The Estates

The Estates sits squarely in the pure-auction tradition, and as someone with a particular weakness for Industry, I found its premise immediately appealing. It has the same satisfyingly constrained economy, but it does not permit you to settle on a bidding plan at the outset and simply follow it through.

The game runs on a closed pool of money and single-round auctions. Every bid is therefore more than an attempt to acquire an item; it is capital removed from your future options, at a point when the table may look entirely different.

That is the material distinction from Industry: the position stays far more fluid, and the final round can still reverse it. The interesting decision is when to pay to alter the balance and when to let the others burn through their limited funds; regrettably, at five players that balance becomes notably leaky and the game suffers for it.

The good material is there, but it is not guaranteed to reveal itself in every session, particularly a first one. I would not call it a bad game, and I would play it again, just not with five players; that count needs different scaling, with more money, perhaps more companies, and another set of three cubes. This is a worthwhile auction design that needs the right table composition to do its job properly.