Furnace - First Play!

18th October 2022

It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.

​The Victorian era; a time of expansion, industrial and otherwise. Become a capitalist! Create your business and run your production line.

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What's in a game?

• Cards: Furnace features several types of cards.
  • Capitalist cards: There are 5 of these, each one is unique and as well as an illustration of the capitalist in question also feature a way in which the owning player can 'break' a rule. Capitalist indeed!
  • Start-up cards: There are also 5 of these starter cards. Each one contains a illustration of a factory, above and below the picture it displays the card's abilities, this will always include the ability to gain (And use.) upgrade tokens.
    Abilities on cards may include production of a certain resource, or a process such as converting one resource into another or selling a resource for money.
  • Company cards: These form the bulk of the game's cards and they are double-sided.
    Basic side: At the top of each company card it will show a production or process ability, this is the compensation effect, more on this later. Next will a picture, usually of a factory, industrial plant or some such.
    Finally, below the picture will be 2 lines of abilities. The 2nd line will be 'greyed out' as it is 'inactive' at this time.
    Upgraded side: The other side of a company card is more or less identical to the basic side except for the compensation effect which is now gone and the 2nd ability line which is now coloured in and 'active', (As a result of the upgrade.)
• Round tracking tiles: A pair of tiles are used to represent and track the game's four rounds with a sort of replica cog-and-teeth mechanism.
• Tokens: Furnace has several types of tokens.
  • Resource tokens: There 3 types of resources in Furnace which are represented by shaped wooden tokens.
    Coal: Little black cubes are used to represent coal, OK, cubes are not very coal shaped items but they are little wooden cubes.
    Iron : These blue-grey rectangular cuboid tokens sort of iron-bar shaped and used to represent iron.
    Oil: Yellow octagonal cylinders are used to represent oil or more accurately, drums of oil. 
  • Bidding tokens: There are 4 differently sized bidding tokens in each of the 4 player colours.
    These are discs number from 1-4, additionally, the higher the number, the larger the disc.
    Neutral bidding token: There is also a 'colourless' bidding token that is only used when a particular capitalist card is in play.
  • Player marker token: For each player colour there is a uniquely shaped and illustrated card token. Black gets a top hat (Very dapper.), red gets a wallet (Displays of wealth are so uncouth!), white gets a pair of white gloves (Very suave.) and yellow gets a pocket watch.
  • Money: Circular card tokens are used to represent money which comes in various colours/denominations.
  • Upgrade tokens: There are also circular card tokens. They show a spanner inside a cog.

Component quality ranges from good to very good in Furnace. Cards and card tokens are the pretty standard good quality most games now have while all the wooden tokens are solid and good quality. The bidding tokens in particular standout as really chunky, tactile discs.

Artwork is good throughout the game with a nicely illustrated buildings and businesses.
It makes good use of a varied and colourful palette which helps to differentiate between the company cards which depict a variety of factories or offices and warehouses etc, which despite all being different sort of look a little samey.
Portraits used for capitalist cards are equally good quality.

The game's iconography looks a little daunting but in practice is straightforward and fairly practical. There are essentially 5 resources depicted and some basic mathematics mostly saying how to turn one resource into another and how may times it can be done.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Players: Give each player the following.
  Capitalist cards: Shuffle the capitalist cards into a face-down deck and randomly deal 1 to each player.
  ​Start-up cards: Next, shuffle the start-up cards into a face-down deck and deal 1 to each player. Start-up cards also determine a player's starting resources.
  Tokens: Give each player the player token and bidding discs in their colour.
• Company cards: Take all the company cards and shuffle them into a deck with the basic side face-up.
• First player: determine a starting player.

On to play
Note: The rules described below use the 'advanced' variant rules, there's a reason for this which will be discussed further down.
The goal in Furnace is to acquire the most money by the end of the game.
Furnace is played over 4 rounds. In each round players will be bidding for company cards then adding them to their personal production lines. Next they will run their production to produce goods and ultimately generate money which is what wins the game.
The game uses a normal turn order during auction, with the first player bidding first before bidding moving to the player on their left. The production phase can be played out simultaneously.

