Happy 2023 and welcome back to Mechanic Monday! Wow, how long has it been since I did a post that wasn’t RPG-based? No one knows. Will this year be a return to 2020 form? No one cares. This week, I’ve been thinking about aUction games, especially on the heels of Dan Thurot’s recent interview with Amabel Holland about Watch Out! That’s a Dracula. I’ve always liked auction games (Medici was the first Knizia I put real time into) and I’ve had a lot of auction mechanics on this blog ( a roundup of them , even), and I thought I should try and see if I can string some of them together into one game, weird and wild but at least playable. I specifically want this to be a bit hodgepodge and messy, as I think that auction games already tend towards clean and I’d like to fight against that both with complexity and accompanying theme. I’m thinking hidden identities of the bidders, and innate as well as acquired player powers, which led me to think that themewise we could do a cyber...