Fair Trade: A Game of Competitive Coffee Cartels

Fair Trade: A Game of Competitive Coffee Cartels is a light economic game simulating supply and demand in the fair trade market. Players make contracts with growers, sell coffee to their market, and improve their operation in order to satisfy the cravings of addicts the world over.

On each turn a player does the following:

1. Draw three coffee cubes from a bag containing equal amounts of coffee cubes. Add them to the demand meters in the center of the board.
2. "Make contracts" with growers from the four corners of the world by moving each grower marker up or down on the contract grid in front of you.
3. The growers then grow coffee. Each player draws one cube for each region he/she has contracts with. The amount of contracts made for that region as well as the type of cube drawn determines how much coffee you get.
4. The player has the option to advertise specific types of coffee, thus potential increasing demand for their stock.
5. Players then may sell their coffee, making more for coffees in higher demand. Selling coffee reduces demand for that coffee in their region.

Because there is a set amount of cubes in the bag, players must balance supply and demand to stay on top.

Fair Trade: A Game of Competitive Coffee Cartels is the first in a line of "Green" games by I-55 Games (a non-profit publisher aimed to provide workplace re-entry training in St. Louis). These games are all hand manufactured and made with almost entirely re-purposed material.