Archive for the 'Merchants & Marauders' Category

Below are links to reviews of games that will be released in shops this week (in the UK):

Note that my Liberté review is of the original release and not the new Valley Games version; however, the only difference is that the new version has better board colouration (which was an issue with the original game).  The Valley Games’ board can be seen here.

I played Merchants and Marauders again yesterday and, once again, we all thoroughly enjoyed it.  As I mentioned in my review, it contains all the cool pirate actions you could want as well as lots of variety.  The naval vessels and non-player pirate ships (NPCs) moved a lot more than our last game which also added more variety and action, especially for me as I had bounties on my head so I spent time avoiding the stronger ships.

Merchants & Marauders really is a first-class game and one I’m really pleased I bought.  I know we will play it a lot more too.  Below are some further thoughts:

Battles at Sea
The players were still quite pleasant to each other so there were very few player-versus-player combats.  I tried but just couldn’t succeed at my scouting roll when it mattered so my “easy prey” human opponent managed to slip by me; however, we did have a couple of fights.  First, one player totally destroyed my already very badly damaged ship as I’d just completed a couple of merchant raids.  Their seamanship skill of 3 versus my 1 made it an easy win (I couldn’t use my seamanship of 2 because they had a bounty on them).  Read the rest of this entry »

There have been a lot of pirate-themed games in the past but not many have covered the full pirate experience.  To make it worse, the Sid Meyer’s Pirates boardgame never made it to completion.  So, when I read the rules to Merchants & Marauders, I was very pleased that a big Pirate game was coming.

THE GAME
The goal of Merchants & Marauders is glory – the first player to score 10 glory points wins.  Each time a player gains a glory point, they also receive a glory card too which is a special ability or item, so your captain becomes more accomplished throughout the game.  Glory is gained through impressive feats such as defeating a ship in combat, trading large amounts of goods, completing missions, gaining wealth, and more.

The board shows the Caribbean split into sea zones – each zone contains a port, plus has a special rule too making every zone different.  Read the rest of this entry »