I've been tossing this idea around for a few years at least and now that I have some spare time this spring I'm going to finally finish it. :p This thread will be my design diary. Maybe by early summer I'll be ready for blind playtesting.
The core of the game is competition in seven trade goods: Wool, Timber, Stone, Grain, Cloth, Wine, and Silk.
Players battle for control of Cities in medieval Europe; each City produces one of the trade goods. The play of Merchant Cards, however, decides when each good pays out (in money, which also serves as victory points).
A Merchant Card looks like this:
At the top you can see this is a Cloth Merchant. Below, you can see payouts for two different goods.
Alongside the competition on the map, players take turns adding Merchants to the Market. At one point in the game, the Market might look like this:
When you have three of a kind (for example three Cloth Merchants) that good pays out.
*The player who controls the most Cloth Cities gets the highest Cloth payout available in the Market ($12 in this example).
*The player who controls the second-most Cloth Cities gets the second largest available payout ($10, here).
*The three Cloth Merchants are discarded from the Market. Cloth won't pay out again until three more Cloth Merchants are played.
Here's how the strategy factors in. Imagine it's your turn to play a card to the Market, as shown above, and you have these Merchant Cards in your hand:
If you have the largest stake in Cloth, now is the perfect time to "cash in" before someone else conquers those cities. You can play your Cloth card; Cloth pays out $12 to you and $10 to the player in second place. The Cloth Merchants are discarded from the Market.
Suppose someone else has a large stake in Wine. You may not be able to conquer their cities, but you can crash the price of Wine by playing your Timber card. Timber pays out ($6/$5) and then the Timber Merchants are removed from the Market - including the one that showed a Wine payout of $16! Now Wine will be worth only $12 to the lead player.
Finally, suppose you are starting to invest heavily in Wool. Playing your Stone Merchant is a decent choice. It shows a relatively high price for Wool, and it's likely to stick around for a while because it's only the first Stone Merchant in the Market.
The subtle and constantly evolving links between the cards creates a system of risk and reward that will hopefully be very interesting to play... as the Market values of goods rise and fall, it's all about being in the right place at the right time with the right holdings :D
Till next time, LinoleumB
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Thanks for the comments+encouragement everyone.
I am not a graphic design wiz so the cards could definitely use redesigning.
Would it be less confusing if they were called DEMAND cards? When three Cloth Demand cards are played, Cloth is scored, etc.
The intent of the mechanic is that the players, in addition to competing (area control) on the map, have the ability to influence the VALUE of each trade good as well. A player can increase the scoring value of Cloth by playing cards that show high Cloth payouts. At the same time his foes can try to crash the price of Cloth by completing other 3-of-a-kinds that remove those high cards. This is going on all at the same time for all 7 of the trade goods. It's this market competition that determines when each good is scored and how much it ends up being worth.