QE a Review of a Bidding Game to Big to Fail (Its Not That Big)

Bert
33 minutes ago
5 min read

Quantitative Easing is what QE stands for. What does that even mean? Its a monetary policy Central Banks use to help combat deflation and keep money flowing during economic down turns. Basically Central Banks start buying up assets from commercial banks. This makes banks more liquid allowing them to loan more money out. A Central Bank is the entity that manages money production, monetary policy, and credit for a nation or group of nations. In the United States its called the federal reserve. In QE players will take on the role of a Central Bank and buy up assets to keep their country's economy going. They have to be careful to not spend too much money while doing this. QE is far less complicated that this paragraph was. Lets take a look at QE from All Play games and QE: Commodities the expansion

Setup

QE setup is super simple.Each player gets a scoring card, marker, bidding card and each player gets a random industry token (they keep it secret). This is a 3 to five player bidding game. Each player has a scoring card that shows all the ways to gain points basically a player will want to either collect sets of the same industries or nation or they will want to collect sets of one of each industry. The hidden industry token gives each player a random free space in the industry section of the scoring.

There are 21 company tiles that get shuffled and placed face down in the middle. These are the companies that the players will bid on.

Game Play

The Goal of QE is to be the player that has not spent the most money and has the most victory points. The player with the most money spent at the end of the game is eliminated. There are 5 parts to each turn in the game. The first player is the auctioneer for the round. The Auctioneer reveals the company tile from the top of the stack and they let the other players know; what nationality it is, the victory points its worth and the industry that the company is in. These pieces of information directly relate to the scoring matrix on each players card.

Next the Auctioneer writes down their bet on the bidding card and places it down for every player to see. This is where the game is abstract to the point of absurdity if you want to take it there. You can bid 1 trillion dollars or 5 peanuts. There isn't much guidance, only that players must bit a positive whole number or zero. The first auctioneer will likely set that scale/tone with the first bid for the rest of the game. After the Auctioneer's bid is shown the rest of the player write down their bids and hand them to the auctioneer. The players cannot bid the same number as the auctioneer. These bids are secret and only the auctioneer will see them.

The auctioneer writes the winning bid amount on the back of the company token. The token is then awarded to the winning bidder. If a player bid zero then they can get 2 victory points by marking it on their player card.

Scoring in QE is a "point salad" meaning there are a lot of ways to score points and part of the strategy is how a player chooses them. There are various ways of collecting sets in QE. Players can score points for having companies that matches their country, for having multiple companies in the same sector, for having groups of 4 companies from different sectors, bidding zero, the points marked on each company or commodity, and finally for having the lowest total of money spent. The secret token players got at the beginning of the game counts as an industry when scoring. There is a fair amount of adding up of points, but hey its an economic game after all.

QE: Commodities

QE: Commodities is an expansion for QE. In the expansion a commodities market is added featuring gold, oil, and crypto. After players bid for the industry and the highest bidder has won that industry the second highest bidder gets to choose a commodity. They write their bid on the back of the commodity board as normal but the commodity spend is a subtracted from their spend total at the end of the game. Each of the 3 commodity types have victory points on them. The Gold and Oil are stable gold having 6 or 7 on all the tiles and oil having 5 or 5 on all of them. Crypto is much more random having 0 through 10 VP on the tiles.

There is no bonus for crypto only the joy of how random it is.

This adds a lot of randomness to the game. This also makes it hard to track other players spend in your head because they are now subtracting as well. Additionally if all the gold commodity tiles are claimed then the market crashes and all of the tiles are worth 3 less VP. With Oil whoever has the most oil tiles at the end of the game gets a 5 VP bonus. There is no bonus for crypto only the joy of how random it is. Also the original game box is big enough for the expansion components to make it a little easier to transport.

Puppies or Poop — QE Commodities Components

Thoughts

QE is a fun game that can get real silly or real calculated depending on who you are playing with. The concept of Quantitative Easing boiled down into a fun fast playing game is a concept that I am floored by. QE takes a second to learn and a little longer to get a feel for how the secret bidding goes but after turn 2 everyone is usually on the same page and the game speeds up.

Adding in the expansion QE: Commodities adds in a lot of chaos with the random draws. I would play QE without the expansion first to see how you like it. For those who love some chaos then add in the QE: Commodities expansion and sit back and enjoy the unpredictability of it all. For me it was way too random and removed a bit of the strategy however I think it makes the game a little more light-hearted.

QE is a light game that helps illustrate the economic concept of quantitative easing. This is a great game for people who are studying economics or people who want to understand the concepts. With a 30 minute playtime this is great for the classroom. I had a lot of fun with this game and learned a couple things along the way.

Players: 3-5

Year Published: 2019

Recommended Ages: 12+

Time to Play: 30 minutes