by Mike Clarke This review was originally published to BoardGameGeek in January 2011.
Merchants and Marauders is an epic tale of plunder and trade in the Age of Piracy. You start as a slovenly pirate with grand ambitions in a lowly sloop or a small-potatoes merchant with dreams of wealth and adventure in a bucket-of-bolts flute.
During the course of the game, you’ll ply thousands of miles of open ocean through the seas of the Carribean and along the coast of South America.
Along the way you’ll plunder and trade your way to ‘Glory’ acquiring better vessels in the form of frigates and galleons and living a story told through the ‘Events’ that shape your world, the ‘Rumours’ you find in port and the ‘Missions’ that the less adventurous denizens of the land pay you to undertake.
In so doing, you’ll be living your own personal story, which due to the rumours and missions, the different captains you get to command, their different starting ports and the random nature of the goods in demand, will be different each time you play it.
Powerful naval ships will stalk your pirate like the criminal he is and as a merchant the game’s non-player pirates will hunt you down for your gold.
Success whether it comes from missions and rumors or plunder and trade brings ‘Glory’ and in the end, it will be the most glorious pirate or merchant who wins the game.
The vastness of the ocean is represented by the scarcity of actions available to you. There are only three and moving is one, scouting is another and doing stuff in port is a third (granted you can do a ton of stuff in port for that one action).
That means it takes awhile to get anywhere and makes the very large game board, which is mostly ocean and islands and some coast, seem even larger.
The first time I played the game, I have to admit I was kind of disappointed. I was a terrible pirate and I got beat handily by the merchant player. All’s he had to do was drop off and pick up goods and never got shut out of ports.
Meanwhile entire towns allied with the merchants I’d just raided would close their doors to me and the shellacking I took in battles was hard to recover from.
It seemed so banal.
Pick up goods, here, drop them off there….or raid this merchant…roll the dice. Geez bad luck again. The pirate frigate costs as much as the merchant galleon, yet the galleon seemed so much better will all that extra crew and cannon.
Granted it was a bit too much of a pig for merchant raids, but gawd it could blow your pirate frigate clean out of the water!
Say, what kind of pirate game is this anyway?! Don’t tell me it was four years in the making. Didn’t these guys learn anything about putting a good game together in all that time??
Even though the game didn’t impress me too much at first, its theme was so strong I kept wanting to play it for reasons even I didn’t quite understand.
Then around my sixth play, the game came into focus. These captains had seamanship and leadership and the pirates roamed far and wide unlike the merchants who were chained to random ports where their goods were in demand.
The pirate frigate had greater maneuverability and was a beast for taking out merchant ships. Its greater freedom meant easier access to rumors and missions, both sources of glory.
It could even take on a galleon under the right circumstances and win…if your captain had good seamanship or your ship a maneuverability advantage and if he didn’t well…there were several other glorious paths to victory if you were clever enough.
Hell under the right circumstances you could even buy the damn galleon if you found a port with a good enough carpenter willing to upgrade your sails to make it maneuverable enough for raiding.
You could even be both a merchant and a pirate in the same game. Starting out stashing your gold for glory points then becoming a pirate mid-game to get more glory from raids…or vice-versa…or not depending on the circumstances.
Fills table and soul with piratey goodness
Little by little, like a shy maiden, the game revealed itself to be a lot more exciting and inviting than I’d first realized. Suddenly the ocean didn’t seem so big as naval ships started pounding on us and players began picking off the wounded.
Do I spend my gold on a ship upgrade or save it to stash because every 10 stashed is a glory point?
Decisions, decisions. Can I afford to travel over there for that ship mod to improve my situation because Daniel is going to get one and possibly two glory points in the time it takes me to get there.
Dare I risk running the naval blockade with 30 gold on board?
What’s this, two nations going to war and I’m from one of them! Now I can’t access the enemies port!! And two man-o-wars just entered the ocean making me suddenly pine for the good ‘ol days and the naval frigates they replaced.
I found the game growing on me. I’ve always loved stories of the pirate life and I found myself becoming immersed in this one. I started really planning my moves. Instead of just sailing around killing stuff, I made sure every single action counted for something.
I found myself changing roles and making plans on the fly. I’d start out as a pirate but the game would take me in a direction that would make me a merchant (in the wrong ship I might add) until mid game because I was getting early glory from rumors and missions and the naval ships which usually don’t become overwhelming until later in the game had suddenly appeared earlier than usual.
In that game, I was a merchant in a pirate sloop collecting rumors and missions because the waters were just too damned dangerous to go pirate until-mid game when I started raiding then realized the only way to recover was to stash the gold for victory that I would have used to upgrade to a frigate or a galleon. Guess what? It worked and I won!!
Merchants and Marauders is a game that rewards strategic, flexible play, but it’s also a game where you can do all that and get killed by the dice.
Naval ships on the prowl near Christian Marquis’s base at Tortuga Arrrrrr!
Like all good dice-based games, you get better odds with better equipment but sometimes as in life, things just go badly even when the odds are in your favor. However, the game is so beautifully wrought, so steeped in theme that it doesn’t matter. You play it to experience it. Winning is the goal. It’s not why you play.
If you’re a player who likes to control all aspects of his game, who wants only his own decisions to count (like in say Dungeon Twister) and who is at heart a euro gamer this game will definitely not be for you.
But if you’re looking for a beautifully rendered board game that lets you live the experience of life on the high seas in the Age of Piracy, then look no further. This is your game.
Home Bases are Victory Point Markers from Pirates Cove – visible from afar
Is it perfect? No it’s not. But I do rate it a solid 8 out of 10 for:
Components: a beautiful knock-out of a board, dice with irregular markings to simulate ‘dem bones, realistically chipped gold pieces, thick player boards and a comprehensive player aid.
Rules: that are straightforward, beautifully illustrated on thick high quality glossy paper, well laid out and easy to understand. A ship battle system that is complex, but intuitive.
Gameplay: that is satisfying, evocative and fun, but that can also be random….where bad luck can sewer you at the end of two-and-a-half hours of play. (There goes the perfect game).
No matter…I love the theme, because I like the choices the game presents me and because I get to be clever and piratey. This game works for me because, win or lose, it’s a gas!
I have higher rated games (Dominant Species and Twilight Struggle are two).
This pirate game replaces Karl and Julianne Lepp’s Plunder, my previous most favorite pirate game.
It is now my highest rated pirate game and it is also the best pirate game I have ever played. To those who may have started off experiencing the game as a letdown (there are some but not many), be patient, it will eventually teach you better strategies.
Don’t judge the game after only a few plays.
If you’re in the right frame of mind, its a freewheeling, unpredictable, roller coaster ride. Hell, you might even want to partake in a little grog to get you in the pirate mood.
See you on the high seas me mateys!
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