In The Guild of Merchant Explorers, each player starts with one city on their personal map board.
Shuffle the deck of terrain cards, then reveal most of these cards one by one. Based on the terrain revealed, each player places on their board cubes that are connected to their starting city or other cubes. You want to complete areas on your board, cross the seas to new land, and establish new cities on the board. You can explore capsized ships for treasure — which gives you special placement capabilities — and create linked connections between locations to score bonus points. Common objectives can be completed by all players, with those who complete it first scoring more points.
At the end of a round, all cubes are removed from each board, leaving only the cities behind, so if you don’t establish new cities, you’ll be stuck in the same places.
The Guild of Merchant Explorers contains multiple copies of four different maps, and the game is designed so that you can play remotely with one or more copies.
Abdul
Has a satisfying amount of decision making, largely due to the special power cards and planning around how to maximise their benefits. Would rate higher if it were not for the fiddly components that turns this into a dexterity game.
adamw
A roll and write without rolling or writing? Yes. I really liked it as it was interesting to know what cards would come out, to plan your path to riches (and points) as well as get some additional clever and powerful abilities unique to yourself. Deserves more plays and may add to my collection.
awrighter
This game came outnof.no where. The entire time everyone at the table was saying. Wow why is this so fun!? This is stupidly fun, right? Went from mildly interested to I must own this game in 3 turns.