If you are the last player to bid in a round you may have the last chance to claim a card but you can get more compensation as a result. Throughout the auction process, you’ll trade turns putting one of your four discs on a market of cards. This makes players think a lot more about what they bid on from rounds two onwards and creates a much more challenging game experience. Companies don't just state what they do in their basic form, but what they will do once you upgrade them.

In turn, each player with then place one of their four numbered Capital Discs onto one of the cards, bidding for that cards power.Each of the five available character cards offers something quite unique – such as an extra disc with the value of two to use in the Auction phase, or the ability to break the Capital Disc placement rules. During the production phase, you can use each of your cards once to gain resources, process those resources into other resources or money, and upgrade your cards. There is also an advanced variant which I enjoy, but perhaps is not suited for game one whereby players cannot rearrange the placement of the cards once they have them. The joy of Furnace is the angst of the auction juxtaposed with the fun of engine building, but quite often the engine building aspect is fairly procedural.

It may be that you need a particular resource before you can achieve a certain goal, and that first resource you need will be made available to you by one of your other cards. And while they may speak clearly enough to get a game into my collection, it takes a solid game to stay. We are a group of passionate individuals who share our love of board games through written and video reviews, articles, and humor, so that others can join us in our journey. Between this choice, and then wondering which cards you should win, when to place your powerful chips, and when to lose an auction. For anyone who struggles with the suspicion of simultaneous play, know that Furnace will arouse discomfort.

Each company card will have compensation at the top of the card, which you get if you bid but don’t win. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to acquire yet in the US, but let’s find out if it’s worth trying to track down.