Game Review – Wildcatters

Wildcatters
Number of Players	3 - 4
Play Time	120 Minutes
Ages	12 Years and up

Wildcatters is an interesting take on a simulation of the oil industry.  Instead of taking just one facet of the industry such as the search of oil or the buying and selling of oil it takes a look at the entire industry from drilling to getting the product to market.

The players start the game by seeding the board with 3 drilling rigs, 2 trains, an oil tanker and a refinery based on 8 region cards that they are dealt.  They also star the game with 20 shares of stock and $10 Once this is done, the players then start taking their turns.  They start the turn by receiving $10 in cash.  During their turn, the player may purchase and place additional infrastructure items, open a well, transport oil and transport oil to the refineries.  The player can only do these actions in a single oil producing region or any non producing region.  The location is determined by taking one of eight region cards that are face up during their turn.  Other players my piggyback on some of these actions by giving the player that initiated the action some shares in their company.  If a refinery is full at the end of a player’s turn, the oil is placed in that region’s market. 

Points are scored in the game by having the most shares in each of the companies, and providing the most oil in a region during the first scoring round.  During the final scoring round the players get points for the same thing they got them for in the first round plus having the most money and bonus points for controlling wildcatter wells, and three or more refineries.

Wildcatters pieces and board

The quality of the game’s parts are very high particularly the cards which will hold up over many plays.  The part that I do not card for are the oil barrels.  The barrels are cylindrical in shape which makes them prone to rolling off the table if the table is uneven or bumped.  They are also slightly too big to fit on top of the pump jacks when they are placed on the board after an oil well is drilled.  To reduce the chance of lost parts it would have been better to make the hexagonal in shape.  Otherwise RASS Games did a good job in choosing the parts.

The key to high scores in this game is to be cooperative with the other players in the game.  You do not want to build up a region by yourself.  It will cost you a lot more time and money to do that.  Make sure to place your resources in regions where the other players are building up.  This will allow you to open your wells during their turn as well give you an opportunity to bid on wildcatter wells. 

The wildcatter wells are worth bonus victory points at the end of the game.  One of the strategies in the game is to capture as many wildcatter wells as possible because they can tip the balance in a game where the score is close.

Another strategy that is effective is to become the oil refiner in the game.  The oil refiner spends the first four rounds of the game placing their four remaining oil refineries into the underrepresented markets including the three markets without any oil production.  This will get them bonus points for each of the refinery they build beyond the first two.  It will also get them to be the majority stock holder in most of the other companies by the end of the game if they choose the stock they are paid in for refining well.  If the other players do not use their refineries they can also use the refineries themselves to gain region control for the areas where they have the refineries getting the victory points for themselves.

Most players will not use this strategy because of the initial expense in cash and stock.  In most cases you will need to take a loan to make the strategy work, but you will be able to pay it off by the end of the game.

I am not sure how the strategy works if two players do it but it does work quite well in both 3 and 4 player games.

If you like economic development games Wildcatters is definitely a game you should pick up.  It is very pricey, but the quality of the art, and components make the cost worth while.