Carnegie

In Carnegie, players take on the roll of business owners, building companies in the industrious and benevolent spirit of Andrew Carnegie.

At first, this seems like a tableau management game, and it is, but only as a means to a bigger end. While it seems complex at first, the core of the Game Centers around building projects and advancing transportation technology across the United States. Players must connect major cities by building projects in cities along the way, ultimately achieving between two and five city links nationwide. These city links act as a multiplier at the end of the game, in addition to the technology level, resulting in a final city connection score. There are other ways to score as well, but first let’s discuss the main actions.

Main Actions

To advance their transportation technology marker, players must spend study points, which they earn by taking the research and development action. When using this action, players spend study points provided by their departments to thematically research transportation technology, as well as conduct research and develop projects in four key industrial areas. Mechanically, players will pull their project tabs to reveal new reward spaces, and fill those spaces with discs. These discs represent projects that can now be played onto the map.

Players can place projects on the map by using the construction action. Workers in these departments can be placed on mission in one of the four map regions to pay resources and place a project from their project tab onto a city in that region.

Players need to research and develop to have the project discs available to place in cities to connect bigger cities and ultimately maximize scoring.

Managing the player board

The rest of the game takes place on the players company board. This is where players need to make sure they have adequate staff to place on missions and maximize actions. The player’s board is made up of departments that each correspond with one of the four available actions. When the start player chooses an action, all other players will activate those departments on their individual board in turn order, so it’s important to always have workers available in areas where players need to take actions. But how to get them there?

The Human Resources action allows players to move workers orthogonally within the company, from one department to an adjacent one for one movement point. Each active worker gives players three movement points to spend. When workers move, they lay down and must be paid the amount depicted on their workstation to stand up. This only happens at the END of a players turn. Once a worker stands up, they are active until they move or are sent on a mission.

Players boards start with basic departments, and if players would like to add additional departments, they can use the management action. This action is also a great way to earn resource cubes and money.

Turn structure

The game is played over 20 rounds, and players choose actions from the timeline. When a player picks an action, an event is triggered. The events are either specific to a region, or allow players to make donations. Region specific events allow players to bring workers on missions back to their player board lobby and earn income based on their position on the transportation track as well as their rewards for building various projects.

Donations are worth end game victory points, and represent Carnegie’s philanthropic endeavors.

Our thoughts

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