MÜLL + MONEY (Industrial Waste)

Publisher: Hans im Glück

Author: Dr. Jürgen Strohm

Tester: Aaron Haag

Game Tested: German edition 2001

Scenario: Resources, production, innovation, growth and profits and last but not least Müll - the German word for waste - are the key ingredientes of this game. Each player tries to max out the interlinked parameters of his production plant by applying suitable strategies and tactics.

The Game: Each player starts with a production plant which needs five work force units and five resources to produce and which generates 5 units of waste. The five work forces and the first five resources are part of the start set-up. The products of one production cycle sell for initially 14$ million.

At the beginning of each round the start player deals sets of three cards openly taking care that a set only contains unique cards (i.e. no duplicate types). The number of card sets is determined by the number of players plus one. The start player is the first to select a set and the other players follow in clockwise order.

The cards are the motor of the game and when it is a player's turn he plays one of the cards of his set and executes the corresponding action.

Resource auction:

The player auctions off resources. The number of resources is determined by the amount of resources his plant needs for production. The auction starts with the player left to the auctioneer and the auctioneer is the last to bid. If he has the highest bid he pays the money to the bank but if any other player bids highest the auctioneer receives the money instead of the bank.

Production:

The plant produces and immediately sells if it has a sufficient amount of resources and work force units available. The player receives the current production price and increases the amount of waste in his waste store by the amount indicated by the waste marker of his plant.

Productivity:

The player may improve one of his plants productivity indicators by one: work units required to produce, resources required to produce or waste generated when producing. Increasing productivity costs $5 million and also increases the number of victory points.

Work force:

The player may increase or decrease the number of work forces of his plant.

Income:

The player may increase the income of his plant when it produces by $1 million. As soon as one player's plant reaches an income per production of $20 million the game finishes after completing the current round.

Waste removal:

The player may decrease the number of waste units in his plant's store by one.

Waste trafficking:

The player removes one waste unit from his plant's store and all other players must increase their store by one waste unit.

Consultant:

The player may make a "double action" playing this card together with any of his other cards. The corresponding action is performed twice, except for production, which generates an additional profit of $5 million instead. Alternatively, the player may use the consultant to repay $10 million of a loan.

Bribe:

This card can be used in case of an environmental catastrophe and decreases the damages to be paid to $1 million.

A round continues until no player wants to play any of their cards - it is allowed that a player keeps one of his cards for the next turn. This is particularly useful if one has a bribe card. Playing this card only makes sense during an environmental catastrophe which happens immediately once the respective card is drawn when the start player creates the card sets. All player that have excessive waste in their plant's stores must pay damages between $5 million and $10 million. This can be reduced to $1 million by playing a bribe card at that point in time. At the end of a round players have to pay for their work forces (irrespective of whether or not they produced in this round) and the start player position shifts one position in clockwise direction.

Once the last round of the game has been completed players count their victory points. Increases in productivity yield additional victory points as well as increases in the plants income. Interestingly, the money in player's hands only counts half but any loans reduce the victory points by the full amount.

Playing Time: Rules are explained in about 15 minutes - playing time is about 75 minutes.

Similar Games: Schoko & Co. (Yves Hirschfeld, G. Monnet), McMulti (Crude), Modern Art (Reiner Knizia)

Westpark Gamers' Opinion: When I played the game for the first time it reminded me very much of "Schocko & Co.", one of the finalists of the 1988 Spiel des Jahres award. There you also had the task to optimize the various parameters of production so that income is maximized. In "Müll + Money" I found it hard to time my actions right though, because one's options are very dependent on the set of cards available for selection. If you are sitting right to the start player you are faced with the "leftovers" of all the other players because you are the last to select and there are only two remaining sets. On the other hand, next turn you will be the first to select your set and you may want to prepare the next move now. Maybe your work force is still high and you want to decrease it to save costs. If there is a "work force" card still available this could be a good point in time to do so. However, next round you will need to select a set of cards that contains a "productivity" card in order to adjust your plant productivity accordingly. Reducing the work force before improving productivity is a risky business and should only be tried in situations like this unless you do want to become unable to produce.

In my opinion the resource auctions are the key to winning the game. As with Reiner Knizia's "Modern Art" you can generate a lot of money by clever auctioning. Many times I have seen situations where a player gets resources virtually for free by first auctioning a set and cashing in and then buying the next set resources with exactly the money received from the first auction. This can be exploited by two players who work together in two subsequent auctions with one player selling to the other for a previously agreed (too) high price. There is nothing the other players can do about this other than avoiding the situation that these two players both receive auction cards in their sets. So maybe you want to establish a house rule that disallows any negotiations about resource prices.

It could be a sound strategy to go for the auctions and productivity cards only, with the goal to generate cash and victory points by selling resources to other players and by increasing productivity and plant income respectively, leaving production (and costly waste generation) to the other players. As an additional benefit you are pushing for an early end of the game by quickly moving the plant income marker to the $20 million area harming those who took an early loan. A similar strategy worked in the first release of "Dicke Kartoffeln" by Doris Matthäus & Frank Nestel where the goal of the game was to generate money by growing and selling potatoes. Here the alternative strategy was to grow lots of worms (normally used as fertilizer) and selling them to the bank or the other players instead of using them on one's fields.

I believe this game has a lot of potential for a wide range of different tactics and strategies and it's replay value is correspondingly high. The web of interlinked parameters is big enough to provide ample possibilities for people who like business simulations. As usual for "Hans im Glück" games the components are of impeccable quality.

The English version of the game has been published by Rio Grande Games under the name of "Industrial Waste".

Aaron's Rating: 7 (out of 10)

Westpark Gamers' Rating: not yet rated