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The Bottom Line box art
1985 Ranked #21,086

The Bottom Line

An economic race has players buy businesses, assemble property sets, trade options, and manage debt to build wealth. Reaching a fortune and landing on the bank creates a final positional hurdle before ownership can be claimed.

Economic Negotiation Set Collection Stock Holding

Players

3-6

Play time

Not listed

Age

10+

Complexity

1.83/5

Rating

5.49

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.4/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 4.1/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.7/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.4/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.7/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

The idea of The Bottom Line is to accumulate $5,000,000 and land on the Bank, so as to buy it. Not as easy as it sounds.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

The idea of The Bottom Line is to accumulate $5,000,000 and land on the Bank, so as to buy it. Not as easy as it sounds. You have $1,000,000 cash, $2,000,000 in debt and 2000 oz. of gold to begin. There are several different businesses, and you can buy parts of them for anywhere from $100,000 each for Residentials, to $600,000 for Casinos. When someone lands on a property you own, you get $50,000 per property of the same kind you own. But the big money comes when you collect a full set of property. Land on a Drive-in Realtor and you can collect multiple millions for selling your set. There are also Options, which allow you to buy lots from your opponents at nauseatingly low prices, and gold is bought for $600,000 a brick (or in that area) and sells for over $1 million. Gold seems to be the fast way to money, but you must have the appropriate card, or you'll get fined $100,000. As players get out of debt (or deeper in it), they will find themselves in a die-rolling race to land on the Bank, or square 17, which allows you to go anywhere you want. A good finance game, but it was only printed for a year in America. Copies do pop up on eBay (where I got mine).

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
No editions imported yet.

Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

No files imported yet.

Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
3–6
Best with
3–4
Play time
90 min
Age
10+
Complexity
1.8/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
A. Trevor Pepperell

Artists

1
Marek Mann

Publishers

2
Maruca Industries Silver Bear Marketing Ltd.

Linked items

No published linked games yet.