How to Play Big Boss Board Game | How to Game with Xander Jeanneret

[@brentjablonski3730]

As a veteran of many dozens of games of Acquire I can say this game does vary in some substantial ways from Acquire. I'll list those that strike me as most important: 1) In Acquire, you can only earn money by being 'in on' a merger. To make the big bucks, you need to hold either the most stock or second most stock in the absorbed company. For the 'losers' in the stock race there is an option to gain a small amount of cash by selling your stock in the absorbed company. 2) You cannot sell stock at any other time in the basic version of Acquire (as I recall there was an small expansion published called Special Powers: one power allowed each player to break this rule once during the game ) 3) When a company is absorbed by a merger in Acquire, you don't put the stock back into the box. The company can potentially be reformed later. At the time of the merger you have the choice to hold your stock, trade it in at a 2:1 rate for stock in the surviving company, or sell it - you can do any combination of these three options. 4) A three-into-one merger is an uncommon possibility in Acquire - not so in Big Boss (at least as far as I can see). One knock against Acquire (maybe the only one!) is that you can get shafted pretty hard if you don't get a big payment from one of the first few mergers. You'll find yourself essentially out of money for the rest of the game, spending your turns making other people richer and hating life. Big Boss seems like it remedies that issue. I like the share price/payout mechanism. I like the option to sell stock if you are otherwise stuck on a turn. Both of these things seem to simulate investing in a more realistic fashion in addition to keeping people in the game. Acquire is the simpler game, while at the same time it seems to be the more challenging. You really need to keep track of who owns how much of what, or at least if you are the share leader in a company. You need to bet some hunches on which companies will stick around and which will be absorbed. Also, the choice of 2:1 stock swaps/selling vs. holding stock can get to be a tough choice as the board fills - will there be enough space to reform that company if you hold onto the stock? I can't give a final verdit on which I prefer as my copy of Big Boss just arrived. Acquire is an evergreen game for me, despite it regularly (mostly for other people 🙂) being shafty. I'm looking forward to playing Big Boss and finding out if a 'kinder, gentler' version can top the classic.

[@grog3514]

Did you play it yet? Which one is better?

[@brentjablonski3730]

@@grog3514 So far I've played just one game with a group that was pretty experienced with Acquire. Our provisional verdict is that Big Boss is an interesting alternative to Acquire. I'm not ready to commit to one being better than the other yet. Big Boss plays very well, and our play experience did bear out one of my thoughts: the game is less 'shafty' than Acquire. Having an option to sell shares in a situation where Acquire would ask you to take your medicine and like it was nice. Some groups might prefer the more hard-core feel of Acquire. The one-dimensional playfield does change the game, as does the vertical growth of corporations. The fact that corporations never 'rise from the grave' in Big Boss also changes the strategy. In the end, I think I'm concluding that the games share a theme and mechanics, but that the incremental changes cause them to play and feel differently. You can't just use Acquire strategies unmodified and expect them to work perfectly. The games are strongly related, but one does not directly replace the other. I'm happy to have and play both. If I were to recommend one of them to a group of casual gamers it would be Big Boss. For an experienced group of players that are used to games where falling behind is usually fatal (Power Grid, Agricola) I would recommend Acquire. FWIW: I've draw a lot of conclusions from one playing of Big Boss. Take all that I said with a grain of salt.

[@Bondenaron]

Do you have a comparison between Big Boss and Aquire? This just feels like Aquire with extra steps? Is there anything I’m missing that would make this better than Aquire?

[@joeskis]

Yeah it seems too close to Acquire. It's almost like someone made a variant and just gave it a different name.

[@MrMurfstoffelees]

Hey, it's Xander!

[@madquest8]

Missed an opportunity to throw on a wig and do a Becca impersonation... now that would have been epic!!

[@kshum615]

At 1:10, is the video reversed? Because it looks like you placed the two radio towers quite perfectly on the card and then fanned out the 10 industry cards quite nicely at 1:20. Very smart video idea if so!

[@grog3514]

Do radio towers increase the share price at all or is it just an extra 3 shares for whoever builds it first?

[@drisitme]

Remember to like

[@GinDragon]

This is effectively Acquire, no? ....... sees the description mentions that it's based on Acquire- oh, I suppose that's legit then.

[@garyk2629]

I think I'll stick with Acquire.