Container (board game)

Container is a board game for three to five players that simulates an economy centered on the shipping industry. It was first published in 2007 by Valley Games, Inc., with a special edition released in 2018 and a more compact version by Allplay in 2023. The game was designed solely by Franz-Benno Delonge, with original 2007 edition artwork by Mike Doyle and 2018 special edition artwork by Kwanchai Moriya. Players take on roles in the shipping business, handling miniature intermodal containers through production, purchase, sale, transport, and storage, all with the aim of maximizing profits. The rules naturally introduce economic concepts like supply and demand, cash flow, return on investment, and resource efficiency.

In gameplay, each player owns a shipyard with a production facility and a ship that can carry up to five containers. There are five types of goods, distinguished only by color and represented by small shipping containers. Initially, a player can produce one container per action, and they may spend actions and money to expand production capacity. When producing, the player pays a union fee to the player on their right and sets a price between 1 and 4 currency units for the container in their factory store. Another player (not the producer) can then use an action to buy some or all of those containers, placing them in their own dockside store at a price between 2 and 6 currency units. Players start with dockside storage for only one container and must spend actions and money to build more warehouses.

Each player’s ship begins in the open sea. A player can move their ship to another player’s dockyard (but not their own) to buy containers from that player’s dockside store. They can also move to a small, industrializing island. When arriving at the island, a blind auction occurs among the other players. The player who triggered the auction decides whether to sell the containers to the highest bidder (receiving the bid amount plus an equal government subsidy from the bank, while the buyer places the containers on the island) or to buy them themselves at the highest bid (placing the containers on the island themselves). This creates a threefold difference in the highest bid between the two choices.

The game ends when two types of containers run out from the predetermined supply. At that point, containers on the island are scored.