An opportunity presented itself… We decided to put Nooa in temporary day care so Johanna could get a break and I could get some board game time. There’s a nice private day care center next to the university where we play, you can drop your kids there for an hour or few. That worked out well, Nooa had fun, and I was able to play games for two hours.

I presented a list of options and Hannu and Petri chose Steel Driver, since they hadn’t played it before. I was curious to try the game with three.

Turns out three isn’t the optimal player count for this game. The auction loses some tension, as it’s obvious that each player will buy two shares each turn. I can’t see many possibilities to upset that balance, unless someone spends a lot to buy a single share or a company becomes too weak to buy. I really liked trying to figure out how to gain an advantage in shares, that was a fun part of the five-player game.

In the end, it was very balanced. I had 520 cash, Petri had 620 and Hannu had 640. Our stock portfolios were even more even: me and Petri had 1160, Hannu had 1130. So, I lost with 1680, Hannu was second with 1770 and Petri won with 1780 — and during the game I once told Petri not to fuss about a single build, as whether he gained $20 or $30 doesn’t really matter in the end…