Container

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The components are top quality. The neoprene playmat is beautiful and the ships slide so smoothly across it. It’s a beautiful game, but it feels very broken.

We played it twice with 4 players.

The first time we “broke” the economy, and 2 of us ran out of money, couldn’t service our loans, couldn’t afford to produce, had already sold off our buildings, and were stuck. It ruined the game for the other two players.

The second time we did better, but it still felt broken. No one wanted to buy. Everyone wanted to produce. And when containers made it to container island, nobody had more than $3-4 at most to bid with, so most people decided to just match the bid and keep their own containers. Nobody could afford to buy from the people who were producing. Once loans were taken, it just got worse.

The game just feels broken and too reliant on other players to make money, except no one wanted to spend once their cash stores got low. Then everything just kind of comes to a standstill and only the people with a bit of money end up winning all the auctions, etc.

I’m really disappointed that this game wasn’t designed better. I really wanted to love this one! It has such a great rating on BGG.

Been wanting to play this for many years and jumped on the Allplay reprint. Easy to teach rules that make sense, the fun and the tension come from pricing decisions that can lead to radically different outcomes from player group to player group. New players get drawn in by the tactile pleasure of loading ships and sailing them around the table.