Tag: merchants

Roleplaying and board games reviews, podcasts, videos and interviews

Merchants And Marauders

I was never much a fan of the old pirate stories, and I sure as hell don’t like the Somali scumbags that are boarding merchant vessels in the modern world today. That being said, the moment I heard about Z-Man’s Merchants and Marauders, I wanted it. I read a bit about it on the Z-Man website, read some rumours on the interwebz, and each new story made this seem like an amazing adventure game. While I am indeed usually optimistic, I simply had to get this to prove to myself that it may be the game to change my mind, forever, about pirates, and more specifically, pirate games.

The Scepter of Zavandor

In The Scepter of Zavandor, the players are magic students amassing power to claim the game named scepter. SoZ is a brutal snowball economy game with an auction component as the main player interaction. Given this description, I should 1) not enjoy the game and 2) be fairly terrible at it. I was fascinated, if a bit overwhelmed, the first time I played it. With each subsequent play, I have liked it more and more. Even more surprising, I am very competitive at the game. After a few attempts, players learn what is and is not a good idea and then develop a sense of what strategies are viable.

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