Saturday - Gaming!
We had a slightly shortened gaming session on Saturday, though it was the first one the wife & I have attended in quite sometime. The group as a rule hasn't been getting together as often as it was a few months ago. We're also loosing a member, Tim is moving to Portland, OR & we'll miss him...an accomplished gamer and not-so-bad guy to hang around with. Good luck on the job Tim...we'll miss you!
Due to the shortened gaming time I was involved in only one game. I believe it was Merchants of Amsterdam. A nifty little game and I'll do my best to describe it here:
The map has three main areas of play not including the time track. The world, which is divided up in to 4 sections where you build ports, the city of Amsterdam (also divded into 4's) where you build warehouses and the merchant ship track...you guessed it 4's. The 4 comodities you deal in are spice, jewels, sugar & silk.
On your turn you draw three cards from a stack, you choose one to keep, one to throw away and one to auction off. Each card lets you either place one of your tokens on the world section or the city section, the card will also determine whether you can select any 1 of the 4 comodities or just one. Inserted in the stack of cards are hourglasses which advance the time track. Most squares on the time track allow you to do something, like advance your token on the comodities track, place a port on the world or build a warehouse in the city. Some squares invoke scoring and some do nothing at all.
So each player gets one action for free, one gets thrown away and one gets auctioned off. The auction, I'm told, is a Dutch auction (yay theme) and is carried out by using a cool little count down timer thinggy. As the timer counts down the price drops, when the price gets to where you want it you hit the timer and it stops...you then pay the price indicated. This is a neat mechanic as you have to judge the value of the card being auctioned and you have to out reflex the other players.
You get more money when the marker advances to a scoring square and money is what determines the winner. So when you're shelling out bucks for those auctioned cards you're spending VP's. You get bonus cash the first time you have two ships in each comodity, a port in each section of the world and a warehouse in each section of the city...you also get a bonus for building warehouses on eitherside of a bridge (the city sections are connected by little bridges). You get money when the marker hits a scoring spot on the time track...each section of the board gets scored by itself...except at the end where everything scores at once.
I liked this game, though playing with two others who had already played it before made it hard for me to keep up. But even though I fell behind and knew I wouldn't win, I had a good time playing and learning the game. I at least felt like I knew what I had done wrong and could probably do better next time. All-in-all, definetly worth playing again...though I imagine that if I don't do better next time my opinion of it will drop.