Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, Essen, Germany