Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas

Food Chain Magnate was the odd point at which Splotter moved from an expensive secret among initiates to a badge for players who rather enjoy being judged by their games. The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas largely earns its importance: it does not just add material, but finds new lines of pressure within the base design.

There are eleven modules, large and small, and only light guidance on how they should be combined. This is a toolkit, not an expansion with one canonical configuration; put everything into the blender and you have a miscellany rather than a superior Food Chain Magnate. In the High Society set, with alternate achievements, sushi, coffee, and the central parks tile, the game's opening information is altered from the initial setup.

The alternate goal sets are the substantial intervention. Familiar principles, card balances, and reliable openings all cease to be reliable; alternate does not mean gentler, only that the opening sequence is more demanding. The interesting decision is whether to remove a dangerous line from the available set before it tilts the game at the outset — for instance, by not allowing first marketer and first lemonade sold to coexist.

Sushi demonstrates both the promise and the hazard of the expansion. Give one player a monopoly and enough cooks, and the sushi plus luxury manager combination can become unstoppable, even against a double-scoring CFO; it is not necessarily a bad mechanism, but it appears better suited to five or six players, where access to cooks cannot accumulate so readily. Do not sell it: this is an expansion with miles still in it, provided you set it up with the discipline it demands.