We are very proud to introduce you to the preorder of Container: 10th Anniversary Jumbo Edition of Mercury games, the new huge edition of the famous board game of Franz-Benno Delonge and Thomas Ewert, and developped by Kevin Nesbitt.
The game is in English version, for 3-5 players and lasts about 90 minutes. It's suggested for 14+ aged players.
This preorder runs together with the Kickstarter campaign and Boardgame Bliss preorder.
The game is the same. KS campaign is for US backers, Boardgamebliss preorder is for Canada backers, Giochistarter preorder is for EU (and rest of the world) backers.
You can pay by Credit card, Paypal, Bitcoins, Satispay or Bank wire transfer. In addition, payment by Paypal in 4 installments (zero interests) is also available.
Games will be shipped from Italy and the price already includes VAT. So they will not be any additional custom cost in the European Union.
If you live outside of the European Community, custom's taxes (and VAT) may be added. This usually doesn't happen for boardgames; however, please check your country's rules and regulations as this aspect will not be our responsibility.
The 10th anniversary edition of Container will contain:
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5 HUGE Resin Ships - Over 17 cm long! Estimated weight more than 200 g each! |
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85 Resin Containers! Large and Highly Detailed! ~3 cm long! |
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140 Euro-Sized Cards (Money, Container Value Cards, Others) |
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One Island Board and One Investment Bank Board |
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5 Large Player Boards |
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Huge Wooden Factories and Warehouses (50% larger than the original version!) |
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Full-Color Rulebook! |
In 2007, after many years of design and development, Container first appeared on the world stage and set a new standard for open economy boardgames. Noted for its ability to generate games with vastly different outcomes, Container became known as the game that doesn't hold players' hands or offer a safety net. Needless to say, Container was a special game and became quite a valued collector's item.
The old version of Container game (image from Boardgamegeek.com)
Now, in 2017, after spending years out of print, Mercury Games has stepped up to reprint Container in a 10th Anniversary Jumbo Edition. In this new edition, you will even find some new content in the form of the Investment Bank add-on. This new edition can be enjoyed with or without the new material, meaning even more varied outcomes for your economy!
This Jumbo Edition is set to be the crowning product in the history of Container, eclipsing the production standards of the original with amazing ship and container miniatures. With ship miniatures over 17 cm in length (!), this scale has never been attempted in other boardgames and it promises to be something worth having in your collection.
Mercury Games would like to extend a personal invitation to you to help us make this unprecedented project a reality. With extraordinarily-high production costs related to such amazing sculpts and components, we need your support!
Really you've never had the chance to try Container?
Container is a 3-5 player game that tests players’ strategy to build and operate a supply and demand system. The game itself is played on 5 player boards and one foreign island board. Each player board contains spaces onto which players may build factories and warehouses. Additionally, there is a harbour area into which other players’ ships may dock to load Containers for international shipment. Container is unique in that the game table itself is part of the board, since it functions as the open sea.
Each round, a player has two actions to perform any of the following activities in any order. The same activity may be performed twice in one turn, with the exception of the Produce Merchandise action.
- Buy a warehouse orbuy a machine;
- Buy merchandise for their harbour store;
- Produce merchandise (once per turn);
- Sail with their ship
A player may move a ship in three ways:
- Ending the movement in the open sea;
- Ending the movement in another player’s harbour;
- Ending the movement in the foreign island harbour.
Not final colors.
When your ship is present in another player harbour, you may buy containers from the harbour store at the end of your turn (does not require an action) or at the beginning of your turn (requires an action).
When one of your ship arrives in the foreign island harbour, you must now hold a single auction for all the containers on the ship. This does not require an additional action. Each player other than the selling player now secretly places an amount of money in their hand as their bid for all the containers on the selling player’s ship. Each player now, simultaneously, reveals their bid.
The selling player now has 2 choices:
- Accept the highest bid; or
- Decline all the bids.
In either case, the auction always ends a player’s turn, even if it is at the end of the first action.
If the selling player decides to accept, the player who bid the highest pays his bid to the selling player; in addition the active player also receives the same amount of money as the highest bid from the bank. The highest bidder now places these containers in his area on the foreign island board.
If the selling player decides not to accept, he can decline all the bids and pay for the containers himself. The selling player pays the highest bid that was offered for his containers to the bank and places his own containers in his area of the foreign island board.
At any time a player may take a loan from the bank. All bank loans are for $10 only. Interest for a loan is always $1 per turn per loan. The player may, at any time during his turn after paying interest, pay back the entire loan to the bank to avoid paying interest on his next turn.
The game ends when any two of the five colours are no longer available in the container supply pool.
Scoring:
- For the two-valued containers, you collect $10/container if you managed to get one of each color. If not, you collect $5/container.
- On foreign island, player must discard all containers of color which they have the most! if there is a tie involving two-valued containers, must choose that to discard.
- Players receive money for the value of all containers on the foreign island.
- Also receive money for containers in harbor store and Ship.
- Subtract $11 for each outstanding loan a player has.
The player with the most money at the end of the scoring round is the winner.
Here a tutorial of the old edition made by "Just Play" and available on youtube:
The 10th anniversary edition of Container also incuded an all new add-on called "The Investment Bank". This new entity operates as a game-controlled broker who is seeking to maximize their own profits.
New for this edition of Container is the Investment Bank Add-On content!
