Get the Goods

Alan Moon’s english version of his German Reibach & Company is a great little game in itself.  Several variants, however, improve it even more.

Get the Goods (Reibach & Co. in Germany) is an excellent card game from Alan Moon concerning the collecting of various commodities and attempting to score points by garnering majorities or secondary positions in as many of these commodities as possible.  The game contains many excellent little features and nuances which help elevate it to a level above that of most card games.

The American version of the game does include a rule which had become a fairly widespread variant wherein a player must use 2 of his 3 actions per turn in order to pick-up a Wild Card or a ‘x2’ card.  This does help ‘even things out’ if one is a bit too lucky to consistently have these cards available for pick-up on his turns. 

Richard Irving of California has suggested the following variant in order to eliminate any advantage players may have for playing first or second to begin the game:

The player(s) that go first have a slight edge since they may get an extra turn depending upon when the game ends.  I suggest giving the first player only one action on his first turn and the second player two actions on their first turn.  Thereafter every player gets the normal three actions.