Place golden coins above the Point cards – specifically, the first (left-most) card in this row. Put as many gold coins here as the number of players, multiplied by two (eight, for example, in a four-player game). Place the same number of silver coins above the second 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. To get the most out of your time with Spice Road, we’d recommend playing with around three or four players, opening up the more interesting interactive aspects of the design while keeping play time a comfortable length. 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. 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

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. 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. 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 a 2017 table-top strategy game designed by Emerson Matsuuchi and distributed by Plan B Games. The game is a simulation of fifteenth-century spice trading, and each player competes for points as they buy and sell spices represented by colored cubes.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. Play a card from your hand. These may be an upgrade card which allows you to upgrade a spice cube to the next level or a Spice Card where you collect a set amount of spices. 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 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.

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 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 Place the four red spice ‘pinch bowls’ (thematic, we like it!) in a vertical row. Pour the yellow spice cubes (turmeric) into the bottom bowl, then the red spice (safran) into the bowl above it. Next, the green cardamom, with the brown cinnamon into the bowl at the top. 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. 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.

Setup

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. If you play a conversion card, you may convert spices on your caravan into the next most valuable spice (i.e. yellow (turmeric), red (saffron), green (cardamom) , brown (cinnamon)) the number of times depicted on the card. When the game arrived I didn’t know what to expect. For its relatively cheap price the box was a small to medium size with great artwork, but nothing I hadn’t seen before. Upon opening the box I was pleasantly surprised, the rule sheet was one piece of card with pictures and writing on both sides. You do not have to execute all conversions that are possible according to the card. In the illustrated example, you were allowed to turn a yellow turmeric into a red saffron and do the same again, or convert the converted saffron into a green cardamom.