At this stage it’s very hard to know what a good score is.
I’m getting more and more tempted with a loan. Although I’m not sure whether that’s because the game I’ve played which is most similar to this, Brass Birmingham positively encourages them.
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I get the impression that loans in this game are much less forgiving than in Brass…
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Loans can hurt and should be taken strategically.
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We seem to be nearing our first auction so I’ll take an opportunity to remind of a quirk with the Foreign Island: once the auction is started, it represents the end of your turn. Try to take an action first if possible.
[EDIT]
Just noticing I didn’t address this: Correct, only through subsidies. Note that this means declining a winning bid at auction has serious global ramifications. Also note that loans have the opposite effect over time.
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Are we playing beginner or advanced bluff rules?
Beginner: 2x $0 cards that can be used to artificially fatten your stack. Works mostly on visual effect, playing lots of $1’s does the same job.
Advanced: a $0 bill included in the stack is a bluff bid and any money with it is returned to bidder.
[EDIT] @RossM already bid using spoiler tags. Are we going to be good monkeys and use the honour system or throw a little PM burden on @pillbox (the current auctioneer)?
I, personally, do not mind collecting bids in PMs. If you would prefer that for my auctions, it is no problem.
I cannot say whether all players are willing to take on that extra work.
I have no preference for beginner vs advanced.
I’m ok taking private bids as well. I’d personally prefer the advanced bluff. Being able to split bills without drawing attention to ourselves really kills the effect of the beginner method.
So PMs, advanced bluff rules.
(Any 0 card in your hand means your bid is 0)
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So, I think we’ve narrowed down who had black containers as their top scoring commodity. 
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The bids were a lot higher than I was expecting
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Or lowest… Who can say? Don’t think too much about it. Koff!
You’re seeing why being first to market isn’t always a good thing here. @pillbox will pull a nice haul in this case, but there was a decent chance he’d have been stuck with a bunch of lowballs, and not a ton of quality info to say which way it would go (he definitely won this crapshoot!). In either event, the whole table gets a slew of hot new info about where things are going from here out, making the next rounds a lot more loaded than before. There’s a reason I didn’t start my boat up too soon. 
Don’t mind me; I’m certainly not a mastermind of meta-gaming, capitalizing on the excitement of the first auction of the game
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I haven’t really paid attention to my own scoring card yet, but I have maybe a game plan?
I offered 4 because Pillbox bought them for 8, and I didn’t want them getting too much money.
One of the fun things about Container is that you can start to formulate plans and strategies pretty much right away. But the information is obfuscated behind first game unfamiliarity and a lack of a good understanding of player quirks and inclinations (which of course end up driving everything), so there can be some amazing triumphs/catastrophes for new players. The learning curve is a ton of fun because of it.
That said, never discount a tactic if it fails initially. Things are almost certainly going to be different the next time you play.
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Container, like many other games that SUSD has riled up excitement for (because it’s certainly in their wheelhouse), is a game of negotiation – but instead of negotiating with words, you use actions and, often, silence.
The entire game is player driven; whether the economy thrives or starves is up to the players to decide and the key criterion for any given player is who is poised to gain (or lose) the most from any given boom (or bust).
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How talky is the game normally?
I think the silence is a big part of what makes things so raucous whenever I get it played. All that silent tension only to finally be broken by outbursts of “what the hell are you doing selling it that low?!” or timely injections of “insider information” when a particularly observant player decides it’s time to remind the table of a particular detail just as someone is about to make a big move, etc.
@RossM added before I got a chance to finish this so to answer direct: ultimately not that talky for the reasons above. Though by “silence” it’s probably more fair to call it non-game chatter.
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I’m sure if you have natural salespersons (you know the type: if you’re not careful, you’ll end up with a 1992 Toyota Tercel in your driveway because “it was practically free!”) in your group, they’ll be talking constantly.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of friends like that (I do have a father like that… but that’s another conversation altogether!), so we are usually very reserved.
I haven’t actually gotten Container played yet with physical people whom I could touch, but I suspect it’ll mirror our experience with The Estates a bit – very quiet as people think through their options followed by sudden groans and/or cheers as the results of such actions are revealed.
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It sort of evolves any time I play it. Going from very quiet initially, to a little more vocal as time goes on and the market starts to develop in more predictable ways. It’s a quiet raucousness but it’s definitely there, even without the full used car salesman approach (said moans and groans, cheers, etc. making up the bulk of the “noise”).
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I may have been a little reckless putting everything at $2 right now. Let’s see how the next few turns go…