Food chain magnate

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Food chain magnate
Game data
author Jeroen Doumen, Joris Wiersinga
graphic Iris de Haan, Ynze Moedt
publishing company Splotter Spellen
Publishing year 2015
Art Business simulation, deck building
Teammates 2 to 5
Duration 120 to 240 minutes
Age 14 years and older

Awards

Food Chain Magnate is a board game by the Dutch game designers Jeroen Doumen and Joris Wiersinga, which was published in 2015 by Splotter Spellen . It is a complex strategy game about building a fast food chain. At the beginning, the players place markers for their restaurants on a modular game board that depends on the number of players. In the subsequent rounds, as the owner of your company, you have to employ staff for your company with a deck-building mechanism and have them produce various drinks and meals that are ultimately to be sold as profitably as possible. An essential part of the game is the opportunity to gain advantages by reaching so-called milestones, which make the game extremely asymmetrical and thus have a great influence on a player's tactics. The game can be played by two to five players in two to four hours. It is distributed in a German / English edition.

Theme and equipment

In Food Chain Magnate, everyone plays the owner of a fast food company, called the CEO in the game, and as such makes all business decisions. In the beginning, nobody owns more than their restaurant and their CEO player card, which they can only use to hire staff and give instructions to their employees. If the player hires someone, he takes one of the freely displayed employee cards and increases his deck in this way. There is a choice of manager cards with which you can assign tasks to several employees, influence the prices of your restaurant or build houses, gardens and other branches. In addition, it is necessary to employ staff with whom you either produce food or buy drinks - there is a choice of cola, lemonade, beer, burgers and pizza - and with whom you advertise your products so that the residents come to the restaurants. You can also employ various trainers with whom you can train your staff and thus make them work more efficiently. It is also possible to employ waitresses who also contribute to the company's income through tips. It is necessary to pay a salary to all trained employees or to fire them.

In keeping with the game theme, a US restaurant chain, the game's artwork is completely in the 1960s style of a corresponding restaurant. The game aids, five of which are in German and five in English, are in the form of a menu. In addition to the game aids, the game material consists of the cardboard box and game instructions, which are also in German and English. This also includes:

  • 20 map tiles
  • an indicator for the order of play
  • an order marker for each player
  • eight house and garden markers
  • 16 marketing campaigns
  • three restaurant markers for each player
  • 222 employee cards
  • 84 milestone cards
  • 18 bank reserve cards
  • six CEO cards
  • 40 wooden markers each for the five products (cola, lemonade, beer, burger and pizza)
  • Play money with different values

construction

The game normally requires a lot of space, because for the sake of clarity, it is recommended to lay out all cards in order to be able to show the career paths of the staff and the milestones that can still be achieved. The actual game board, consisting of the game board parts, requires significantly less space: with two players, nine parts are laid out in a 3 × 3 grid, with three players twelve parts in a 3 × 4 grid, with four players 16 parts in a 4 × 4 grid and with five players all twenty in a 4 × 5 grid. In addition, each player needs enough space in front of him to be able to organize his company structure before each round, where he determines which employees have to work in this round. The bank, which is filled with $ 50 per player, and the various markers that can be used at different times in the game also need some space. There are numerous ideas in game databases such as Boardgamegeek to make the game structure more space-saving.

Style of play

Game flow

At the beginning of the game, the different parts of the map are placed depending on the number of players. Various houses and streets can be seen on the game board. Various sources of supply for the three types of beverages can be found on the streets adjacent. The order of play is then drawn and each player places his or her starting restaurant. Each player also decides which reserve card to put in the bank, he has to choose between $ 100, $ 200 or $ 300. These are revealed after the bank runs out of money for the first time, in order to replenish it with the sum of all reserve cards. The game is divided into seven phases that are repeated continuously until a winner has been determined, i.e. who has the most money after the bank has been emptied the second time.

restructuring

In the first phase, each player secretly and for himself selects those employees who he will let work in his company in this round. It should be noted that the number of employees who can work per lap depends on the number of managers working. After each player has made a decision and built up his corporate structure, phase two follows.

Agenda

Depending on the open positions in the company structure, the order of play for this round is redefined.

