This is a game we used play when we were 16 as a 3M Bookshelf game along with the previous Avalon Hill war games the previous 5 years starting with Tractics II.

In Acquire, each player strategically invests in businesses, trying to retain a majority of stock. As the businesses grow with tile placements, they also start merging, giving the majority stockholders of the acquired business sizable bonuses, which can then be used to reinvest into other chains. All of the investors in the acquired company can then cash in their stocks for current value or trade them 2-for-1 for shares of the newer, larger business. The game is a race to acquire the greatest wealth.

History of Acquire: This Sid Sackson classic has taken many different forms over the years depending on the publisher, yet the rules and game play have stayed the same. The 1966 version of the 3M bookshelf edition included rules for a 2-player variant. The original version is part of the 3M Bookshelf Series.

Many books and websites incorrectly list this as a 1962 publication as the 3M Company used previously copyrighted artwork when they released the game in 1964. 3M actually received the idea for the game of “Vacations” from Sid Sackson in May of 1963 and decided to take his idea and put it into artwork they had developed the year before for a game called “ACQUIRE.” 3M’s original game idea for a game called ACQUIRE must not have been very good so they decided to take Sid’s idea of Vacations and put it into their concept of ACQUIRE. They released some limited test market games in 8 Midwestern U.S. cities in December of 1963 with a box that had a 1963 copyright. These games had Sid’s original rules. When 3M released the mass market games in 1964, they had developed some of Sid’s original ideas and changed some rules and game play to match their production desires. They released them with outer boxes that were copyrighted 1962 and inner boxes with rules that were dated 1963.

December 1963 – Test Market World Map Wood Tile Edition
1964 – Dated 1962/63 wood tiles, chipboard with plastic overlay & stocks with printed backs
1965 – Dated 1962/63 plastic tiles, chipboard with plastic overlay & stocks with printed backs (last edition made with printed backs until 1999)
1966 – Dated 1962/66 plastic tiles, chipboard with plastic overlay & non-wax coated stocks (Only edition with these stocks)
1968 – Dated 1968/66 plastic tiles, clear plastic board with paper underlay (Both 1966 inner box games have a lot of mixed parts)
1971 – Dated 1968/71 plastic tiles, yellow hard plastic board
1975 – 3M sells rights for game of ACQUIRE to the Avalon Hill Company
1976 – Dated 1976 plastic tiles, yellow hard plastic board, redesigned money, no inner box (This edition was also produced in 1977, 79, 81, 82, & 86)
1989 – Dated 1976 Gray box edition with new box artwork same contents as regular 1976 editions (This edition was also produced in 1992)
1995 – Dated 1995 Large box cardboard edition with chipboard board and tiles, Special Powers Variant Tiles inspired by German editions
1997 – Avalon Hill sells the rights to the game of ACQUIRE to Hasbro
1999 – Dated 1999 Large box with large plastic board and tiles, 3D company buildings, redesigned stocks & money, large info cards
2006 – Hasbro assigns rights for the game of ACQUIRE to their subsidiary, Wizards of the Coast
2006 – Lloyd’s (private) Rules of ACQUIRE are made public, two major rule changes that help to bring the balance of the game of ACQUIRE back to the intentions of Sid Sackson’s original ideas. Lloyd Solon’s Rules help players to correct poor strategy during the beginning of the game that can been seen with new and unexperienced players (running out of money soon is the main mistake that must be omitted!). 
2008 – Dated 2008 cardboard edition with chipboard board & tiles, redesigned stocks & money
2016 – Dated 2016 The current affordable mass-market edition. It looks at first sight to be similar to previous modern editions, but has been criticised for the use of inferior design choices such as hard-to-read grey-on-grey embossed slots and the unusual tile fonts. It contains modified rules and a slightly smaller playing grid. Although these changes have been criticised for not ultimately improving upon Sackson’s original design, they are generally regarded as not being too damaging to it.
2023 – Renegade Game Studio partners with Hasbro, and releases their new version, with Classic Mode or Tycoon Mode — play with or without tertiary stockholder merger bonus.

Zeus (Steve) and Hecate (Lee) vs Apollo (Jim) and Artemis (Richard)… Zeus and Hecate won both battles by killing Apollo twice.

Hera, tired of Zeus’ infidelity, decides to take her revenge and releases the Titans on Mount Olympus. In the ensuing battle, the power liberated by the combatants ignites in a combustion that shatters the Earth. In the ensuing deflagration, the weakest gods are obliterated, rendered down into the small fragments of power that constituted their being. The stronger ones were able to resist total annihilation but even their prodigious power could not save them entirely. As the survivors fell from the broken mountain, the shards of their divinity and the remnants of those that did not survive were scattered to the 4 corners of a now broken world.

As they awoke, each god found themselves to be but a shadow of their former selves. They were still mighty, stronger than any mortal that yet walked but they were no longer all powerful, no longer immortal. Each one could sense the fragments of power that had now fallen to the Earth and that by collecting these they could regain their former grandeur and, if they could but amass enough, stand at the front of a new Pantheon, reshaped in their image.

The world around them suffered as much as they did, the power released during the epic battle had ignited a cataclysm that reduced the beautiful land of Greece to a barren wasteland. Athens burns, Crete has sunken below the waves of the roiling seas and the immortal mount Olympus is now an ash covered wreck of its former glory. But this Event has not only affected the mortal realms. The underworld trembled from the blow even as a legion of fresh souls ran down the river Styx. Would that have been the extent of the underworld’s involvement however…

Hades, having lost the majority of his power, no longer holds sway over the Underworld. The gates of hell are open and even though the River Styx prevents the weakest souls from regaining the mortal world, the strongest warriors, the mightiest heroes and the most vicious monsters have managed to claw their way back up the Styx and back to the surface.

As a new power struggle breaks out, Gods summon mortal survivors, returned heroes and reborn monsters to their side in their hunt for the shards of their lost power.

In Mythic Battles: Pantheon, it is these clashes between warbands, in the midst of a post-apocalyptic ancient Greece, that are the focal point of the game. Choose your God, draft your warband and take the fight to your enemies with the might of the most powerful beings from Greek mythology at your back.