Warehouses in Industria

Another new mechanism that the expansion Clans of Caledonia: Industria adds to the game is the warehouse module. 🏭

There are 9 different warehouse tiles, each one depicting a combination of a basic good and a processed good. The warehouses work a bit like the opposite of the neighboring bonuses. At the beginning of the game, each player places 1 warehouse tile on a land hex that has at least 3 neighboring land hexes and there must be at least 3 hexes in between 2 warehouse tiles.

During the game, if a player expands on a hex neighboring the warehouse tile, that player can then immediately sell up to 4 units of the good depicted there to the market (using merchants as usual) and earning a bonus of 2 or 3 pounds per unit sold depending on if it is a basic good or processed good. Once done, the player places 1 unit of that good on the depicted good on the warehouse tile, to indicate that the demand for that type of good on this warehouse tile was fulfilled.

As soon as both types of goods on a warehouse tile are covered, the warehouse tile with both units is removed from the game map and from then on, the hex becomes available for expansion.

The cardboard tile with the bread token represents the warehouse. Prototype graphic, not final!

This new mechanic has several intentions:

• Producing goods becomes more attractive, since you can then make a bit more profit via selling these goods via the warehouses
• Even with the base game maps, the ways you expand on the map changes based on the placement of the warehouses. It really contributes to the replayability of the map modules because some hexes become more attractive due to the warehouses, but warehouse hexes are also not available for expansion! So it really makes players expand in new patterns than usual.
• The market becomes even more important and volatile! Buying cheaply via neighborhood bonus in one game round and selling at a premium in the following game round can be quite profitable! 💰
• There is one small downside too, though. Through the warehouse bonuses, players tend to earn more money during the game. This bears the risk that players’ engines gets more powerful, resulting in greater production of money and goods. This can lead to the map getting quite full, and it can make the game last a bit longer because players make more action before they run out of money. In order to mitigate that, players are supposed to start the game with a couple of pounds less than usual (e.g. £5). We are currently still playtesting to figure out which £ deduction is the sweet spot.

Overall, I find the warehouses to add quite some depth & replayability to the game with very few extra rules. 😍 😎🤩

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🗒️ Subscribe to the Kickstarter preview page! 🗒️Take a look at the ​rules​ and print out your own prototype ​here​, or play digitally on our ​TableTop Simulator Workshop​.

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2024 will become big for Karma Games with a lot of new games being released!

Life is Play!
Juma