Century: Spice Road is the first game in a series were 2-5 players act as merchants that trade in mysterious and lucrative spices, traveling along the spice road in their caravans looking for trading opportunities.
Setting up:
First, shuffle and place the orange backed cards in the center of the table between all players and reveal the top five cards, placing them in a row to the left of the deck. These cards are the points cards and will have numbers on them relating to how many victory points they reward you with.
Setting up:
First, shuffle and place the orange backed cards in the center of the table between all players and reveal the top five cards, placing them in a row to the left of the deck. These cards are the points cards and will have numbers on them relating to how many victory points they reward you with.
Above the card on the far left place gold coins equal to two times the number of players, for example in a 2-player game you would place four gold coins above it, and above the card to its immediate right, the second in line, place the same amount of silver coins.
Next, just below the row of five points cards and the orange deck, shuffle and place the purple backed cards, this is known as the Merchants deck. First remove all the purple bordered cards in the deck depicting two yellow cubes and two grey cubes with an upwards arrow (there should be five of each). Reveal the top six cards and place them in a row below the points cards.
Then place along the side next to the cards four bowls filled with different coloured cubes representing the spices you will be trading in the game, making sure to keep them in order, Yellow at
the bottom, or to the left, then Red, next is Green and finally, Brown.
Take the purple bordered cards, five with two yellow cubes and five with two grey cubes and an upward arrow on them, that you removed previously and give one of each to each player, these cards are each players hands.
To decided who goes first, there is a selection of five grey backed cards called the caravan cards, each with ten spots for cubes on them and one with a symbol in the bottom right hand corner. Take as many cards as needed, making sure to include the card with the symbol on it, equal to the number of players, and remove the rest. Shuffle the caravan cards and get each player to pick one. The player who picked the caravan card with the symbol in the bottom right hand corner of the card is player one.
Player one receives and places on their caravan card three yellow cubes, then moving clockwise, each player takes cubes corresponding to the numbers below
Each cube takes up one space on your caravan card.
Playing the game:
The aim of the game is to get the most victory points from the points cards you can purchase with spices you have collected. You do this by using the cards you have in your hand, at the start it is just the two cards purple bordered cards, to gain and upgrade spices. You can gain cards from the Merchant card row to boost abilities you can do and provide you with more spices to use. In each players turn, that player can choose one of four actions,
Acquire - On your turn you may pick up one of the cards in the Merchants row, allowing you access to more spices. You can either take the first card, the card farthest to the left, for free or, if you wanted something else in the row, you can place a spice on each card to the left of the card you want. For example, if I wanted the third card in the row, I would have to place two of my spices from my caravan card onto the first and second card, one on each, of the Merchants row. If a player would pick up a card in the Merchants row with a spice on it, that player gets the spice in addition to the card. You can pick up as many Merchant cards throughout the game as you like. When a card has been taken from the Merchant row, slide all the cards to the right of that card up, creating a gap on the far right hand side of the row and then reveal the top card from the Merchants deck to fill the space.
Play - To play a card, you take it from your hand and place it in front of you, action the effect of that card represented in the top left hand corner. As long as a card is in front of you, you cannot replay it, but it will allow you to gain more cards.
Rest - Instead of playing a card or acquiring a card, you can pick up all cards that you have previously played to use in the coming turns.
Let's take a look at the two cards you start with.
Every time you play this card in your turn you are able to pick up and place on your caravan card two yellow cubes.
The aim of the game is to get the most victory points from the points cards you can purchase with spices you have collected. You do this by using the cards you have in your hand, at the start it is just the two cards purple bordered cards, to gain and upgrade spices. You can gain cards from the Merchant card row to boost abilities you can do and provide you with more spices to use. In each players turn, that player can choose one of four actions,
Acquire - On your turn you may pick up one of the cards in the Merchants row, allowing you access to more spices. You can either take the first card, the card farthest to the left, for free or, if you wanted something else in the row, you can place a spice on each card to the left of the card you want. For example, if I wanted the third card in the row, I would have to place two of my spices from my caravan card onto the first and second card, one on each, of the Merchants row. If a player would pick up a card in the Merchants row with a spice on it, that player gets the spice in addition to the card. You can pick up as many Merchant cards throughout the game as you like. When a card has been taken from the Merchant row, slide all the cards to the right of that card up, creating a gap on the far right hand side of the row and then reveal the top card from the Merchants deck to fill the space.
Play - To play a card, you take it from your hand and place it in front of you, action the effect of that card represented in the top left hand corner. As long as a card is in front of you, you cannot replay it, but it will allow you to gain more cards.
Rest - Instead of playing a card or acquiring a card, you can pick up all cards that you have previously played to use in the coming turns.
Let's take a look at the two cards you start with.
Every time you play this card in your turn you are able to pick up and place on your caravan card two yellow cubes.
When you play this card, you can use the spices you have on your caravan and turn them into other spices.
There are three types of card you can play;
A spice card - These cards are represented by an amount of cubes in the top left corner of the card and it indicates how many spices you can take from the bowl, like one of the cards you start the game with. For example, if a card has four yellow cubes in the top left corner, that means you can take four yellow cubes, putting them on vacant square on your caravan. Your caravan has ten spaces for spices so if you end up having more than ten, you must put any excess back of your choosing.
