Global Warming Board Game

13/5/2016
I played the Global Warming Board Game on 13th May with my classmates during ENE class and it was a very interesting experience. Its a 2 to 4 player game and it is a game that kind of simulates the real world competition over oil control and all the players get to choose how happy their country is and how large their carbon footprint on the world will be.
All players start the game with 5 dollars in their bank and they can use the money to buy oil, or to place a consumer or environment card. A player can either draw 3 cards and discard as many as they want(max 7 cards in hand), play a card, or place an oil rig in any country that is available, buy oil from countries which they have placed an oil rig in, or lastly pass a turn, if they dont want to do anything for that turn. There are 3 barrels on the global warming track, which is an indicator for the total carbon emissions from our industrial actions in the game and there are 3 markings, on the 30, 60 and 100 point mark, when we pass the marks we have to do some actions, depending on which mark we pass. The game ends when all the oil and money has been used up or when the 100 point mark is reached, and the player whose country has the highest happiness index, which is increase by the use of consumer or environment cards, wins the game.
In my opinion, the game answered all my questions of why different countries in real life, are fighting so hard for control over oil. At one point of the game i had around 20+ dollars in the bank and i had a rig in Saudi Arabia, so when it was my turn i bought 8 barrels of oil for $16, as it was $2/barrel, this gave me a huge advantage as i was able to have more money as i was able to use the oil to carry out more industrial actions and also to increase my happiness index. Thus oil is not only a source of energy but also power. The global warming index was also very difficult to keep under the 3 marks as we had to carry out industrial actions that increase the temperature of the world for money but even though individually the temperature increase seems little it adds up over time.
I learnt alot from this game especially in terms of how important natural resources are to the world and also how each country contributes to global warming and i strongly recommend this game to all who are in the age limit:)