Work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The company works in this phase. First, employees are hired. After each player has decided in the order of play whether and which employees to hire, each player can decide whether to train his employees if he employs a suitable coach. It should be noted that only employees who are currently not working can be trained. Marketing campaigns are then placed, which are only started at a later point in time, food and drinks are procured (by placing wooden markers in the player's supply) and new restaurants, houses or gardens are placed (by placing the respective markers on the game board) .

Mealtime

The fourth phase compares which restaurants have the products requested by the residents. The needs of the residents are made visible by wooden markers on the houses. It is decided which player sells his products by adding the price demanded by the restaurants and the distance between the houses and the restaurants and comparing the values ​​of the restaurants with each other. This balances distance and price. If two restaurants demand the same amount for the goods, the number of waitresses employed will decide which restaurant the resident will go to.

If at the end of the fourth phase the bank has been emptied (blown up) the second time, the game ends at this point.

payday

In this phase, each player has to pay his employees or fire them.

Marketing campaigns

The marketing campaigns placed in phase three are executed. According to the rules of each of the four possible campaigns (poster, mailbox, airplane or radio advertising), a corresponding number of demand markers are placed on the houses.

to clean up

Normally during this round, unsold food and drinks are disposed of and the employee cards are picked up again. If a player has reached milestones at any point in the game, all remaining cards of this type are removed and are no longer available for others.

Milestones

What is special about Food Chain Magnate is that at several points in the game a player can gain advantages by reaching milestones, which will then no longer be available to other players in the future and thus have a great influence on the tactics of the game. The equality of the possibilities of the players at the beginning is greatly reduced and the game becomes very asymmetrical. The first player who trained an employee will receive a discount on his salary payments in the future, and the player who first had to throw away food or drinks will receive a refrigerator with which he can keep up to ten items after phase seven.

Introductory game

A shortened version of the game is recommended for beginners, in which the milestones, employee salaries and bank reserve cards are dispensed with. In addition, $ 75 instead of $ 50 is put in the bank at the beginning, the game ends after the bank is broken the first time.

extension

Under the title The Ketchup Mechanism and Other Ideas , an expansion to Food Chain Magnate was announced in 2018, the prototype of which could be shown and played at the 2018 Games Fair in Essen. In January, the publisher announced that it might be releasing the expansion in time for the 2019 game. The expansion should contain material to make the game playable for six people. In addition, a new set of milestones and numerous new possibilities are to expand the game.

development

After three years of development, the Dutch duo of authors Jeroen Doumen and Joris Wiersinga announced a new game in April 2015, which was then published by their own publisher Splotter Spellen for the international game days . Pre-orders have already been possible via the website since the end of August and were then sent worldwide in November. After the first edition sold out in a short time, several new editions from Splotter Spellen to Food Chain Magnate were published, which also sold very quickly. In 2016, New Games Order, LLC published a Japanese version that landed at number 7 on the top list of the Japan Boardgame Prize that same year . The seventh edition of Food Chain Magnate was published in February 2018. Due to numerous very positive reviews, the game developed into an insider tip in the following years. A Chinese edition was published in 2018 and a Korean edition in 2019.

reception

Food Chain Magnate received excellent reviews after it appeared. The theme of the game and the implementation of the corporate design as a restaurant were praised, for example the idea of ​​including the game rules as a menu. The stimulus that the high and brutal interaction creates between fellow players is also highly praised. It was sometimes criticized that the downtime of the players increased somewhat towards the end due to the calculation. Jan Cronauer and Johannes Jäger described the game in their Youtube blog Hunter & Cron as “one of the best expert strategy games of 2016” and as one of the best games they have ever played.

The game has been nominated for numerous prizes and won the Meeples' Choice Award 2015, The Golden Elephant Award 2015 and the Italian Goblin Magnifico 2016.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ muwins.ch: FOOD CHAIN ​​MAGNATE - DON'T COOK TONIGHT, PLAY SPLOTTER'S DELIGHT
  2. ↑ H @ ll9000: Review of Food Chain Magnate
  3. ↑ Hunter & Cron: Food Chain Magnate - Board Game - Review # 189

Web links