Arkwright

My sixth game of Arkwright, and I still consider it perhaps the best economic game in my collection. It is not a game you approach casually, of course: it is tiring, especially when the session is as strong and as close as this one was.

At the table, nobody took the ships and export-contracts route. Instead, we all threw ourselves into the core markets, so it turned into a proper brawl, with everyone competing against everyone else. Every decision carried weight, because the pressure did not come from someone quietly pursuing their own plan, but from opponents fighting over exactly the same space.

That constant market conflict made the game exhausting in the good sense. There was no comfort in merely looking after your own economy: you had to keep calculating what everyone else would do and how it would affect your own choices. And when it all ended with a difference of just one point, well, ’nuff said.

The only unfortunate part was that the tension and fatigue had burned us all out. It was a little after midnight, and nobody had the energy to carry on with another game. Still, it was not a bad ending at all: we spent the time in general conversation, having already exhausted the political talk.

Honestly, being able to have a healthy, civil disagreement is almost as enjoyable as gaming itself, especially compared with the cesspit we are so often forced to look at on social media. It helps that we have completely different views about almost everything, but also that we can defend them with serious arguments. The following day dawned predictably sleepy and heavy, mainly because we had to return to reality — but that is the pleasant kind of exhaustion a great game of Arkwright leaves behind.