• Auction phase: During this phase players will bid on the available company cards.
  • Deal company cards: At the start of each auction phase, the top card on the deck is shuffled back into the deck (To stop 'canny' players from knowing what the first card will be!), then deal 6-8 cards depending on player count with the basic side still face-up in a row. Placing them in a row can be important during the auction resolution.
  • Bidding: The first player bids for one of the company cards by placing any one of their bidding discs on the card they are bidding for.
  • Next bidder: Once the active player has placed their bidding disc, play progresses to the player on the left who can then make their bid.
    • Restrictions: There are however, some restrictions to bidding.
      No same colour: No 2 discs of the same colour may be placed on the same card. Thus, a player can only bid once on a card.
      No same number: If a card already has a bidding disc on it, no other player may bid on that card with a disc that has the same value.
  • Resolve auction: Once all players have placed all their discs, the bids on each card - going from left-to-right - are resolved, this  consists of 2 phases.
    • Highest bid wins: Whoever played the disc with the highest value wins the card, which they will add to their production line in the next phase. If a player wins more than 1 company card during the phase, they are all added to their production line one-by-one.
    • Compensation: It's not all bad for players that put a losing bidding token on a card, instead they get the compensation effect.
      The compensation effect is listed at the top of a company card, it might be produce resources or process them.
      Production: If it's resource production, the losing player(s) gain an amount of that resource multiplied by the value of their failed bid.
      E.g., if a player failed a bid with a 2-value bid on a card which has a compensation effect of 1 oil barrel, they would gain 2 oil barrels.
      If someone failed with a 3-value bid on card with 2 coal as compensation effect, they would gain 6 coal!
      Process: ​Alternatively, a compensation effect may include a process. In this case, the losing player may use that effect as many times as the value of their losing bid.
      Thus a player with a losing bid of 2 and a compensation effect process that allows 2 coal to be turned into 1 iron can use this process twice. Note: This must be resolved immediately, if a player does not have the required resources to complete a process when the auction on it is being resolved, they cannot resolve it later.
  • End of phase: Once all auctions on all company cards have been resolved, play progresses to the next phase.
• Production phase: During this phase players will add their newly acquired cards to their production line. Then players will run through their production line.
  Unlike the previous phase, players can choose to resolve their production phases one at a time or simultaneously.
  • Production line: First, a production line needs to be defined. A production line is a row of cards that run from left-to-right. The order of cards in a production line can never be changed.
  • Add cards to production line: Each player now add their newly acquired cards to their production line.
    Positioning: Cards maybe added to the start or end of a production line. They may also be placed in between 2 other cards, so long as the relative positioning of cards already played is not changed.
  • Run production: Once a player has added all the new cards to their production line, they must run it with the following stipulations.
    Left-to-right: All production lines start with their leftmost card and work through to their rightmost card.
    A card must be fully resolved (Or as much as a player can or wants to.) before the next card is addressed.
    Top-to-bottom: If card has multiple abilities - which is likely - they will be displayed in lines on the card. Abilities are resolved individually, going from top-to-bottom. An ability must be fully resolved (Or as much as wanted or can be.) before the ability below is resolved. Furthermore, if an ability can be used multiple times, they must all be completed before moving on.
    Upgrades: If a card that has already been used in a production is upgraded, it's new ability cannot be used. If the upgraded card is further down the line, then it's new ability can be used.
• End of round: Once all players have finished running their production lines, the round is over.
  Play progresses to the next round. Advance the round marker and begin the next auction phase.

Endgame
Once 4 rounds have been completed, the game is over.
Players calculate how much money they have accumulated.

Monies are tallied, most money wins

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Overall
Furnace packs a lot of gameplay options into what is in essence quite a small package. The game consists of a deck of cards, some tokens and that's it

Even so, each of the main 2 phases provide players with interesting and meaningful decisions.

There are 2 mechanics to the auctioning and both are unique and present players with unusual options and interactions with other players.
Using bidding discs instead of money in auctions is an interesting proposition. First it means players only have 4 bids they can make and they can't re-bid on the same card if they get outbid. Players will need to determine what's important to them and bid appropriately. Turn order can make a difference here. A player going first who bids their 4-value disc on a card guarantees they will get it. Going later or last in bidding is not necessarily a bad thing to do, it allows a player to see what opponents are going for and bid accordingly.
There's definitely a higher level of play at work here from watching what other players look like they need and potentially taking it or denying it to them. Hate bidding I guess?

Which brings me to the other auction mechanic; compensation. Firstly, compensation works as sort of balancing mechanism, if a player loses a bid, they may still get something for their losing bid. Secondly, it's a mechanic that can potentially be exploited by players to gain resources quickly. A player make take the risk of making a lower value bid on a card, hoping to be outbid for the compensation, of course this can backfire and they may end up with a card they don't want to play.

Talking of playing cards, the next interesting mechanic how cards are played during the production phase.
I'll start by saying that whenever we played Furnace it was always using the 'advanced' variant 'production line' rules. By default the game does not use a production line, instead players just activate cards in any order they choose. In my opinion this makes the game less engaging.
I can't stress enough that the variant rules are vital to what makes Furnace a good game.
Having to think about where to place company cards is compelling and intriguing. Frequently cards will be useful both at the start and end of a production line forcing players to think hard make meaningful decisions in order to optimise their production lines.
Additionally, it's genuinely gratifying to run a production line that has been put together efficiently and ends up generating lots of cash.

Furnace is a game with a quick play time. In fact I found that the game's 4 rounds came to a conclusion all too soon, still having the urge to continue building my engine and that's a pretty good sign of a game I enjoy.
It's also a sign of good design balance; having a 4 round limit forces players to be as ruthlessly efficient as possible with little room for unnecessary moves. 4 round limits are something I've seen in other engine building games too.

So in conclusion; Furnace is pretty easy to learn, has a fast playtime but still manages to present players will a variety options both in auctioning and engine building. If these styles of games interest you, then Furnace is definitely a game to try.
I found it a engaging and entertaining experience.