Capstone Games Pipeline Board Game

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Pipeline is an incredibly confident debut game from designer Ryan Courtney. Taking on the role of private oil companies, players will attempt to buy and refine oil in the most efficient manner. This, of course, means buying crude oil cheap and refining it through a maze of your own pipelines. Seeking to capitalize on this new opportunity, in Pipeline you start a company in the oil business.

To win the Game of Klondike, players begin at St. Michael and navigate the Yukon River to Dawson, surviving a series of potentially deadly catastrophes along the way. While some prospectors did take this path to the Klondike, most chose the land routes via Skagway and Dyea, entry points for the White Pass and Chilkoot Trails, respectively. Part of a continuing weekly series on local history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story. The game’s bias is best illustrated via concerns for the Prince William Sound. An objection card, with its comical pipeline foe, says, “Tankers will pollute Valdez Harbor.” The professor says in response, “Modern equipment and strict regulations against oily discharge.” Unfortunately, history did not side with the professor. It doesn’t have a published solo set of rules. However, an excellent automa has been created by John Koch As with nearly every other aspect of life in Alaska, the discovery and exploitation of oil changed the nature of Alaska board games. In particular, the debate over the environmental impact of what would become the Trans Alaska Pipeline, which intensified in the early 1970s, influenced a new wave of Alaska-themed board games.This is where you come in. Seeking to capitalize on this new opportunity, in Pipeline you start a company in the oil business. You will focus on building a much more efficient pipeline network in your refinery, hiring experts that provide valuable benefits over your competitors, and managing the logistics of purchasing and selling your refined oil in the various markets. You will need more than strong economic skills – carefully crafting an interweaving network of pipelines just might ensure your victory! It’s wonderfully tactile and interactive throughout, with players constantly competing to sell and buy everything first. It’s also brilliant at all player counts (thanks to some simple tweaks to the markets) and doesn’t take too long to play once everyone is familiar with the mechanics.

The valuation cards in Pipeline give every game its own flavor and the combinations are close enough to endless that I think it will be difficult, if not impossible, to ever come to a point where you can define “the best” strategy. As the Klondike and subsequent gold rushes faded, so did the production of board games attempting to tap into the mystique of Alaska. The decades-long lull in Alaska-themed gaming mirrored the economic doldrums and stagnant development of Alaska, especially between World War I and II. Buy/sell at the oil markets—This makes up four of the available actions as there are three different refined markets and a crude oil market.

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Tanks - These are used to store the oil you buy and refine. Each player has a player board on which to arrange their refinery and these can sometimes be worth money at the end of the game. The refinement of oil has long been part of the government-controlled energy sector. Amassed with an incredibly complex and inefficient system of refineries, the government has felt the severe pressures of worldwide demand and the ever-increasing global standards for refinement. Unable to keep up with demand, the government has only one option: privatizing the oil industry. Of course, the nostalgia for the gold rush is still well represented in modern Alaska board games, including the 1991 Alaskan Gold Rush, 1992 Klondike: Trivia Game on the Yukon, 2014 Lost Valley: The Yukon Gold Rush 1896, and the 2017 Klondike Rush. Pipe, also known as Pipe Mania, is a classic puzzle game where the objective is to connect pipes of different shapes and sizes to create a continuous flow of liquid or gas. The game presents players with a grid or a board, which is initially filled with various pipe segments in a disorganized manner. Read more .. By the 1980s, Alaska board games had begun to diversify beyond natural resource themes, to more accurately reflect the disparate interests of Alaskans themselves. An early exemplar of this period is the simply titled Alaska, released by Ravensburger in 1979 and re-released in 1980. Players battle polar bears, frostbite and the changing seasons while attempting to recover needed supplies.

By the late 1930s, Alaska advocates openly begged for a new wave of settlers that might promote renewed investment in the territorial infrastructure and thus spur the economy. A 1940 Seward Gateway editorial declared, “With the coming of more people it will be found that insistent demands for more roads and other improvements will grow less. They will not be necessary as they will come naturally with the advent of population.” Anthony Dimond, Alaska’s non-voting representative to Congress from 1933 to 1945, was more direct in a 1939 letter. He wrote, “Alaska needs people,” and that development required the territory’s population to “be in accord with its vast area and unquestionably large natural resources.” The Solo Automa, named Ludvig, will act as a 2nd player over the course of a game. Your goal is to beat Ludvig’s score at the end of the game. The first wave of what a modern toy aisle shopper might recognize as a board game arrived in 1897. A bumper crop of Klondike Gold Rush games appeared on store shelves across the country with a speed that matched the rush for the goldfields. While roughly 100,000 individuals set out for the Klondike from 1896 to 1999, many times that number eagerly consumed any news or product connected to the gold fever sensation. In other words, the Klondike Gold Rush was a fad, and like any modern fad, there were fortunes to be made with tie-ins.Pipeline has players starting up their own oil refinery business as the government moves toward privatization. You’ll have to manage your limited actions effectively to create the most wealth for your company over three years.

In 1973, Armond Kirschbaum released Alaska Pipeline: The Energy Crisis game amid that year’s oil crisis. An oil embargo enacted by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) sparked severe gas shortages and price spikes across America. The game’s objective is to refute pipeline criticisms and circle a map of Alaska while using the least amount of gas ration coupons. The game was re-released in 1993 in the wake of the First Gulf War. The gameplay is quite deep. Every game the valuations (end game scoring) are different every game, meaning what works one game will not work so well the next. If you don’t aim to fulfil at least one of these, you could be in trouble come end game scoring. Board games have been a part of Alaska culture for well over a century. These games have ranged from simple card games to complex simulacrums of reality. Some were designed by Alaskans. Many more were designed by residents of the smaller states and therefore more often describe Lower 48 perceptions of Alaska of what outsiders deemed important. Still, the history of Alaska-themed board games broadly reflects the history of Alaska itself, from Alaska Native interactions with whalers through the modern fish industry. You will need more than strong economic skills – carefully crafting an interweaving network of pipelines just might ensure your victory! Solo Variant

Pipe

Amassed with an incredibly complex and inefficient system of refineries, the government has felt the severe pressures of worldwide demand and the ever-increasing global standards for refinement.