This new entity is a sort of "A.I. Player" which operates independently of other players in the game. It features three brokers who are seeking to earn profits for the Investment Bank. They have both cash and containers on offer for the players to purchase, and also function as an addtional port for players to visit.
On a players turn, they can choose to "Call Broker" and make a bid for one of the brokers' holdings. They mark this by taking a special card which records their bid. They always offer cash for containers, or containers for cash. On a different player's turn, they can choose to increase the offer, hoping to secure the cash or containers for a better price. No matter what happens though, if a player's turn starts with the Broker Card in their possession, the broker has accepted their bid and the cash and containers are exchanged. Be careful though, if you've just won some containers you're going to need to sail by to pick them up!
The Investment Bank also takes care of loans to players and earns profits from their interest payments. Players can speculate against large cash reserves at the Investment Bank by offering up some of their slower-selling containers.
In playtests the Investment Bank can have performance as varied as the economy itself. Sometimes the brokers are a powerhouse, gobbling up cash and containers at a torrid pace. Other times the bank will struggle as players grind the best possible deals out of the brokers.The fate of the bank makes for a storyline in itself, and for gameplay purposes it ensures an entity which is always available for interaction, even when playing with the minimal number of players.
For purists, yes, the Investment Bank can be easily removed. In fact, some players will find that alternating games with and without the Investment Bank will makes a fun economic experiment!
This project is really difficult and expensive to produce.The Container ship sculpts are the largest ever attempted in a boardgame!
Needless to say, this requires special and very expensive tooling, not to mention all the other large and amazing components Mercury games is seeking to create.
Unfortunately every time a special item is added to the project for a smaller group of people, the cost for everyone increases dramatically.
In order to keep the project price reasonable, Mercury Games focused on delivering the highest-possible quality game rather than try to ask more money for additional stretch-goals.
This preorder is live on three different platforms, and all of these contribute to the total ammount collected. US and Canada backers may purchase their copy of Container: 10th Anniversary Jumbo Edition respectively on Kickstarter and BoardGame Bliss site.
Thanks to its huge resin miniatures, Container: 10th Anniversary Jumbo Edition is very heavy. This aspect influence shipping costs.
Shipping to Italy costs 6.12 euros. For other countries, the shipping cost will be shown after clicking the "Checkout” button on the cart.
Shipment cost examples (there are different options, the cheapest solution is shown):
- Spain, France, UK, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Norway: 10.95 euros (pickup at UPS access point), around 20 euros with courier option.
- Portugal: 24.67 euros (courier)
- Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Brazil: 39.20 euros (postal service)
Retailer shipping cost depends on order size and is shown on the Shipping cost page. Games will be shipped from as soon the publisher Mercury games will provide us the games.
Container: 10th Anniversary Jumbo Edition is produced and published by Mercury Games, for any problem, complains and suggestions about the game you can use the contact form on website www.mercurygames.com.
Giochix manages the GS preorder and shipments in Europe (and rest of the world excluding US and Canada).
Components. Game specifications and components are to be considered indicative of the final product and may be changed during final production.
Project pages. Sometime there can be small vartiations between the pages of this project in the different languages. In that case, refer to the project’s English page.
Order Canceling. An order can be canceled/refunded before the end of the campaign by clicking on the specific button in the order page or within 15 days from the order date by sending us an e-mail with the specific request. Besides these options, the order is considered as valid and is not cancelable/refundable.
Orders paid only partially will be awaiting full payment before being processed and shipped.
Shipments. We ship by postal service or by supported courier (UPS, GLS, SDA, etc.)
We reserve the right to separate the contents of an order into different shipments or to merge the contents of different orders in the same shipment to improve the shipment's delivery speed and any required logistics management. If this happens, there will not be any additional costs to you as a customer (nor right to any refund).
Shipments made by courier or by insured postal service can be tracked and are considered insured.
Shipments made by the postal service are not insured and cannot be traced. While rare it is also possible that a package may be lost (0.1-1%). The insurance option for postal services costs an additional 3 euros.
Courier shipments may take about 1-2 days for Italy, 3-6 days for EU/US/Canada and 1-2 weeks for the rest of the world. Postal service shipments require about 1-2 weeks for Italy, 2-7 weeks for EU/US/Canada and 4-8 weeks for the rest of the world. Please note that the postal service in the same case can be slow and may suffer several weeks of additional delay. This happens very rarely but it is still a possibility and is out of our control. If you would like a faster delivery, or wish to avoid any risk of a long delay in the arrival of the package, please use a courier service.
Courier shipment insures against package loss, destruction and package damage. Postal service insurance insures against package loss or destruction. Insurance requires a customer claim to be made when the package is delivered. Ask the postman.
If the game failed to arrive because of your mistake (wrong address, recipient absent, not picking up at courier/postal warehouse, etc.), you will have to pay an additional shipping/warehousing cost for us to re-send/re-deliver your game. This cost will also include the return costs of the game. On the other hand, if the error is ours, we will send it again to you at our expense. If the package is lost or destroyed, we will reship it at our expense only if it was insured.
Important: Please note that we will not reship any game without first having investigated what happened to the first shipment. This can be processeed quickly through the courier service option, but may require an additional 1-5 weeks through the postal service.
We will no longer accept complaints related to the shipments of items of this campaign (package damaged, lost or missing contents) after 6 months from the date of shipment.
If you live outside of the European Community, custom's taxes may be added. This usually doesn't happen for boardgames; however, please check your country's rules and regulations as this aspect will not be our responsibility. (ver 16)
