As part of my playing through new games, Furnace came off the shelf and hit the table. This game from Hobby World and Arcane Wonders is an engine building and drafting game. The mechanisms are not complex, but does that work for the game? Is there enough going on in Furnace that makes it a fun time? Now these are just my initial impressions of Furnace so join me as I try and figure that out.

How to Play Furnace

Furnace is an engine building game, like I mentioned, that is played over four rounds. And each round has two parts because you aren’t just building an engine, you need to get the cards for the engine. To do that, you are doing an open auction or bidding process. There are some unique rules to the auction that we’ll talk about in the next section.

At the end of the auction you get cards and resources for your engine. You put the cards into an order that when it fires off makes the most sense. You collect your resources and then spend those in the engine to turn out money. The money you get is purely your points, the more profitable that you are, the more points you get and you win the game.

That’s the simple version of it. But there is more going on in Furnace to talk about. So let’s dive deeper into three areas.

The Auction

The first spot is the auction in Furnace. Honestly, probably the most unique part of the game. And the part of the game that I think with two players, which I played at, is just okay. I’ll talk about the mechanism they use to balance it in a bit with two players.

But the system is simple. Players have chips to bid with, or tokens I guess a better way of putting it. The tokens are one through four. You play one at a time on the cards that you’d want to add to your engine. There are specific rules on where you can play, though, you only are allowed to play on one where you haven’t played. And one where that number isn’t yet, aka. no ties. So it offers some strategy, do you keep back your four to steal something late? Or do you go early to lock in something you want or need?

The other element is that you still get something if you lose the bid. Each card has symbols on the bottom that you use for your engine. On the top, however, is something that people who lost the bid get to use. It might be gaining resources. Or it might be the ability to change resources into rarer resources. And you get to do that top action the number of times equal to the chip you put down. So if it’s gain two coal and you played a three, you get six coal. The person who won the bid just gets the card, no resource bonus.

Two player Cavet

Now quick about two player. In two player there is a dummy player who randomly places out their numbers. The downside to this is that it’s random. So they might steal a spot you really want with a four. They always bid last, but it can mess things up. And because it’s random it makes the auction less strategic.

The Engine Building

Now let’s talk about how Furnace does it’s engine building. I think that, again it’s simple. You run through the cards that you got in whatever order you want to. Basically you spend some time after each auction phase to get your engine in the right order. When you feel like it’s good, you kick it off and you start gaining and spending resources.

I like this element of the game, and the complexity of the engine is not too high. It’s basically trade resources for another resource, rarer one. Gain resources, or sell the resources. That is it, and I like that about the game. Because, if there is too much more that you could do with your engine, it’d bog down the game.

Even with that said, I would be somewhat careful who I play this with. Someone who is very analysis paralysis prone is going to find themselves shuffling little things and calculating little points just to make sure it is perfectly optimized. A timer would be an option to help with that, but it’s not part of the game, naturally. It shouldn’t affect most people, the game isn’t that complex, but it will some, and might make the game feel too slow to some people who just sit there.

Owner and Starting Card

Finally two things to talk about the owner and the starting card. These are two things that make you a bit unique. The starting card is pretty similar for everyone. What the card has is basically the same for everyone. You gain and upgrade token, you can convert a resource to points, and you can use your upgrade token. The upgrade token is simply that you can flip cards in your engine to make them better. Adding a second ability to trigger.

The owners, which might not be the right term, are more interesting in terms of giving unique game play. They provide you with a special power that means you can do something unique to your character. In my game play, I could spend two coal to repeat a card. My opponent could upgrade without the upgrade token. They aren’t game breaking, but they let you break the rules in interesting ways, if you can utilize them well.

Final Thoughts on Furnace

I like Furnace. After an initial play, I believe that I gave it an 8 on Board Game Geek. So I like the game a lot. But it isn’t without a concern to me. But let’s talk about what I like about it first. And I think the most interesting part is the auction. I love the strategy that I could see, even with the randomness of the dummy player in two player mode. I ideally win a card with my four and three for my engine. But if I don’t, well, then I gain a lot of resources, hopefully.

And I think the strategy around which chip to bid when is interesting. Because it is possible to get blocked out of a spot you want because someone plays down the same number. So you need to weigh that out as to when you guarantee you get something. Or when you hope to sneak a three onto a card and be able to keep it. Or I want to try, in a three player game, holding back a two and seeing about stealing a bid.

But let’s talk about my concern. It’s not a negative, and they already have helped with it some. There is an expansion for the game, I own it, but I haven’t played with it yet. But my concern is that that the variety in cards is low. That said, too much variety and it would cause analysis paralysis to run rampant. So they need to balance the variety so I feel like I’m building a unique engine each time. But so much that it locks up the game. And the expansion adds a few more cards for that variety.

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