Games with Fixed Resources Ben Hvrt and Starbase Jeff Juho Snellman My two favourite Cheapass games are closed systems as far as money goes: Ben Hvrt: Everyone gets 100 units of money at the start, which is used to buy stuff in auctions + for paying the fee for entering the race. All the money that's spent goes into to the pot, which is then distributed to the top-3 of the race. Repeat for two more races. Starbase Jeff: Everyone gets 40 (?) units of money at the start. The players then proceed to build a space-station, paying for building/demolishing modules (this money goes into the pot) or for rights of passage (this goes to the other players). The player who finishes the station gets the pot. Repeat until someone runs out of money. A surprisingly rarely used game mechanic. More on Games with Limited Resources Traumfabrik Anthony Simons Traumfabrik was the first game that came to my mind; we were playing it just on Tuesday and after the game was finished we were all discussing how we liked the closed economy mechanism in it that made the game more interesting. Adel Verpflichtet is almost there, with the exception that there is the intervention of the cash till. I possess a copy of a very old game (which in fact can be played with a number of chips and a couple of decks of playing cards) made by Chad Valley in the UK circa 1940's called SHOC. The players take turns to be broker and other players buy and sell shares to them until the market closes. All money comes in from other players and comes out from the current broker's resources. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 2 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com