An upgrade card - The upgrade cards are indicated by an amount of cubes in the top left of the card with an arrow pointing upward. These cards allow you to take a number of cubes, corresponding to the amount on the card, and replace them with other cubes. For example, if a card had two cubes and an arrow pointing up, like the other card you start with, and you have two yellow cubes, you can take both of them and replace them with two red cubes. Alternatively, you could take just one of your yellow cubes and, instead of going to the next spice up, move two bowls up and take one green cube. Obviously, this doesn't mean you always have to upgrade yellow cubes, the upgrades apply to to all coloured cubes and the number of cubes on the upgrade card corresponds to how far you can go up the chain as well as how many you could take.
A trade card - Trade cards are shown by two amounts of cubes in the top left corner of the card separated by a downward arrow. What this means is when you play a trade card you can take the cubes, corresponding to the ones above the arrow and replace them with the ones underneath the arrow. Trade cards are similar to upgrade cards, but where they only let you gain cubes from up to the next two above whichever you chose to upgrade, trade cards could net you some extra cubes and of multiple different colours. Trade cards can also be used multiple times, providing you have the necessary cubes, in the same action they were played. For example, if you play a trade card that depicts two yellow cubes above the arrow and one green cube below the arrow, you can trade two yellow cubes for one green cubes. Then if you have two more yellow cubes, you can immediately trade them in for another green cube, this must be in the same action as playing the card and cannot be done again later until you play another trade card. You can acquire trade cards from the bottom row of face up cards.
A point card - Point cards are what you need to win the game and can be acquired from the top row of face up cards. Each point cards has an amount of coloured cubes along the bottom of the card, this is the cost to acquire them. For example, if a point card has two yellow cubes, one red cube and one green cube at the bottom of the card providing you have all the correct cubes, you can spend them to acquire a point card. Any cubes spent on these go back into the corresponding bowls. If you acquired the card beneath the set of gold coins, you get one of those gold coins with the point card and the same is true for acquiring the card beneath the silver coins. When a point card is acquired by any player, you must slide the other point cards to the left and replace the empty space at the far right with a card from the top of the orange deck.
Once a player has acquired a fifth point card in a four or five player game, or their sixth card in a two or three player game, each other player then gets one more turn before the game ends.
Scoring:
Each player totals the number on all the point cards they have acquired and adds three points to the total for each gold coin and one point for each silver coin they have also acquired. Players also gain one point for each spice they have on their caravan that isn't yellow. The player with the most point wins and just in case there's a tie, the tied player that last took a turn wins.
Thoughts:
I absolutely love this game. I think there is a lot going on here, between keeping track of what point cards and merchant cards your opponents have acquired and managing your spices, Century does keep you on your toes. The game is really intuitive however, being very easy to grasp with everything set out in visual form and the colours of both the cards and spices add a nice aesthetic to everything. I would highly recommend Century: Spice Road to people looking for a game full of variety and forward thinking along with a lot of replayability. Any board game player will be very happy with Century: Spice Road and its very easy to get your friends into as I said above, its very easy to grasp and easy to teach.
I hope this look at Century: Spice Road has given you a look into the experience of the game and maybe even made you want to pick it up for yourself. If that's the case, head to your local games and hobbies store and inquire. Until then though, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.
A point card - Point cards are what you need to win the game and can be acquired from the top row of face up cards. Each point cards has an amount of coloured cubes along the bottom of the card, this is the cost to acquire them. For example, if a point card has two yellow cubes, one red cube and one green cube at the bottom of the card providing you have all the correct cubes, you can spend them to acquire a point card. Any cubes spent on these go back into the corresponding bowls. If you acquired the card beneath the set of gold coins, you get one of those gold coins with the point card and the same is true for acquiring the card beneath the silver coins. When a point card is acquired by any player, you must slide the other point cards to the left and replace the empty space at the far right with a card from the top of the orange deck.
Once a player has acquired a fifth point card in a four or five player game, or their sixth card in a two or three player game, each other player then gets one more turn before the game ends.
Scoring:
Each player totals the number on all the point cards they have acquired and adds three points to the total for each gold coin and one point for each silver coin they have also acquired. Players also gain one point for each spice they have on their caravan that isn't yellow. The player with the most point wins and just in case there's a tie, the tied player that last took a turn wins.
Thoughts:
I absolutely love this game. I think there is a lot going on here, between keeping track of what point cards and merchant cards your opponents have acquired and managing your spices, Century does keep you on your toes. The game is really intuitive however, being very easy to grasp with everything set out in visual form and the colours of both the cards and spices add a nice aesthetic to everything. I would highly recommend Century: Spice Road to people looking for a game full of variety and forward thinking along with a lot of replayability. Any board game player will be very happy with Century: Spice Road and its very easy to get your friends into as I said above, its very easy to grasp and easy to teach.
I hope this look at Century: Spice Road has given you a look into the experience of the game and maybe even made you want to pick it up for yourself. If that's the case, head to your local games and hobbies store and inquire. Until then though, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.
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