 Century: Spice Road box cover | |
| Players | 2-5 |
|---|---|
| Playing time | 30-45 minutes |
| Skills | Strategy |
Century: Spice Road is a 2017 table-top strategy game designed by Emerson Matsuuchi and distributed by Plan B Games. The game is a simulation of fifteenth-century spice trading, and each player competes for points as they buy and sell spices represented by colored cubes.
Each turn, a player will play a card, buy a card, or take back into their hand cards they had previously discarded. [1] By doing so, the player builds a hand of cards that enable the player to collect or upgrade spices to fill orders that score points for the player. [1]
The game has received positive reviews. The Guardian calls Century: Spice Road "slick and fast-paced," noting also that the game's "speed and simplicity mask some real depth." [2] Owen Duffy of Ars Technica calls it a "tight, brain-teasing card game." [3] The New Indian Express describes the game as "clever," also praising the game's pace, a facet encouraged by the focus on series of small, quick decisions as opposed to offering many options to consider simultaneously. [4] The game currently holds a rating of 7.4 on the website BoardGameGeek. [5]
Another review at Ars Technica states that it is "slightly more complex" than Splendor , and that it is "an absolute joy to play". [1]
Two official Century: Spice Road mini-expansions have been published as Bonus Cards Sets with unique mechanisms to introduce new strategies. [6] [7] In addition, Plan B Games released a re-themed version of the game titled Century: Golem Edition. In this new version, players trade crystals and compete to build golems, and it features new art and a new setting, in a fantasy world called Caravania. [8] [9] [10]
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