Food Chain Magnate - First edition, fourth printing (2016)

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to play Food Chain Magnate yesterday for the very first time. I had read the rules twice before playing so felt fairly confident I understood how to play the game. However I'm really glad there were two experienced players to lead the game along, as it's quite a beastFirstly, there are a LOT of cards in this game. Like a metric crapton of them. The board, which is made up of randomized selection of large square tiles, takes upon another big chunk of space. You'll need a big table: you're not gonna play this on a plane.The tiles, incidentally, are the weak part of the production as they are not terribly well decorated and, in the copy I saw, there was bleed from the next tile's lines where the cutting had been slightly misaligned. This is not a big issue: they're perfectly functional and, to be honest, you'll be so bogged down in the complexity of the game you won't even have time to worry about the artwork: it's utilitarian, which, in a way, is a blessing. The cards, though, are very nicely decorated with stylish retro-American artwork. The multiple copies of rules in the form of menus is also fantastic, and pretty much essential as you will be continuously looking up the cards available and how to upgrade them. Finally there are a squillion wooden tokens to represent burgers, pizzas, cola, lemonade and beer, which are used to represent the demand from the houses, the stock each player has produced and the duration of the marketing campaigns. (Even though there are a squillion of these we still ran out near the end of the game, but you can work around this with some makeshift multipliers or something.)During play, players take turns recruiting staff, which give you new abilities: producing food, collecting drinks, marketing products, expanding your chain, recruiting additional staff, training staff into more elaborate roles or managers which allow your workforce to grow wider. Working out what to do and how to do it is the biggest part of the game and most decisions take a good two or three rounds to pan out, e.g. recruitment done during your current turn are not available until the subsequent turn. Players then choose which of their pool of workers to deploy by forming a corporate structure of the worker cards you wish to use (this itself takes up even more space: you'll need a giant sized table). You're limited as to the number of cards you can play by the number and types of managers you have. Based upon various things the player order for the round is then decided. At certain points in the game going first is beneficial, whereas at other times playing later gives you more information and less opportunity for your opponents to react, so you can kinda orchestrate this a little by how you play. Each player can then take their turn in order: their kitchen staff producing food, hiring new workers, training up workers, starting marketing campaigns, moving or opening new restaurants, &c. according to the workforce they have deployed.After all players have taken their turn, the repercussions are revealed: demand from houses is translated into purchases at a restaurant based upon which restaurants can fulfil what they want in the nearest, cheapest way available. Thus it's possible to outwit an opponent by marketing a product your opponent can't produce, by having a nearer restaurant or by lowering your prices. After this, marketing campaigns (billboards placed besides houses, mailboxes affect whole housing blocks, &c.) get translated into demand at the houses. Finally everyone has to pay the more advanced members of their workforce a salary, and you also scoop a small bonus for any waitresses you have deployed (if you remember, you probably won't).If you thought all this sounds a bit dry, then there is another huge selection of cards called milestone cards that mix things up considerably. The first person (or people: everyone achieves the milestone if it's in the same round) to hire a pizza cook, to place a billboard, to run a truck, to get $100, &c. gets a special ability. Some of these are very, very powerful. For example, if you're the first to throw away food (because you've produced it but no houses have demanded it) then you get a freezer in which you can store ten items of excess food...for the rest of the game. Nobody else gets this, only that player (or those players) that threw away food first. As another example, the first player(s) to place a billboard get free, infinite duration marketing, allowing you to basically dictate the demand at the hotspots on the board. It's crazy. It sounds messed up and it kinda is. You would be forgiven for thinking it would be game breaking but somehow it just works out and still doesn't guarantee a win, because there are so many of these milestones than no matter what direction you take you're sure to end up with some superpower the other players don't have. You really have to play to the strengths of the milestone cards you've secured.Now this is a pretty complicated game, both in volume of things to remember, volume of cards, money and tokens to manage, the mental sums needed to resolve where diners each and how much they pay, and in terms of the strategy needed to win. For those gamers who like a heavy game I'm sure there's a lot of strategy in here waiting to be discovered and a lot of great intellectual battles to be had. I.e. this is a good game for the right crowd and I really enjoyed it despite having never played anything this complicated before. For those who just want a more casual scrap, or a more peaceful experience, then this game is going to be waaaaaay too complicated to enjoy and take waaay to long to play: my game with five players took four hours, but the first three hours flew by and at no point did it feel like it was dragging. In fact the downtime whilst you're waiting for other players is easily consumed thinking about your next few turns.Good game though.

Food Chain Magnate ist ein absolutes Expertenspiel und nur für Vielspieler zu empfehlen. Wer zu diesen gehört und Wirtschaftssimulationen mag ist hier genau richtig. Es entführt einen in die Welt der amerikanischen Fastfood Restaurants der 50er Jahre. Man muss sein Restaurant mit Hilfe unterschiedlicher Faktoren steuern. Man beginnt als CEO und muss sich überlegen, welche Mitarbeiter man einstellt. Lieber das Recruiting Girl, welche mir bei der Mitarbeiterauswahl hilft oder doch lieber den Vertriebler, der den Bedarf bei den potentiellen Kunden weckt und mir dadurch entsprechendes Einkommen sichert. Denn meine Mitarbeiter möchten schließlich auch bezahlt werden.Das Spiel hat eine außergewöhnliche Aufmachung, wodurch man sich im Thema fühlt. Es verzeiht nur schwer strategische Fehler. Setze ich auf die falsche Kampagne oder vergesse eine entscheidende Variable ist die Partie auch meist verloren.Food Chain lässt sich sehr gut zu zweit spielen. Vorallem für die ersten Spiele ist es sinnvoll mit einer kleinen Spielerzahl zu starten. Mit 3 Spielern auch noch gut. Mit mehr habe ich noch keine Erfahrungen sammeln können.Klare Kaufempfehlung für Strategen und Gerngrübler, die auch vor längeren Spieldauern nicht zurück schrecken.