For-Ex II: She Made Another One

For-Ex II: She Made Another One is exactly what it sounds like: a second game of currency trading designed by Amabel Holland. Players invest, divest, and trade currencies which only have value relative to one another. As in the original For-Ex game, currency values are tracked using tokens on a display, and futures contracts are entered into a contract queue whose resolution also serves as a game timer. That queue is longer, however, and the game is pacier.

Players begin the game with a hand of identical action tokens. When you take an action, you spend the relevant token into a pool. Taking the Resolve action allows you to refill your hand with the leftmost markers in the pool. Soon players will have very different hands and capabilities, and the decision to Resolve Contracts depends as much on the contents of the actions pool as it does the next item in the Contract Queue.

The investment market is divided into two rows, and an Invest action will invest in and remove the leftmost currency in one of them. You can invest in a second leftmost currency, so long as it is a different currency. Canny and well-timed plays can ensure the next player to invest only gets one bite of that apple instead of two, and the randomized volatility of this market makes for a more dynamic, less deterministic game.

Dry-erase markers remove the need for money cards and investment certificates, speeding the whole thing along and allows the publisher to offer the game at half the price of the original. The first For-Ex was one of the first games Holland designed, and in a career spanning over a decade she’s learned quite a lot. She applies those lessons here, resulting in a sprightlier game.

—description from the publisher