Q.E. Board Game Review

Set against the background of the 2008 banking crisis, in...

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The name of this one confuses me, but that’s ok.

What were the “big” bet increases you saw during play? Was a big jump 40%, 400% or 4000%?

There was this fine thread last year from Ah_Pook, with Sag and Charlie contributing:

rpggeek.com/thread/2236905/whats-counter-play-hyper-inflation

I've never played the game, but I thought it was an interesting discussion. Dunno if opinions around this coalesced or not.

Yeah, to a large extent that was the gist of my question, but I don't want to rehash that thread in its entirety for obvious reasons.

There's a "bad actor" issue with this and other titles as well that makes those games fragile. They can be played, but certain players simply aren't going to be able to stay within the lines of polite play.

My oldest son is one of them, so I don't mean to imply that these people are simply dicks that are to be shunned. But if he sees a best practice that breaks a game he won't lay off it, and if I press him to he'll simply choose to sit the game out. The idea that there's a way to win within the rules that he's not allowed to use makes the game pointless to him, frustrating to play. He's such an engineer.

My issue with the QE name is that this isn't really what Quantitative Easing is about. They could have as easily named it Stock Market and it would have been equally descriptive, and equally wrong. I haven't played personally, but the descriptions seem to resemble more of a bank bailout kind of paint job than the self-purchasing of one's own bond offers.

It's my opinion that the game would be much tighter if there was a need to be within a certain delta percentage of the lowest total bidding player, even if that percentage were extreme. That would put every player at the table in a much more powerful position, would make for a much tighter binding on the play. I'd love to hear the results of plays where you need to be within, say, 100,000% of the lowest bidder's total bids to be eligible to win.

I like QE conceptually, but find it frustrating to actually play in the end. If you tacitly or explicitly agree to play in a fun/rational way it's fine, but at that point I'd much rather play High Society and just not have to worry about skating around potential degenerate game states.

Thank you all for your comments. I think Q.E. needs to be approached light-heartedly and without lots of competitiveness. I'm sure there are ways to break the game, but if you see it as a bit of fun, I think it works really well.

Weirdly there's a new game called Magic Money that appears to just be QE?

boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/311658/magic-money

The designer says it was designed concurrently, and plays out differently since the rules outside the central bidding mechanic are different. Still weird though. Also once you know the winning bids you're basically just playing High Society without the set bidding cards, so like..
why not just play High Society? I would certainly try it out if someone else has a copy though.