{"id":3587,"date":"2004-12-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-22T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2004\/12\/22\/grossegeschaefte-mall-world\/"},"modified":"2004-12-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-12-22T11:00:00","slug":"grossegeschaefte-mall-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2004\/12\/22\/grossegeschaefte-mall-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Grosse\nGesch\u00e4fte \/ Mall World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grosse
\nGesch\u00e4fte \/ Mall World<\/a><\/h2>\n

reviewed by Aaron Haag<\/i><\/p>\n

Remember your last visit to your favourite shopping mall? Plenty of shops, outlets,
\nand restaurants cleverly located under one roof and aligned in perfect order to persuade
\nthe unsuspecting target groups to spend their money. This is what “Grosse
\nGesch\u00e4fte” claims to be about.<\/p>\n

Permission has been granted to build a new shopping mall and you and the other players
\nare managers deciding about the location of shops in the mall and later in the game to
\nwhom they lease a particular shop. Of course, it’s all about money in “Grosse
\nGesch\u00e4fte” and successful deals will provide a healthy income, appropriately
\ntransferred to your Swiss bank account. Every now and then, a bit of slush money changes
\nhands in order to ease the signing of contracts or permissions.<\/p>\n

Sounds like an interesting business game, doesn’t it? Reading the rulebook
\ncertainly makes you believe this as the concepts described and the elements used are just
\nwhat I have described above. But once you’ve come to the end of the rules you’re
\nmost likely pretty puzzled and start reading over again. It is not because the rules are
\nwritten poorly; in fact, they are quite good with examples provided whenever necessary,
\nbut you probably didn’t get the idea about the shop contracts, permissions and target
\ngroups. Why is that? Because the game is a very abstract tile placing game with a theme
\ngrafted on top, which neither conveys a certain atmosphere nor does it help understanding
\nthe game principles. I hope the designer, Andrea Meyer, will forgive me that I
\ndescribe the game principles here in more abstract terms rather than using the shopping
\nmall scenario.<\/p>\n

The board setup is semi-variable by placing one or two (depending on the number of
\nplayers) blocking tiles together with one tile of each of the four colours randomly on
\nthe board. Tiles come in two versions, rhombus shaped normal tiles and round upgrade
\ntiles. Further game components are: contracts showing combinations of two tiles,
\nplacement permissions for tiles, bribes for contracts, and slush money for bidding on
\nplacement permissions.<\/p>\n

It is the players’ goal to fulfil contracts, which are combinations of tiles on
\nthe board. Fulfilled contracts earn money at the end of a round. Three rounds are played
\nin total and the player with the largest amount of money wins the game.<\/p>\n

\"Grosse<\/p>\n

Each round consists of several phases:<\/p>\n