The game components are beautiful, evoking a flavor of the region during the early half o the 18 century. The game board includes a scoring track and a region (termed the "Court of the Grand Moguls") for placing influence markers up for bid as the game unfolds. These markers include tokens for the Vizier (representing political power), the General (military control), a Monk (religious influence), a Princess (social influence), a gold ring (control of the crown and extra building privileges) and the current province tile (building privileges and the acquisition of commodities). Each city is connected to cities in adjoining provinces through a network of roads. As the game begins, 11 numerical province tiles are randomly placed on each province, with the twelfth tile always placed in Agra. The province tiles are revealed at the onset. Each round, players visit a single province and the randomly placed province tiles detail the order of visitation. Each player receives a starting hand of six bidding cards.... some cards are also placed face up near the board each round.

   After the first bidding turn, a player has two options. He may continue to play cards, attempting to increase his influence and outbid opponents OR he may elect to withdraw... If withdrawing, a player with the most symbols of a particular type collects the matching influence marker(s)...Following a withdrawal, bid cards are discarded and players receive their bountiful rewards.

   First, all players except the last withdrawing player receive two cards from the face up cards near the board. Competitive bidding can therefore decrease your chances of adequately replenishing your supply of cards. The last player left bidding only receives one card.... Second, each player receives rewards for influence. Control of Viziers, Generals, Monks or Princesses grants a player the respective tile from the Grand Mogul's Court. Players who gain a tile get to place a palace onto a city... in the currently active province. Control of the Crown allows a player to to place a castle anywhere in the active province, even within an already occupied city. This is important because players score for chains of castles connecting adjacent provinces. Finally, control of the Elephant grants the player the province tile. Tiles depict commodities that are important for later scoring.

   Scoring and placement of palaces occur immediately as each player withdraws from the auction. Players score a point per placed palace in a province and a point for each commodity shown on the province tile won.... if player's manage to connect provinces through skillful palace placement, scoring increases by one for each connected province.... scores increase cumulatively for matching commodities...

   When a player collects a pair of Vizier, General, Monk or Princess tiles, he gets to trade in the tiles for a special bidding card granting them extra power! If player during a bidding round (and you'd be crazy not to use them right away), these four bonus cards grant either +1 to economic influence, +1 to Crown influence, +2 immediately scored bonus points or an opportunity for a single color change (allowing a suit different than the lead suit to be played once in bidding). Bonus cards are NOT discarded after being played making them very useful. (My only complaint is that the +2 bonus card may be a bit TOO powerful.) If another player collects a pair of control tiles, that player takes control of the bonus card from the previous player. And there are more potential bonuses!

Certain cities contain randomly placed chits that my grant you a free point, a free card from the deck or a single commodity. The Taj Mahal in Agra is worth a fat 4 points if you grab the city... Finally, after touring all of the provinces in India, players cash in their hands and receive one point for each white card held and one point for each card in their longest suit. In the end, holding cards may help as much as bidding them!

   The game's gimmick is a noisy mechanical auction clock that has prices from 200,000 florins DECLINING to 50,000. Once the clock's pointer is set in motion, players may stop it by hitting a button in its center. Whoever stops the clock pays the price indicated to the bank and then takes the action on that card.

   Cards enable players to place their markers on the board. Cards with a globe symbol allow placement of a marker on any unoccupied colony and move the player's marker for the commodity indicated up one level in the marketplace. (Placement may be restricted, either by region or commodity.) Cards with a ship allow a player to advance his marketplace markers a total of three spaces (but no more than two for any one commodity). Cards that highlight one or two sections of Amsterdam allow a player to place one of this markers on an unoccupied city space plus advance a commodity on the exchange.

   If an hourglass marker is turned over, plays is immediately suspended and the pawn on the timeline is advanced one space. If an event is triggered, all players get to take the action shown, starting from the left of the current Mayor. These events usually result in a player getting a free placement of one of their markers on a colony or in Amsterdam or a one space advancement of a commodity in the marketplace.

   If one of the seven scoring intervals is indicated, payouts are made to the players having the most (and second most) markers for each colonial regions (twice), most contiguous markers in a section of Amsterdam (twice) or the highest level of each commodity in the marketplace (three times). Ties are resolved by a clearly stated order of preference on the game board.

   Players earn bonuses through diversification. Having one marker in each of the four colonial regions or in each of the four Amsterdam sections earns an extra 100,000 florins. Moving all four commodities to at least the second level earns a player one free placement in Amsterdam. Linking two Amsterdam sections with your markers on both sides of a bridge earns 40,000 florins.....

   When the timeline pawn has reached the penultimate space, a final set of payouts is made for all three areas of influence but with amounts that are double the earlier ones. This final reckoning often allows a player to make up ground for having spent freely in auctions. Players now count their money to determine the winner.

   In the impressive array of gaming gems designed by the legendary Sid Sackson, Acquire stands as the jewel in the crown.... After a long run of over 30 years, Acquire had, regrettably, gone out of print. Now, this huge vacancy on game store shelves has been generously filled as Hasbro, under its new Avalon Hill banner, has released a spectacular and very welcome deluxe version of Acquire.

   As originally conceived, Acquire was a game of hotel mergers. In this new version, hotels give way to corporations as the theme gets modernized as does the presentation which is simply stunning. There is a molded plastic grid upon which the 108 corporation tiles are placed. In addition, there are seven plastic buildings (to represent the corporations in the game), stock certificates for the corporations, information cards for each player, play money, and a tray to hold everything in place. For 2 to 6 players, ages 12 and up, a game session takes less than an hour to play.

   In a merger, the larger chain (the one with more tiles) survives and the smaller one becomes defunct.... The players with the most and second-most stock in the defunct corporation receive stockholder cash bonuses. Stockholders in the now larger chain do NOT receive a cash bonus. However, the value of their owned shares in this bigger chain tend to increase in value.... Play continues until.... all corporations are safe [consisting of 11 or more tiles] or until one corporation consists of 41 or more tiles. At that point, majority and minority shareholders' bonuses are paid out and all stocks are sold back to the bank at current prices....The player with the most money wins! Acquire is a rarity, a game classic truly worthy of its reputation...Highly recommended! ---------------------- Herb Levy

   Split derives its name from its unusual set of playing cards. It uses the standard 52 card deck (plus Jokers) that we al know and love except that each is split, that is, cut in half. In searching for its mate, players are allowed to place, and sometime remove, chips from the board. The first player (or team) to connect both sides of the board with his chips wins!