review
Producing and selling cars
Automania
What do future Customers want?
Automania is a tactical development game, designed by the Norwegian designer team Kristian Amundsen Østby and Kenneth Minde, published by the Norwegian company Aporta Games.
Players represent automobile companies that try to produce high-image cars with an equally high margin of profit and to sell them. Currently the automobile industry is experiencing one of its biggest restructuring periods in its entire history. In Automania, however, neither the issues of E-Mobility nor autonomous driving or Diesel scandal are broached. We try to build cards in the classic way, driven by combustion engines and driven by humans, albeit being high-capacity, environmental friendly, dynamically moving and safe while offering lots of room for baggage. As one car cannot meet all those demands on the same top level, we need to observe the two markets that come into play, the US-American market and the European Market.
The game is played in four rounds which all basically follow the same scheme of events. At the start of each round a display of 4x4 randomly chosen square tiles is laid out. Each tile either features a machine for a production line - allowing players to build better cards - or a beautification feature - which also enhances the values of cards - or assistants offering various types of assistance instantly or once-only bonuses like money or victory points.
Above and to the left of the tile grid you find nine action spaces, one each for row and column and one more in the left hand top corner. Every player has a certain number of worker meeples, this number can be raised during the game with assistants. In a given sequence players will resolve one action, one after the other, which continues around the table until all players pass their turn - so far so worker placement standard.
If you want to do an action, you choose one of the nine action spaces. When the chosen space is empty, you place one worker there. When the space is already occupied you must place one worker more than currently in place in the space. The ousted player takes his workers back. You cannot oust yourself! After placement, you choose one of the tiles in the column or row corresponding to the action space and put it on your own board. When no tile is available in row or column, you cannot choose the action, but you can choose the top left corner space where you cannot take a tile.
Then you resolve the action corresponding to the chosen action space. On seven of the nine spaces, you produce a car, the remaining two action spaces enable you to pick up an order which will give you points at the end of the game if you meet the order.
When producing cars, you need to pay attention first to the choice of which class of car you want to produce. There are three classes of cars: City cars, family cars and super cars. Each player has his own board featuring one production line for each class of cars. The line for city cards has two station and a city car only costs one money unit to produce; a family car line has three stations and the car costs two units, and the super car line has four station and the cost is three money units. Each station has room for one machine, enhancing one of five features - Power, Environmental friendliness, Driving dynamics, Luggage storage or Safety. Then you decide on selling the car to Europe or to America, depending on the market the features are worth different amounts, you add the value of the stations for the car, add bonuses from assistants and beautifications and arrive at the value of car, which can be raised also by the deployment of workers. The higher the car value the higher the revenue of money and victory points, at the end of the round, depending on the market.
This car production is the heart of the game and absolutely interactive. There is only one available slot for each car value; if another player sells a car of my value before I can do it, I must sell my car for less. In the selection of action cases and the subsequent choice of tiles to take the choices are narrowing quickly, because the selection is very limited. Therefore, in each choice of actions players are forced to take a multidimensional decision and to choose between short-term success and long-term bonuses, and must do so from the first action in the first round! Therefore, boredom never enters the game unless players take too much time to ponder their choices; usually decisions are taking quickly without missing out on strategic thinking.
Summing up, I would state that Automania is a beautiful, felicitous and very good game. If shines with an interesting mechanism, which without doubt needs to be put into the wide range of worker placement games, but is, however, refreshingly different. The graphic design is somewhat childish and thus somewhat belies the depth of the game, but is nice and clear all the same. The rules are well written, too, and don’t leave any question unanswered, but the could be more clearly structured all the same.
Markus Wawra
Players: 2-4
Age: 12+
Time: 120+
Designer: Kristian Amundsen Østby, Kenneth Minde
Artist: Gjermund Bohne
Price: ca. 30 Euro
Publisher: Aporta Games 2016
Web: www.aportagames.com
Genre: Development, worker placement
Users: For experts
Version: multi
Rules: de en
In-game text: no
Comments:
Second edition
Interesting mechanisms
Interlocking action options
Interactive
Attractive components
Compares to:
Automobile
Other editions:
First edition 2015, Aporta Games
My rating: 6
Markus Wawra:
I really like games where I have to take multidimensional decisions. With each action, I need to evaluate short-term and long-term effects as well as my fellow players and my available resources, represented by workers and money. Highly interactive, very tactical and also strategic - that is how Automania plays and I like to put it on the table.
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 2
Strategy (blue): 1
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 1
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 3
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0