Oh My Goods! is a Hand Management, Push your Luck game.

Title: Oh My Goods!

Year Published: 2015

Designer: Alexander Pfister

Publisher: Lookout Games

Players: 2-4

Game Time: ~30 minutes

Set-up Time: ~3 minutes

Ages: 10+

Theme: Medieval

Mechanic: Action Programming, Hand Management, Press Your Luck, Set Collection

How to win: Score the most points by building buildings, creating resources and hiring assistants.

Game Description

Players are European craftsmen during the Middle Ages who produce tools, barrels, glass windows, and many other goods. Only if you make clever use of your production chains will you have the most victory points at the end of the game.

Oh My Goods! Set-Up

Give each player a random Charburner and a Worker, and remove the rest from the game. Each player also gets 5 cards into their hand and 7 cards face down on their Charburner.

The value of a Good is shown on the Building card. In the case of your starting setup, the Charburner has 7 Goods on it each worth 1 Gold. This is the ‘Money’ you will use throughout the game.

Add a number of random assistants face up on the table depending on the player count, and remove the rest from the game.

Select a random Start Player.

Before gameplay, a little look at the good cards. Each can be used for 3 things…

• The middle of the card shows its resource, used if in your hand.
• The main part of the card shows a building, used when in your personal tableau.
• The back of the card shows it’s being used as a Good when face down on a building.

Oh My Goods! Game Play

A round is played over 4 phases: New Cards, Sunrise, Sunset, Production and Building.

New Cards

Here there are have 2 options: Draw 2 cards or Discard their entire hand, draw that many cards, then draw 2 more cards. Either way, a player will gain 2 cards in this phase.

Sunrise

The active player turns over cards into the market until 2 half suns are visible.

Players simultaneously choose which building will produce this round by placing their workers under the building either Efficiently or Sloppily. ‘Efficiently’ means a player needs all of the required resources on a building to produce and it produces twice. ‘Sloppily’ means it needs one less resource but only produces once.

A building can only have 1 Worker and it can freely move around each turn. Assistants can also move but payment of 2 coins is required to move it to a different building.

At this point players can place a building card from their hand face down, this is to show this is the building they will be hoping to build this turn.

Sunset

The active player flips over cards into a second row until there are two half-sun cards, the same as the sunrise.

Then, in turn order, players will Produce, then Build or Hire an Assistant.

To Produce, and compare the production buildings’ requirements with cards in the market. Cards can also be discarded from a player’s hand to make up the rest of the required resources. Add 1 or 2 resources to the building depending if it is produced efficiently or sloppily.

As long as at least one good is produced, the player can discard matching cards to chain extra production. If a Production chain has 2 resources, you must discard both to be able to produce.

Building

To build, they pay the cost of the building set aside by discarding goods. If built successfully, it’s added to the tableau. If it fails, it’s just returned to the player’s hand.

Instead of building, a player may hire 1 assistant if they meet the criteria by paying the cost. This is where turn order is important as multiple players may meet these criteria in the same turn. The assistant is placed at the players building immediately.

Now, discard all of the cards in the market and the next player is the start player.

Game End

When a player has 8 buildings, including their starting Charburner the game ends at the end of the next round.

Players score…

• Points for the value of their Buildings
• Points for the value of their Assistants
• 1 VP per 5 gold coins worth of Goods (Remove these Goods from the Buildings, Use one card per point to track scoring)

The player with the most points wins with ties broken by the player who has the most coins left after buying victory points.

Round-Up

There are only 110 cards in this tiny little box but I would still class it as a Medium to Light Euro. There’s more than just hand management and guesswork…

You’re trying to Produce as much as possible on each turn to get money to build buildings. Buildings get you assistants which in turn up your production… But it’s not easy.

The randomness of the Goods in the market, the value/colour of the buildings you draw and the requirements of the Assistants won’t make it an easy process.

The best player at doing this will win though, so it’s not overly random.

Rating

Lots of games in a tiny box.

I give it 6/10

Oh My Goods! First Impressions March 2017

Positives

Big game in a tiny box that doesn’t take too long.

A different layout of assistants along with the different requirements for your starting Charburner make for a change in strategy game to game. It stops you from trying to build the same buildings every time.

Has an expansion with a campaign-style element attached that I haven’t tried yet but looks awesome.

Negatives

Eats table space!

Summary

Another very good game by Alexander Pfister.

Jesta ThaRogue