UK EDITION: How can the degree of difficulty of playing the UK game be gradually increased?

Refer to the booklet, ‘Guide to Delivering Learning’ which accompanies the UK EDITION:

Pages 23-25 provide a number of options. Introducing the ‘Productivity Gain’ cards and/or the ‘Green Dice’ (explained on page 25) are relatively gentle ways of increasing the challenge to players at Level 1.

How to progress beyond Level 1 is very much a matter of choice. It is not strictly necessary to graduate one level at a time from Level 1 through to 7.
Two possible approaches are:-

(a) IF PLAYERS FINISH THEIR LEVEL 1 GAME AND WANT TO CARRY ON:

Introduce Level 2 (for all) when first player completes their 4 deliveries Progress next to:

• Level 4 alone (palletisation with/or without extra pallet pooling option)
• Or Level 5
• Or introduce level 4 and then, possibly, also level 5

(b) IF PLAYERS HAVE PLAYED BEFORE AND WANT A GREATER CHALLENGE:

Start with Level 3 and progress next to:

• Level 4 alone (palletisation with/or without extra pallet pooling option)
• Or Level 5
• Or introduce level 4 and then, possibly, also level 5

DETAIL NOW FOLLOWS ABOUT EACH HIGHER LEVEL 2-7:-

Level 2 can grow naturally out of a current Level One game by offering players who have delivered their 4 orders the option to draw another Order card from the top of the pack. They then choose whether to exercise this option at the end of every turn. The attraction of receiving extra orders has to be balanced against the risk of failing to deliver to some customers by the end of the game and incurring penalties that might be imposed by the Bank (recommended to make players think and guard against accumulating orders they cannot possibly deliver in time).

Level 3 works best when players have played the game before and want to raise the bar from having the “equal orders” at the start as in Level 1. Players must decide whether to accept or decline an Order randomly drawn from the pack every turn right from the beginning of the game. This level gives players the opportunity to take on only the Orders that fit in with their “strategy”, perhaps specialising in shorter truck deliveries, in longer-haul deliveries by train for high value orders or (when using Level 4 too) in pallet deliveries.

Level 4 has the advantage of being able to be introduced into a Level 2 or a Level 3 game.
Level 4, best announced by a ‘Newsflash’, offers players the opportunity to deliver any container to any of the 4 Distribution Centres (DCs) around the board. Once unloaded, the player pays £5,000 to the Bank to ‘break bulk’ and obtain three white pallets in exchange for the container. These 3 pallets must be delivered according to the customers specified in the ‘Pallet Order’ cards. The cards can be drawn from their pack in the same way as standard Order cards. The player simply chooses to receive either an ‘Order’ card or a ‘Pallet Order’ card, never both in the same turn. See pages 15 and 16 of the Guide for more details.

An extra dimension can also be applied to Level 4 once the concept of breaking-bulk and palletisation is understood by players.