Venture
Fascinating Game of Finance and Big Business
3M Company - 1970
2-6 Players
Like most of the games in the Gamette line, Venture is played with two decks of cards. The first deck is the "Corporation" deck and contains cards from each of six different industries (Aerospace, Automotive, Chemical, Electronics, Petroleum and Steel). Each card contains from one to five letters (from the range A-F) and a value from 8-24 million (varying depending on the number of letters). The second deck is the "Resource" deck and contains Capital, Proxy Fight and Profit Cards.
At the start of the game five corporations are placed face up in the center of the table. Each player is given seven Resource cards. Each player in turn may purchase Corporations from the center of the table using Capital cards.
If a player has two or more corporations from different industries that have at least one letter in common, they may be combined to form a "Conglomerate". As many corporations as desired can be placed into one Conglomerate as long as they are all from different industries and have at least one letter in common.
A player can use a Proxy Fight card to purchase a Corporation belonging to another player. Only the top card in a Conglomerate can be taken over this way.
When the player has made all of the purchases they wish to they replace any purchased Corporations from the center of the table with new cards from the Corporation deck and draw two new cards from the Resource deck. Play then passes to the next player.
Whenever a Profit card is turned up a scoring round occurs. Points are scored based on the number of Corporations in a Conglomerate and the number of letters in common with all of the cards in the Conglomerate. When the last Corporation has been purchased a final scoring round is performed. The points from all of the scoring rounds are totaled and the player with the highest total is the winner. (As the rules put it, "The others are simply multi-millionaires").
This is a surprisingly complex game. The shifting availability of Corporations and Resources as well as the always possible chance of losing a key Corporation to a Proxy card and the random appearance of scoring rounds makes this an extremely interesting game. There is a great deal of interaction and through skillful use of Proxy cards and reorganizations a player can come from behind at any time. A very good game and one of my favorites from the Gamette line.
3 comments on Venture:
I've had this game for over 30 years. I'm glad that my children are still able to enjoy it; the cards and box are still in excellent condition. We've just resurrected it after a couple of years "lost" on our shelves. It was missing the directions, so I was delighted to find them here. Although we remembered the rules for the most part, we were uncertain of the number of Corporation and Source cards dealt. Turns out, we guessed wrong! Thanks so much for making this available!
My children joined me for Christmas Eve and my 29 year old son suddenly described a great game we had played when he was younger but could not remember the name or if I still had it. I knew exactly what he was talking about, went to my game cupboard and found Venture! The Official Rules were old and faded, so I was so glad to find them on your site. Thanks for the memories!
You can find a pdf version of the rules at http://www.1stingames.com/rules/venture/index.pdf