Players: 2-4
Time: 1 hour
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)

The Components

Castle Merchants comes with:

• 1 game board
• 55 path tiles
• 20 wares markers
• 29 gold coins
• 60 cards
• 4 pawns
• 1 die
• 4 horse cart mats
• 1 rulebook

Game Board: A four-panel, linen-textured cardboard map. It depicts a hex grid in the middle, surrounded by the five castles of the game and the warehouse. The board is generally attractive but plain, though the five castles depict a (repeated) piece of nice artwork.

The board also features a couple of nice, utilitarian nuances: including setup info for any number of players, and a listing of the six potential die rolls.

Cardboard Bits: 55 circular path tiles, 20 square wares markers, and 29 gold coins. They're each printed on somewhat thin, non-linen textured cardboard. I had some minor trouble with tearing while punching them out, but otherwise they tend to hold up well.

The circular path tiles feature one of five distinctive terrain types (though the terrains are slightly odd choices, as discussed more below) or else "rock slides". They're clearly differentiated both by individual pictures and by a specific color for each of the terrain types. The wares feature five distinctive wares, which match up with the five castles. The gold coins feature a variety of valuations, from 1 to 5.

Cards: The sixty cards are medium-light, but otherwise printed on an attractive, glossy stock. Each shows one of the five base terrains, again featuring artwork and a distinctive color. They're easy to match up with the terrain types.

The artwork, especially, when seen full-size on these cards, is quite attractive.

The bright green, and relatively plain, card backs are a bit overpowering.

Pawns & Die: Unfortunately I didn't actually get the pawns and a die in my review copy. It looks like they're pretty standard plastic pawns and a pretty standard small plastic die. The attractive color-matched dice and pawns that are faintly visible in the accompanying pictures are actually Cheapass game components.

Horse Cart Mats: Light-weight cardboard player mats in the four player colors (red, blue, green, and yellow). Besides reminding you of which player is which color, each mat also has spaces to hold your own five wares and contains fairly complete information on how the game works. The info is all textual, which I usually find subpar for in-game reference, but reading it over would doubtless give players a good understanding of the game.

Rulebook: A 12-page, full-color, glossy rulebook. The rules are actually only four pages long, and are duplicated in what I believe are German and Finnish. The rules are easy to follow, and the fourth page is taken up by a very helpful example of play.

Overall, theming of Castle Mechants is pretty weak. Based on the gameplay, your mechants seem to have the ability to create and destroy terrain, and even that terrain is a slightly odd set (mountains, fields, forests, ... villages, and castles). Overall, Castle Merchants feels like (and plays like) a pretty classic abstract.

The components of Castle Merchants are of fairly average quality, with a bit of attention given to utility, and some nice artwork on the cards and tiles. I've given then a high "3" out of "5" for Style: slightly above average.

The Gameplay

The object of Castle Merchants is to deliver goods to castles in order to earn 18 gold coins.

Setup: Each player chooses a color, places his pawn on the warehouse, and takes one of each good (cheese, jewels, weapons, cloth, and wine) and puts it on his cart.

Gold coins are placed on the five castles depending on the number of players in the game. In a 2-player game each castle gets 3 coins, valued between 1 and 5, while in a 4-player game each castle gets 5-6 coins, valued between 1 and 5. Generally, the castles nearer to the warehouse (Muslin Castle and Fromage) have less valuable coins, topping out a "3", the next two castles (Castle Excalibur and Castle Gemstone) have better coins, topping out at "4", and the furthest castle (Chianti Castle), has the best coins, topping out at "5".

Each player is also given an initial hand of 6 cards, and 2-4 rockslide tiles.

Order of Play: On his turn a player plays cards in a variety of ways and/or plays a rockslide, then draws replacement cards.

Playing Cards: There are a wide variety of ways to play cards in Castle Merchants. If a player chooses not to play any cards, he can instead draw 1 card, to a hand maximum of 6.

Play a Card for a Path Tile. A player can play a card to place a tile of the same type on any empty space on the board (e.g., play a field card to place a field tile).

These tiles are taken from open supplies, near the side of the board. Late in the game, if there are no supplies left of an appropriate type of tile, a player can instead move one from elsewhere on the board.

Play 2 Cards to Remove a Tile: A player can play any two cards in order to remove any tile (other than a rockslide) from the board.

Play 2 Cards to Roll the Path Die: A player can play any two cards in order to roll the path die, which reveals one of the five terrain types, or a rockslide. The player may then place, move, or remove a tile of the appropriate type. (This is the only way to affect a rockslide on the board).

Play a Card to Move. Finally, a player can also play a card to move his pawn. He can move his pawn onto an adjacent tile of the appropriate type and through any chain of additional, connected tiles of the same type.

