At some point, you may find your board gaming group seeking a “next level” board game. Something that can provide you with hours of immersive and thematic gameplay, that contains enough decision making to make it feel like a skill-intensive experience, but not at the expense of fun. And of course, you’ll want something you can play over and over while still getting a new experience. If your group is ready to take this plunge, or if your just looking for the ultimate “pirate” board game, you should consider Merchants & Marauders.

The game is played with 2-4 players, and is based around sailing your fleet of ships between ports to trade goods and obtain quests for victory points. Each port of the Carribean has unique attributes, and have allegiance to a particular European monarch. You may also encounter merchant or military vessels while sailing, which you can choose to attack, but you will become wanted in the ports of that ships nationality! Players must carefully decide how to go about seeking their fortunes, considering the available quests, most profitable ports, and unique attributes of their captains and ships, which can be upgraded. 

We’ve only scratched the surface of all the depth this game has to offer, and for the truly master-level gamer, there is an expansion set with even more ship upgrades, character cards, and questlines. The first time playing, you should be prepared to spend most of the night just learning (read more...)

I got Seasons for Christmas this year and couldn’t wait to play it.  Brian and I broke it out the weekend after New Year’s and played two games the first of which was our learning-to-play game.  I won the first game and he killed me in the second!  Rematch, Brian?

You are a sorcerer competing with the other wizards in the kingdom in the Tournament of the 12 Seasons, which takes place over three years.  The winner will be the Archmage of the kingdom.  Fun!

The components of the game are beautiful and well made, although the cards were a little on the thin side.  The dice are really cool (four different color sets of 5 dice each) with icons that are clear and easy to read. The graphics on the cards are amazing and a little funny.  We sleeved the cards right away.  I’m not super neurotic about card sleeves, but these seem like they will get a lot of use and the sleeved cards fit in the box (super important to me!)

I’ve read some other reviews saying that this game has a steep learning curve, but I didn’t experience that.  After about 15 minutes of set up and rules reading we were playing. The rules were clear and nicely laid out.  We were able to find the answers to questions easily and the descriptions of the individual cards were very helpful.  Each card is numbered so looking them up was a breeze.  We figured it out in the first (read more...)