The Estates

The ruthless negotiation board game The Estates was originally designed by German game designer Karl-Heinz Schmiel. It was later published in English by Z-Man Games, bringing its brutal financial mechanics to a wider international audience.

In The Estates, players take turns investing in a dubious, multi-story building project by purchasing building blocks, roofs, and permits to maximize their financial returns. The game is famous for its ruthless negotiation, allowing players to sabotage opponents by adding negative-value floors to their properties before the roof is placed.

The game unfolds over exactly three rounds, and players calculate their scores based on the completed buildings when a roof is placed on the 9th to 16th floor. If a player owns the majority of the floors in a completed building, they score the points indicated on the roof, but owning floors with negative values will drag down their total financial returns.

Yes, The Estates is widely considered a highly take-that and ruthlessly cutthroat board game, engineered to ruin friendships and encourage aggressive table talk. Players are actively incentivized by the game's mechanics to lie, betray, and pile negative points onto each other's investments during the dubious building project.