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 »

Spiel seemed different this year compared to previous years – not good or bad different – just different.  We went for 3 days of the show as usual, stayed in the same hotel as usual, ate steak in our favourite restaurant multiple times as usual.  However, when asked what was my favourite game so far, I wasn’t able to point at one specific game which outranked the others; instead, there were lots that were very good indeed but too close to pick a single leader.

However, Spiel was the usual gaming marathon and didn’t disappoint as there were many superb games.  Whilst I can’t pick my favourite game of the show, I think think the following (in no particular order) were great.

• Merchants & Marauders
• Black Friday
• Isla Dorada
• Mille Graize
• Mord im Arosa
• Era of Inventions
• Tikal II
• Dakota
• 7 Wonders

Read the rest of this entry »