Century: Spice Road

2nd April 2019

It's a Tuesday, so that means a pleasant evening of tabletop gaming at 'The Sovereigns.

Proceedings began with 'Century: Spice Road'. This game is first part of a gaming trilogy.
I blogged about the 2nd game - 'Century: Eastern Wonder' here. in that blog I said that I found playing Century: Spice Road to be a frustrating experience.

Well I've played Century Spice Road again, so here we ego!

Century: Spice Road, as they name suggests is about 'The Spice Road' which means travelling and trading spices.

Like Eastern Wonder, Spice Road is about trading the same 4 types of spice, represented by identical components (which makes sense and is fine).

Century: Spice Road is a engine building card game. As well as the aforementioned spices, there are 2 types of card, scoring cards and trading cards.

The cards sit in the playing area in 2 rows, with the scoring cards on top. Also some 'gold coins' are placed just above the leftmost scoring card and some 'silver coins' are placed just above the second leftmost card.

The ultimate objective of the game is to get the highest score. Can you guess how you do that - yep accumulate scoring cards.

Scoring Cards
Each scoring cards has to be bought with a combination of spices, like 3 reds and 2 greens, 5 yellow or 1 of each colour etc. The more expensive the spices required to obtain, the more points the card is worth.

Trading Cards
These are the cards that allow you to generate and trade spices. There are different kinds of trading cards.

• Acquistion cards: These cards allow the player to take relevant spices from the spice stock.
• Upgrade cards: These cards allow the player to upgrade their spices. The basic starting upgrade allows 2 upgrades, so 2 yellows could be upgraded once each, or a single yellow could be upgraded twice.
• Trade cards: These cards allow players to trade spices they currently possess for other spices. These to trade a larger number of lesser spices for fewer, better spices. Conversely, it also allows you to trade a greater spice for a larger number of lesser spices.

How the game plays

​Each player ​starts with a small hand of trading cards and can do 1 action in their turn.

• Play a trading card from their hand: When a trading card is played, it goes into the player's discard pile.
• Buy a trading card: A player may choose to buy a trading card from the row of trading cards. The card on the furthest left is free, but all other cards cost spice (any kind of spice can be spent). One spice cube must be spent on each card to the left of the card you want to buy. Thus the further right to the trading card is, the more it costs. The game utilises a 'conveyor belt' mechanic, when a card is bought, all the cards to the right are shuffled to the left and the new card is played on the furthest right. This also means that the newer cards are also the most expensive. Also, when a trading card is bought it goes into the player's hand, so it is available to use immediately on the player's next turn.
• Buy a scoring card: Each has its own cost regardless of position, but if a card from the furthest or 2nd furthest left is bought, the buying player also receives the relevant gold or silver coin. - Coins are worth points at the end of the game. The scoring row uses the same conveyor belt mechanic as the trading row. When trading card is bought it is not added to the player's hand, but put to one side.
• Rest: Resting allows the player to put their discard pile back into their hand. Strictly speaking this is not a deck-builder (Because there is no deck!) and the player keeps all of their cards in their hand and plays them in any order they wish.

The game continues until one player has acquired the required number of scoring cards to trigger the endgame.
Scores are tallied and a winner declared.

How does it play?

In an earlier blog I expressed my frustration at this game.
This is entirely to do with the game flow to do with scoring cards. After buying a scoring card, a new scoring card will appear. It's frustrating when you buy a scoring card and the next card that is dealt is slightly better. Particularly so you had the spice to buy it, but have used it on the previous card and now have no chance of getting it.
Additionally, when a new scoring card appears that you easily have the spice get, there's no sense of satisfaction in do so, it just feels a little cheap.

So grumbling aside, Century: Spice Road is easy to learn and play. It also has a fair amount to strategize. When buying trading cards, you want ones that fit what you want to do as efficiently as possible.
Overall my opinion of it has softened a little over time and after playing Century: Eastern Wonder. I may end up buying both of them.