A BAZAAR TWIST: PENALTY BAZAAR

A BAZAAR TWIST:

PENALTY BAZAAR

Bazaar is one of Sid Sackson's classic 3M "brain burner" games. When 3M was in the process of putting "finishing touches" on the game, Sid received a letter from the company on February 14, 1968 with a question/suggestion.

"Has any consideration been given to assigning penalty points for chips left in the players hands at the conclusion of the game? I assume that this could be handled on either an optional or mandatory basis. If so, would you make it a one point per chip penalty or a fraction of a point?"

A mere 10 days later, Sid responded.

"After giving the suggestion considerable thought, I came up with the enclosed variation which, as you can see, can cause penalties every time a card is purchased. This adds a new dimension to the play. It becomes necessary to keep a close watch on what the opponents are doing, both to try and catch them with a handful of tokens and to avoid being caught yourself.

I think that it should definitely be presented as an optional variation. Some players who have tried it, much prefer it to the original, while others are equally strong in their preference for the original. It appears to be a matter of temperament, the variation appealing to those who are strongly competitive by nature while the original appears to those who like a more relaxed game."

So, here for the first time, are Sid Sackson's rules for:

Penalty Bazaar:

An Optional Variation for Competitive Players

In this variation, every time a player purchases a Wares card, he may, in addition to the points he scores, also cause his opponents to lose points by penalties. The penalties are based on the number of tokens that the purchaser holds after the transaction, compared to the number held by each opponent.

To the number of tokens the purchase has remaining, add 3. Each player who holds more than this total of tokens loses one point for each token in excess of the total.

Example: A player has two tokens remaining after a purchase. An opponent with five tokens receives no penalty; another with six tokens is penalized one points; and another with eight tokens is penalized three points. A player may, because of penalties, have a minus score.