To enter the three special space types (castle, warehouse, meadow) a player can play any one card

Playing Rockslides: A player may also play one rockslide tile on his turn, from his original supply of 2-4. These are placed on top of other terrain tiles, and totally block that terrain. However, a rockslide may not be placed in such a way as to utterly cut off any section of the board.

The only way to later move rockslides is with the path die, as noted above.

Drawing Cards: A player then draws as many cards as he played that turn up to a maximum of three. If a player played more, then he's going to have less cards in his hand on the next turn (and on future turns until he visits certain special terrain).

Ending on Special Terrains: If a player ends his turn on one of the three special terrains, there are some special effects.

Castles. The Castles (not to be confused with the Castle path tiles) are where you're trying to deliver your wares. When a player arrives he discards your ware that matches the castle. Then he either takes the most valuable remaining gold coin in that castle, or else refreshes his hand to six cards.

In addition, he then rolls the path die and takes the appropriate action.

Warehouse. If a player ends their turn in the warehouse, they draw back up to six cards, and also refresh any wares that they'd previously sold.

Meadow. In the middle of the board is a meadow. If a player ends their turn here they refresh their hand to six cards.

Ending the Game: The game ends when a player receives gold coins that bring his total to 18 or more.

Relationships to Other Games

Castle Merchants is a tactical play-and-move racing game.

Other play-and-move racing games that I've reviewed include Leo Colovini's Cartagena and Michael Rieneck's Around the World in 80 Days. Unlike the other games, Castle Merchants is fairly unique in its wide-open racing field. You don't have a singular path that you must move through more efficiently than the other players. Instead there's a large board which you can move about at will, and you have to judge which locations it's most efficient to move to, based on the current layout of the board and the actions of the other players.

Castle Merchant's tactical nature is particularly strong. I'm reminded quite a bit of some of Kramer & Kiesling's classic tactical action-point games. Though there aren't actual action points in Castle Merchants, the cards do sort of act like very constrained APs. And, similarly you're constantly trying to figure out a most advantageous single-turn move. Much like Java you can do very long movements if you stay on the same terrain, and much like Mexica you can mess up other players late in the game by stealing away their terrain (there, bridges, here, path tiles).

Finally, I'm tempted to suggest that Castle Merchants was prototyped with Settlers of Catan components, since they both contain maps made up of five different, hexagonal terrain types. However, other than that structural similarity, the games don't actually have anything in common.

The Game Design

Castle Merchants is a thoughtful and intelligent game that also has a pretty large random factor.

The tactical movement system at the heart of Castle Merchants is fun and works quite well. You can make surprising and clever moves, but there's also a lot of player interaction, as you have to decide how your moves affect other players, and how they may help you or hinder you.

Some of the clever tactics possible in this game eluded me until my second time out. For example in my first game I felt like I was trapped a couple of times when I couldn't get across a specific terrain. In my second game I realized that I needed to play more tactically, and so was more likely to change my plans from turn to turn. (I also remembered that I could always spend two cards to remove a terrain, then replace it with something I could move across if I really needed to move in a specific direction.)

I'm also quite impressed by the card refreshment system. On an average turn you want to spend just 3 cards, because that's how many you can refresh. However you can spend more, up to 6, for a particularly good move, but this can leave you partially or entirely crippled, as a smaller hand dramatically decreases your possibilities, and also increases the random factor of the game for you (because you have fewer cards to balance it out). This introduces a very interesting resource management system into the game, but does it in a way that I haven't seen in other games.

Beyond that, it's worth noting that Castle Merchants marries these very solid game systems, of the type you'd find in most Eurogames, with some very American gameplay sensibilities.

There is a large random factor in the game. Your opponents can have large, chaotic effects on you. Your card draws can dramatically affect what you can do. If you choose to roll a die you can (clearly) have 1 out of 6 outcomes. Overall, I'm perfectly happy with the randomness because it's somewhat controllable and because a good tactical sense can overcome some of it. However more serious Europlayers may find it excessive.

There's also a fair amount of "take that" gameplay, particularly late in the game. You can mess people up with rockslides, remove their tiles, or move their tiles away. Again I think this is relatively well managed because at worse you can slow a player down, not stop them, but do expect the game to become highly combative for the last few rounds.

On the downside, the game is somewhat simplistic. The gameplay is pretty unidirectional, without a huge amount of depth. In addition, I felt like the game got a little too tight at the end, with players struggling to scrape together their last couple of gold coins.

On the whole, Castle Merchants is an enjoyable game. It is somewhat simple and abstract, and it's more likely to appeal to players who enjoy American beer & pretzels games than the most serious Eurogamers. However, if you match that profile, I think you'll find this a fun and original game. I give it a "4" out of "5" for Substance: well above average.

Conclusion

Castle Merchants is an abstract tactical racing game with a heavy American spin. As long as you don't mind a fair share of randomness, you'll probably find this an interesting and clever game.