Plan B Games | Century: Spice Road | Board Game | Ages 8+ | 2-5 Players | 30-45 Minutes Playing Time & Repos Production, 7 Wonders Duel, Board Game, Ages 10+, 2 Players 30 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

To play a hand card, place it face-up in front of you and trigger its effect. There are three types of trader cards that you can play: Spice Card

If a player has his fifth point card (with 2 or 3 players, his sixth), the game ends after the current round. Each player earns the points on their scoring cards.Therefore getting spices and, more importantly, the orange Points cards is kind of a big dill (groan) to winning. But how do you accomplish that, we hear you ask? Rules Breakdown

The other card everyone starts with – two grey cubes with an upwards-facing arrow – is an Upgrade card. When played, this allows you to upgrade any two spices in your caravan into the next-most valuable spice, or to upgrade one spice cube twice. Return spices from your caravan to the bowl and claim the upgraded version of it.Overall, I am very pleased to add this to my collection and always have a great time when it hits the table. I will be looking forward to the next installment of the Century trilogy and it will be great to see how they all work together. The clever thing about these three games is that as well as being excellent gateway games in their own right, any two of the three can amalgamate, providing a new bumper-game, entirely. However, in this tutorial we’re only focusing on how to play the one that set the ball rolling – Century: Spice Road. So clamber onto your camel, join the caravan and let’s trade some spices… Century: Spice Road – Set-Up One card, for example, provides the trade of two cardamon cubes in exchange for one cinnamon and two safran. If you (eventually acquire and then) play one of these cards, you’ll trade the spice(s) shown, for the spice(s) promised – again, returning spices to their bowls and taking the relevant ones onto your Caravan card. Century: Spice Road has quality components and the artwork is great. The only bad points I can see to this game is that the theme is a bit on the bland side (pun intended) and at no point do you feel like a spice trader (Splendor has the same problem) and the game does feel like a solitaire experience as no real player interaction is involved. At some point during your first match – and a few turns into every game afterwards – the juggling of cubes and cards turns from a cautious step-by-step experiment into a fully confident spice-trading ballet as you lay down patterns of acquisition, upgrade and exchange cards to work towards the next rainbow of condiments required to score big.

The simple setup and playtime helps keep her interested and even though the theme is not one that really shines through, the game has enough fun and depth to keep all levels of gamers invested throughout the play time.The clever thing about these three games is that as well as being excellent gateway games in their own right, any two of the three can amalgamate, providing a new bumper-game, entirely. However, in this tutorial we’re only focusing on how to play the one that set the ball rolling – Century: Spice Road. So clamber onto your camel, join the caravan and let’s trade some spices… Century: Spice Road - Set-Up At the end of your turn, if you have more spices on your caravan than you can transport, you must return spices of your choice into the bowls until your upper limit is reached. Example: Tom has 6 turmeric and plays a card with which he can exchange 2 turmeric for 1 cardamom. He can now exchange 2, 4, or 6 turmeric for 1, 2, or 3 cardamom. I had never heard of Century: Spice Road prior to attending UKGE and the mass amount of posts asking about it on Facebook got me intrigued. I had a read up online and a lot of people were saying it was a game that would get rid of Splendor from people’s collections as it was a better game. This was a bold statement and one I had to find out if was true as I love Splendor. Century: Spice Road is played using the actions above, players will collect spices buy market cards and trade for point cards. The game ends when the first player gets their fifth point card. Turns are fast and even our first play only lasted 45 minutes. Final Thoughts

Put twice as many gold coins as there are players playing above the leftmost scoring card. C Place the same number of silver coins above the second card from the left. D Another review at Ars Technica states that it is "slightly more complex" than Splendor, and that it is "an absolute joy to play". [1] Expansions [ edit ] Which brings us neatly to the second action a player could decide upon: acquiring one of the six Merchant cards on display. The left-most card is free. If you want the second card, it costs one spice of your choice. The third card costs two spices, and so on. These coins are metal (just try to resist that delightful clink) and, like everything else in the box, contribute to Spice Road’s universally breathtaking visual panache, from its gorgeous cards to the spices, which come with four diddly bowls to tidy up unruly heaps of cubes. Example: Tom would like to acquire the 4th trader card from the left A so he places one spice on each card to the left of it B.Last of all, there’s just enough thyme for a few winning tips (okay, that’s the last of the awful spice puns, we promise)…