Capstone Games Pipeline Board Game

Product Information

Pipeline is an incredibly confident debut game from designer Ryan Courtney. Taking on the role of private oil companies, players will attempt to buy and refine oil in the most efficient manner. This, of course, means buying crude oil cheap and refining it through a maze of your own pipelines. This is where you come in. Seeking to capitalize on this new opportunity, in Pipeline you start a company in the oil business. You will focus on building a much more efficient pipeline network in your refinery, hiring experts that provide valuable benefits over your competitors, and managing the logistics of purchasing and selling your refined oil in the various markets. You will need more than strong economic skills – carefully crafting an interweaving network of pipelines just might ensure your victory! The refinement of oil has long been part of the government-controlled energy sector. Amassed with an incredibly complex and inefficient system of refineries, the government has felt the severe pressures of worldwide demand and the ever-increasing global standards for refinement. Unable to keep up with demand, the government has only one option: privatizing the oil industry.

Other gold rush board games released that year reflected that reality. For example, From Boston to Klondike, published by A. M. Robinson out of New Jersey, offered a longer view of the journey. As the title suggests, players roll dice to make incremental moves from Boston across the northern United States to Seattle, then turn north toward Alaska and the goldfields. From there, players jump up to Sitka, Juneau, Dyea and through the Chilkoot Pass into Canada. Tanks - These are used to store the oil you buy and refine. Each player has a player board on which to arrange their refinery and these can sometimes be worth money at the end of the game. Pipe, also known as Pipe Mania, is a classic puzzle game where the objective is to connect pipes of different shapes and sizes to create a continuous flow of liquid or gas. The game presents players with a grid or a board, which is initially filled with various pipe segments in a disorganized manner. Read more .. Generally, Ludvig will follow all multiplayer rules. However, below are instances when he does not follow the typical multiplayer rules:

You will focus on building a much more efficient pipeline network in your refinery, hiring experts that provide valuable benefits over your competitors, and managing the logistics of purchasing and selling your refined oil in the various markets. The valuation cards in Pipeline give every game its own flavor and the combinations are close enough to endless that I think it will be difficult, if not impossible, to ever come to a point where you can define “the best” strategy. Tanks – These are used to store the oil you buy and refine. Each player has a player board on which to arrange their refinery and these can sometimes be worth money at the end of the game. The first wave of what a modern toy aisle shopper might recognize as a board game arrived in 1897. A bumper crop of Klondike Gold Rush games appeared on store shelves across the country with a speed that matched the rush for the goldfields. While roughly 100,000 individuals set out for the Klondike from 1896 to 1999, many times that number eagerly consumed any news or product connected to the gold fever sensation. In other words, the Klondike Gold Rush was a fad, and like any modern fad, there were fortunes to be made with tie-ins. How does this work? Well, there are 3 varieties of oil in the game (Teal, Orange, Silver) that correspond to the 3 colours of pipe, and 4 grades of oil (Crude, Low, Medium, High). During setup, you will randomly assign the length of pipe needed to refine oil from one level to the next.

We are only halfway through, but 2019 is shaping up to be one of the better years for new board game releases in recent memory. Today we are looking at one of the games that is leading that charge, Pipeline, which sold out at Origins 2019 and finished atop the BGG hotness at the convention. The game is blatantly pro-pipeline propaganda. Players are dealt cards from four suits: anti-pipeline “objections,” pro-pipeline “facts,” pro-oil trivia, and public impact cards. The game mechanics are a slightly more complicated version of hearts. A professor delivers the facts, but the objections feature a caricature of a nosy older woman, her tiny hat topped by a flower. On one of her cards, she holds a sign stating, “Objection for objection’s sake.” One of the pro-oil trivia cards declares, “the dinosaur died for nothing” if gas stations closed. Of course, the nostalgia for the gold rush is still well represented in modern Alaska board games, including the 1991 Alaskan Gold Rush, 1992 Klondike: Trivia Game on the Yukon, 2014 Lost Valley: The Yukon Gold Rush 1896, and the 2017 Klondike Rush. The game’s bias is best illustrated via concerns for the Prince William Sound. An objection card, with its comical pipeline foe, says, “Tankers will pollute Valdez Harbor.” The professor says in response, “Modern equipment and strict regulations against oily discharge.” Unfortunately, history did not side with the professor.As with nearly every other aspect of life in Alaska, the discovery and exploitation of oil changed the nature of Alaska board games. In particular, the debate over the environmental impact of what would become the Trans Alaska Pipeline, which intensified in the early 1970s, influenced a new wave of Alaska-themed board games.