PLAYED FOR YOU

GHAWAR

THE BIGGEST OIL WELL IN THE WORLD

The oil well for which the game is named is in Saudi-Arabia and was discovered in 1948/1949. Daily this well yields 6% of the world-wide daily amount of oil pumped up. The background story of the game has King Saud considering an heir to the throne; for a test of abilities his nephews – the players - must take over oil production at Ghawar.

In Phase 1 of the game you place your oil rigs. You roll both dice and place a rig on the coordinates determined by the dice, as seen from your side of the board. In Phase 2 oil stones are collected. To do so you move lorries and railway engines to the oil rigs and then to your base camp. In your turn you can either roll the dice to move vehicles or move an oil rig. The dice result for the vehicles must be completely used, but you can allocate it to several vehicles. You can change direction at crossroads. Vehicles block each other, you cannot overtake another vehicle. On a square with an oil rig you can pump oil by taking the oil stone from underneath the tower. If you do so at rigs not your own you pay the other player according to the values table. For one complete set of colored oil stones an oil barrel is placed; until this barrel is delivered to a camp special rules apply. You move derricks to cover oil stones for future collection. When all stones have been collected, the game is scored and you win with the highest score from a number of criteria for variety and amount oil stones.

Ghawar rather nicely transmits the feeling of oil production, but the oil barrels introduce a rather massive amount of chance into the game by allowing to elimination of vehicles.

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 45+

Designer: Johannes Halbig

Artist: Harald Lieske, Katharina Schossow

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Mücke Spiele 2010

Web: www.muecke-spiele.de

Genre: Placement and acquisition game

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de

In-game text: no

Comments:

Series Bohrturm * Series Läufer * very much chance-driven, especially in phase 2 * gets the atmosphere nicely across

Compares to:

McMulti and other dice game on the topic of oil wells

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0