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Be the first to review “Merchants of the Dark Road (Kickstarter – Deluxe)”
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After half a year of daylight, we must now prepare for the dark season. The roads will be treacherous but they will still need to be braved by a select few in order to keep our cities thriving. In Merchants of the Dark Road, you are one of these brave few merchants that travel the dangerous paths between cities. While the job is perilous, fame and fortune await.
Discover the capital city where most of your actions will take place using a rondel action system. Collect and produce items to add to your caravan, or sell these items to local heroes and hire them to travel with you. Manipulate the market price of items, visit the back alley sellers, or delve a nearby dungeon for magical items to gain the potential for even more coin and notoriety.
Gather lanterns to ease your passage along the dark roads as you guide your caravan to distant villages. Deliver goods and heroes to the best destinations and gain fame for your bravery! Balance the money you earn with the height of your fame because your final score after a number of game rounds will reflect the lowest of these two values.
After all, what good is a purse full of the coin if the people don’t sing songs about you, and what good is a song with an empty mug of ale?
—description from the publisher
The Deluxe Edition contains everything in the Standard Edition, with upgrades in the components, the box, and the insert.
Ages | 12+ |
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Players | Solo, 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players |
Play Time | 60m – 120m |
Designer | Brian Suhre |
Mechanics | Rondel, Worker Placement with Dice Workers |
Theme | Dice, Exploration, Fantasy |
Publisher | Elf Creek Games |
ande9249
Player count gives surprisingly different experiences , I have not tried the automata yet but if it works well I will likely just have a minimum character count of three.
Big B
A bit of a curious game here. It's flashy, with beautiful artwork and a decent spin on economic themes, that has lots of bits and components for a medium weight game. There's a decent amount of decision space going on, but you're pretty reactive to what the game gives you at various points in time. There's some fuzziness in the rule book where I wish they had greater clarification or more examples, though nothing deal breaking from what I've seen. It flirts with being too sprawling for the what the core is, I do wish an element or two had been slimmed down a bit, but there's some cool ideas here too. Not quite great, but decently enjoyable and replayable.
Caitlin147
Heard about this on the Secret Cabal podcast, and then watched the rules videos & gameplay videos. I love that anyone can join in on the dark road outings, and love the idea of planning efficient trips by carefully choosing what you're brining before you set out. Decided to stick with the regular edition... although the deluxe was cool in theory, I do not actually like how the lanterns stand up, so I went with the regular one. Edit: bought the upgrades at PAX Unplugged 2021 as a Christmas gift (before the actual game even arrives, oh my goodness!) but once I saw the upgrades in person, PLUS they added in the ability to lay down the lanterns, I was sold (literally)