Capstone Games Pipeline Board Game

Product Information

The most unavoidable Alaska board games are the many official Alaska Monopoly variants, including Monopoly: Alaska Edition, Monopoly: Alaska’s Iditarod, and Monopoly Junior: Trek Alaska. Other Alaska-themed board games have built upon the Monopoly design, including Alaska-Opoly, Fairbanks-Opoly, and the Game of Palmer Alaska. Several of the Monopoly-style Alaska games have been updated or reprinted. It doesn’t have a published solo set of rules. However, an excellent automa has been created by John Koch Pipeline is an economic euro for 2-4 players and plays in about 30 minutes per player. It plays well at all counts. Gameplay Overview: Tanks – These are used to store the oil you buy and refine. Each player has a player board on which to arrange their refinery and these can sometimes be worth money at the end of the game. Pipeline is an amazing experience, especially considering this was designer Ryan Courtney’s first game. Though it might seem dry and complicated at first glance, after a few turns even new players will understand what they should be doing and be grumbling about the fact that they don’t have enough time to do it all.

The pipeline building is its own kind of spatial puzzle, as you’ll likely start by focusing on a certain color of pipe but need to have options if the market for that type of oil becomes flooded. Not to mention, having the ability to upgrade different types of oil gives you a lot of flexibility in actions as you can buy and sell different types of oil at different markets. How does this work? Well, there are 3 varieties of oil in the game (Teal, Orange, Silver) that correspond to the 3 colours of pipe, and 4 grades of oil (Crude, Low, Medium, High). During setup, you will randomly assign the length of pipe needed to refine oil from one level to the next. As the Klondike and subsequent gold rushes faded, so did the production of board games attempting to tap into the mystique of Alaska. The decades-long lull in Alaska-themed gaming mirrored the economic doldrums and stagnant development of Alaska, especially between World War I and II. Of course, the nostalgia for the gold rush is still well represented in modern Alaska board games, including the 1991 Alaskan Gold Rush, 1992 Klondike: Trivia Game on the Yukon, 2014 Lost Valley: The Yukon Gold Rush 1896, and the 2017 Klondike Rush.As with nearly every other aspect of life in Alaska, the discovery and exploitation of oil changed the nature of Alaska board games. In particular, the debate over the environmental impact of what would become the Trans Alaska Pipeline, which intensified in the early 1970s, influenced a new wave of Alaska-themed board games.

Amassed with an incredibly complex and inefficient system of refineries, the government has felt the severe pressures of worldwide demand and the ever-increasing global standards for refinement. Run your pipe network—Refine oil based on the length of the pipe and the type of oil you have on hand.

We are only halfway through, but 2019 is shaping up to be one of the better years for new board game releases in recent memory. Today we are looking at one of the games that is leading that charge, Pipeline, which sold out at Origins 2019 and finished atop the BGG hotness at the convention. Unable to keep up with demand, the government has only one option: privatizing the oil industry. This is where you come in.

Part of a continuing weekly series on local history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story. The refinement of oil has long been part of the government-controlled energy sector. Amassed with an incredibly complex and inefficient system of refineries, the government has felt the severe pressures of worldwide demand and the ever-increasing global standards for refinement. Unable to keep up with demand, the government has only one option: privatizing the oil industry.Oil is not the only thing you’ll need. Pipelines are important too. They come in three colours; each refining oil barrels of the same colour. Amazingly each of the 130+ tiles are unique, which presents you with an interesting spacial puzzle. Each oil colour will require different lengths of pipe to be refined from each stage to the next (crude - low grade - mid grade - high grade). Do you build big in one colour so you can refine a barrel all the way from crude to high grade, or multiple pipelines that can refine multiple barrels at once? By the late 1930s, Alaska advocates openly begged for a new wave of settlers that might promote renewed investment in the territorial infrastructure and thus spur the economy. A 1940 Seward Gateway editorial declared, “With the coming of more people it will be found that insistent demands for more roads and other improvements will grow less. They will not be necessary as they will come naturally with the advent of population.” Anthony Dimond, Alaska’s non-voting representative to Congress from 1933 to 1945, was more direct in a 1939 letter. He wrote, “Alaska needs people,” and that development required the territory’s population to “be in accord with its vast area and unquestionably large natural resources.”