Century: Eastern Wonders

5th February

Another Tuesday night at 'The Sovereigns'.
The ladies bathroom was closed and most of the pub smelt of poo! But board gamers are a tough as it gets. So we endured and played on.

The first game of the night was 'Century: Eastern Wonders'.

This is the 3rd 'Century' game I've seen the other two are:
Century: Spice Road.
Century: Golem Edition.

I've played Century: Spice Road previously and it was alright. It was sort of a deck building Resource trading/management card game. But a specifc random element in the game 'Really pisses me off to no end!' But enough talk of a game that I'm not actually blogging about.

So Century: Eastern Wonders is a sequel  of sorts to Spice Road game and contains rules for combining both games into a single game. Curious - but something for another time.

In Eastern Wonders, you control a merchant ship that travels around, trading spices for profit.

The first thing I'm going to say for this game is that even though it's more or less just a bunch of boat shaped meeples sitting on tiles - it is quite a pretty looking game. Unfortunately I didn't get a good photo of it.

On to the gameplay.

First; let me explain the different spices.
There are 4 types of spices, ranked from least to most valuable they are:
Yellow - red - green - brown.

In your turn you can move your ship 1 or more spaces, then you can perform 1 of 3 actions after moving.

• Harvest: This allows you to collect 2 yellow cubes from the bank.
• Market: If you are on a market tile (which you will be most of the time), you can trade spice cubes. Different market tiles allow you to carry out different types of trading. For example, you could trade 2 yellow cubes for a 2 red cubes (which are more valuable) on a particular tile. On another tile, you could trade 2 red cubes for 2 yellow cubes and a brown cube. Or a tile might allow you to turn a brown cube into 5 yellow cubes, etc, etc. So by travelling along particular routes you can create trading loops to increase your spices. Why are spices so important?
• Port: This is why spices are so important. The game's playing area has 4 ports, generally each port contains a 'Victory Tile'. Each victory tile has a cost (E.G. 2 red and 4 yellow). If you are on a Port tile and play the 'Port' action and have the necessary spices, then you discard those spices to acquire a Victory Tile. Each Victory Tile has victory point total (the highest I've seen is 20 Victory Points). victory points win you the game. Then a new victory tile with a different cost. There's also a mechanic where a port can become temporarily inaccessible.

There are some other mechanics, such as 'outposts'. Each player has their own board. On their board are 20 outpost markers arranged in 4 rows of five. In order to use the market action on a tile, the player must place a outpost marker on the tile.

However, there are specific rules on how out post markers are removed from a player's board and placed on a market tile. Each market tile has a spice symbol (yellow, red, green, brown) and each of the 4 rows of outposts has a corresponding symbol.
Thus: If playing an outpost marker on to a market tile with a yellow symbol, it must be the left-most outpost marker from the yellow row that is placed on to the market tile.

This is important, as how markers are removed from your board makes difference.

• The spaces further to the right side of the board have numbers, these count as victory points at the end of the game. So playing outpost markers from one type of spice will earn you points.
• Removing an entire column of spices earns you an upgrade to your board. This can be extra movement, extra cargo hold space, improved harvesting etc. So there's also a reason to place markers from the spices evenly.

And that's good. There's more than one strategy you can pursue to earning victory points. And there always seems to be a meaningful decision to make. Sometimes you just need to recognise and adapt your tactics when circumstances change.

And that's it. I enjoyed Century: Eastern Wonders enough that it goes on to the 'would like to own' list and I may revisit Century Spice Road in the future with a different mindset.

Dang! Just realised; I blogged a game tabout spices and I didn't make a single reference to 'Dune'. Well The spice mu - ah too late, screw it!​