Century: Spice Road

Today's game review is of the 2017 release, Century: Spice Road.  For 2-5 players, it takes 45 minutes.

Overview
You are a caravan leader in search of wealth.  Your job is to acquire merchants (purple-backed merchant cards, each granting you a special ability) and use them to acquire spices (yellow, red, green, or brown cubes), which you'll need to pay for (orange-backed) point cards.

All spices are not created equal.  From easiest to obtain (yellow) to hardest (brown), you'll need spices of different colors to pay for point cards, whose value varies based on the quantity and type of spices needed to buy it.  But don't worry; you can use merchant cards to obtain, exchange, or upgrade your spices to get what you need . . . as long as someone else doesn't beat you to it!

the game after set up; image from here

Simplified Gameplay
You begin the game with a few spices and two merchant cards in your hand.  You'll acquire more as the game progresses, giving you more options to use on your turn.  On your turn each round, you do must do 1 of the following actions:

• play a merchant card from your hand, executing its effect and leaving it face-up on the table.  There are three types of effects:
• spice cards- take the number and color of cube(s) shown on the card from the bowls and place them in your caravan
• upgrade cards- upgrade a cube in your caravan 1 level for each upgrade symbol on the card (example: turn a yellow into a red, or a red into a green)
• trade cards- turn in the number and color of cube(s) above the arrow for the number of color of cube(s) below the arrow
• acquire a merchant card from the merchant row 
• paying a cost if necessary by placing one cube of any color on each card to the left of the card you acquire
• rest- take all played cards back into your hand
• claim a point card buy paying the spice(s) indicated on it

If you acquire a merchant card or claim a point card on your turn, shift the cards left to occupy the vacant space and place a new card as needed, making sure there are 5 cards in the point row and 6 cards in the merchant row at all times.

Once a player acquires 5 point cards, the remainder of the round is played, and points are tallied.  Highest total wins!

Review
This is a great game!  It's a deck-building game that's a cross between Splendor and Dominion.  Easy to learn and fast to play, I highly recommend this one.

Rating: A