Upgrading Original Acquire
BGG user Paul Jefferies loves upgrading his eurogames. Here the story of how he upgraded his original copy of Acquire:
This was one of the first non-children’s games I ever played…and it was also the first game I ever upgraded! Using flat black tiles to represent hotel chains didn’t feel right; I wanted them to look like hotels. As I said, I was just starting out so the only game I knew with hotels in it was Monopoly. I wrote to Waddington’s Games and asked whether I could buy ten sets of hotels. A delightful lady sent me a letter back saying, “No, I couldn’t buy them” – but whoever she was, she very kindly included with her response ten sets of hotels! It was a very kind gesture and one I’ve seen repeated over the years. Most game companies, I’ve found, prove to be very helpful when it comes to getting hold of extra pieces.
Now that I had the hotels I had to figure out how to put the grid references on them. I tried writing it in permanent marker, but the results looked horrible! I did some investigating and discovered that Letraset (what we all used before desktop publishing came along) made adhesive lettering in different sizes. I ordered some through the local art store and it worked a treat. I ended up with the rather pleasing hotels that you see in the pictures. Of course, this was before any 3-D reprint of the game by Avalon Hill, Wizards of the Coast, or Schmidt Spiele.
My final tweak to the game was to draw tiny pictures of the various hotel corporations and stick them on the corporation tiles. As the picture reveals, I also had to cut a “V” in the bottom of the tiles so they would sit on top the hotels. The 1999 Avalon Hill remake of Acquire was outstanding, but I still prefer my original upgraded set. [Note: To keep the tiles secret from other players, they simply need to be turned on their side.]