Giganten

About this board game

Giganten is an oil-industry board game for 3–4 players, with sessions lasting about 90 minutes. Set in dusty Texas, it challenges players to find oil, claim drilling sites, and compete for sales contracts.

An oilfield lies before the players, with drilling sites scattered across it. Players send out their trucks to reach these sites as quickly as possible. Three groups of tiles are placed over the drilling sites, creating a range of possible values for each site when it is reached.

Position matters. Sites deeper in the field offer a greater overall yield, while the smaller yields closer to the beginning can help create a constant supply early in the game. Players must weigh these competing opportunities as they decide where to direct their trucks.

• Claim drilling sites across an oilfield using trucks.
• Balance yield and timing between nearby sites and deeper, more valuable locations.
• Compete for sales contracts in the oil market.
• Use hidden bidding pools to make rivals guess whether a bid is genuine or a bluff.

After producing oil, players can try to sell it on the market. However, only three companies are available, so in a four-player game one player is shut out of the market each turn. This creates a tense bidding contest in which visible ambition and concealed resources do not always tell the same story.

The hidden nature of the bidding pools makes it difficult to judge opponents accurately. In Giganten, successful play depends on managing access to oil sites, choosing when to pursue greater yields, and competing for limited sales opportunities. The game was later reimplemented as Black Gold.