Supply Chain the card game
You survived the great war and have come home to run the family business. You have contracts that supply your business but you realize that real success comes from owning the means of production. So you purchase companies that produce what your business needs. Then later this allows you to expand into new markets. But be careful, your properties need to be linked together or your growing business empire will fall apart.
As you can see Supply Chain the Card Game has many aspects. It has purchasing, resource management, tile placement, revenue building, and a puzzle factor. You want to add businesses and properties into your growing organization and most cards have supply requirements. Example: a Fish Cannery needs fish and cans.
Now you might start out by simply buying a Fish and a Cans contract to supply your business, but contacts have no Victory Points. So you work to get a Harbor to supply you with Fish and a Sheet Metal Co to supply you with Cans. We call this a "block." And you can have blocks within blocks.
But remember, your businesses must be linked to all its suppliers, and after a while, your sprawling business grows out of control. Many games out there have the same deck-building or worker-placement dynamic. Supply Chain has a unique facet where the properties and resources must be linked together, and properties can share resources, if you can link them properly. Often this game can be like those old sliding-tile puzzle games.
You start with a Main Office card, and you can buy more offices if you need to.
And you also start with 2 Special Offices and each has its own special unique trait. Some examples are increasing your hand limit, or adding to your revenue, or multiplying your victory points. Or this one...
Lastly, you begin the game with one of eight different unique Starter Businesses from which your vast business conglomeration will expand.
You can purchase Vehicles and Contracts, but Contracts are only temporary, just to get you started. Adding more properties to your business dynasty will increase your Victory Points.
You will spend most of your time building your business empire, but if one of your competitors starts to grow too fast, you can try to slow them down by inflicting a Derelict property on them.
The derelict property forever links and locks to one of their properties and can never be removed.
Resource management:
We all like games with a wide variety of resources, but most board games or card games never seem to have all that many. So let's do a comparison with popular games out there.
Scythe (4): oil, wood, metal, and food.
Gaia Project (4): ore, credits, knowledge, and QICs.
Everdell (4): berry, resin, twig, and pebble.
Imperial Settlers (4): food, wood, stone, and gold.
Civilization (5): wheat, silk, incense, iron, and uranium.
Settlers of Catan (5): wool, grain, lumber, brick, and ore.
Brass Birmingham (5): cotton, beer, pottery, coal, and iron.
Concordia (5): bricks, wheat, tools, wine, and textiles.
Sheriff of Nottingham (5): apples, bread, cheese, chickens, and contraband.
Puerto Rico (6): corn, sugar, coffee, tobacco, indigo, and stone.
Agricola (6): wheat, vegetables, reeds, wood logs, stone, and bricks.
Wingspan (6): fish, berries, worms, wheat, rodents, and nectar.
Terraforming Mars (7): steel, titanium, plants, energy, heat, animals, and microbes.
7 Wonders (8): wood, bricks, ore, stone, paper, cloth, pottery, and military.
Clans of Caledonia (9): milk, wool, cheese, grain, bread, whisky, cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane.
Hungry Hippos (1): marbles.
Chutes and Ladders (2): chutes, ladders.
And Supply Chain beats them all with 19 resources and 4 vehicles.
Money: coin tokens:
And what would a business-enterprise game be without money? For money the game uses coin tokens that are based on current and vintage US coins.
The coins are 3/4" paperboard tokens, but it is my desire to find a metal coin company that will make real metal versions that can be bought separately. This is something I am working on.
GAME CONTENTS:
6 main office cards
9 misc office cards
27 special office cards
82 property cards
58 contract cards
16 vehicle cards
6 derelict property cards
6 business plan cards
66 coin tokens, 6 misc tokens
1 rules booklet
Of the 210 cards in the deck, over 150 are unique. All of the office and property cards are unique. Don't worry if this many cards seems a little overwhelming because if you are playing with 1-3 players, then you use the Short Deck where you remove a little over half of the property cards.
The game can have 1-6 players and there is a co-op mode. Game time is 1-3 hours depending on if you use the Short Deck or Full Deck. The solo game only takes 20-30 minutes. Ages 10 and up. For a better explanation of the game and rules please go to:
Official rules
When you play solo it is like the card game Solitaire. You get 15 random properties and you try to knit them together for the highest score you can get. I will start a facebook group for people to post photos of their best Supply Chain empire.
The Kickstarter campaign had some exclusive cards and coins. These will be in your game until we run out.
To the deck will be added the 10 victory point Department Store. It will add prestige to your business empire and double-digit VP. And we will add this variant $50 coin token to the bank based on the 1860 Indian Head penny.
The incredibly helpful and versatile Factory will be added to the deck. Most of your properties supply only 1 product, but not the Factory. It can create a variety of products depending on the input. And added to the bank is this variant $500 coin token that is an homage to the liberty head silver peace dollars of the 1920s.
The 11 victory point Fancy Restaurant will be the finest addition to the deck. It will be the crowning jewel in your business empire. And added to the bank is this variant $1,000 coin token which was influenced by the walking liberty silver dollars of the early 20th century.
Finally, to the deck we will add the dream-dashing Nuisance Property. Whereas all other Derelict Properties only have 1 link, this property has all 4 links, and locks to any and all properties it touches. It is sure to annoy and frustrate your competitor's business schemes. And we will also add this $100 coin token to the bank inspired by the historic 1914 buffalo nickel.
Ukraine connection:
In August of 2021, I met Alexander T (fiverr ID aleksimmortal) on fiverr dot com. He is a graphic designer that lives in Donetsk, Ukraine. And over the next 4 months he helped me put together nearly all the cards for my game, Supply Chain. He is a great guy and a pleasure to work with. I told him that if my game goes well, we will work on a german-language and russian-language version of the game.
After the Russian invasion started I emailed him and he told me was okay. I told him that if he can get to America, he and his family is free to stay with me, but he said he is okay for now, and I check in with him now and then. I hope to heaven nothing bad happens to Alex, and that we can work together on future projects.