Merchant of Venus
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Merchant of Venus
Stephen: [00:00:00] So Merchant of Venus, this is the Fantasy Flight Edition.
John: And we are playing the classic rules tonight.
Stephen: Playing the classic rules. We've never actually played the, what do they call the other?
John: Standard rules?
Stephen: Standard rules. Um, yeah, we've never really messed with that. Um,
Samuel: you guys have been like, , you've, you've taken a firm stance against playing the standard rules ever.
Stephen: I mean, why? I mean, why try cuz the game is damn near perfect.
Samuel: I think I tried once
Stephen: in the classic line.
John: Do you turn away the sweetness? That's the question.
Stephen: I mean,
Samuel: variety is this place of life, gentlemen.
Stephen: It is. I get that. But I really just like the game the way that it is, honestly. I mean, I wouldn't be opposed to giving it.
Chris: Have you ever tried it?
Stephen: No, I've never tried it.
Chris: What have you heard about it? I, but
John: it's not the classic.
Stephen: It's not the classic.
Chris: Oh, I understand that.
Stephen: But it's, it's got a different running gear. There's extra rules for different things.
John: Every now and again, you'll bump into somebody on the internet that says, yeah, no, I actually really like the, the standard rules.
Most [00:01:00] people sit there and say they like the classic.
Chris: I'm, I'm with Samuel. I'd like to give it a try.
Samuel: You guys clearly have a history with this game. Mm-hmm. , you want to go into that a little bit?
Stephen: Uh, so yeah, I was just trying to look up and see what our actual logged history is. Um,
Chris: will Adrienne, be giving out. ,
John: this is Richard
Chris: out. The names.
John: This is Richard. Yeah, hope so. Go ahead.
Stephen: Yeah, I just, we were real busy this weekend and I wasn't able to nail down a time to, to get her to, and I feel really bad cuz I know I butchered those names for Heat: Pedal to the Metal. Like
John: those are some tough names.
Stephen: They were tough. I mean,
John: they're, they're Norwegian or something?
Stephen: Denmark.
They're Danish.
John: Danish.
Stephen: And I, I have one friend that's Danish and I can only say his first. . His, his last name has an r and a j next to each other, and I just can't figure it out. . . All right. So yeah, we've, um, we've played this one a lot. Uh, you know, this is one where in my board, gaming infancy. , uh, when I was doing nothing but listening to the Dice Tower, Eric [00:02:00] Summerer would come on and always talk about Merchant of Venus and how great it was to the point where, you know, he built his own set and it was ridiculously hard to get ahold of.
And I was like, all right, if I'm gonna make a, if I'm gonna make a game, this is probably the one I'm gonna spend the time to make it. Mm-hmm. . And about that time, all the drama started with, what was it? Fantasy, flight and Stronghold.
John: Stronghold. Yep.
Stephen: So, you know, We knew what, we knew it was coming. So at that point I'm like, great, I dodged a bullet.
I'll wait till it hits retail.
John: Right.
Stephen: And I'll just pay whatever the price is. And you know, it's a really interesting story in that, you know, you've got two publishers that are working independently on reprints for Merchant of Venus.
John: Mm-hmm. ,
Stephen: and they kind of, one of 'em, kind of teases that they're, um, that they're, they're doing it and as a marketing thing, not as a, not as anything else.
well, I guess it was Buonocore that teased it.
John: Yes. Buonocore of stronghold games, he essentially [00:03:00] announced over a podcast. Mm-hmm. very similar to this one, that he had secured the rights to Merchant of Venus, which at the time was one of the grail games that would never be reprinted because Hasbro owned it and Hasbro were just awful people and wouldn't release it.
Stephen: And so
Chris: they're not gonna sponsor us
Stephen: about that time. Christian Peterson
Samuel: Hasbro are awful people, uh,
Stephen: Christian Peterson of fantasy flights like, well, wait a minute, we have the rights. And so what, what you have is. , you've got the makings of something that could have been, could have been terrible.
John: Could have been a real mess.
Stephen: Yeah. Could have been a real mess. It could have gone to legal, it could have been dragged out and this game could have never been made. Right. But instead they came together and they realized this is too good of a game to not put out. So they actually collaborated.
John: Yes.
Stephen: Which is unheard of.
John: Yes. And I, I'll be honest with you, I.
I think the reason you have two versions of this game in one box is because Stronghold Games wanted to publish the original classic exactly [00:04:00] as it was, and fantasy flight. Had already done a revision and had rebuilt some of the, the game in order to quote, modernize it. Mm-hmm. , and you can, I, I haven't played the standard rules, so I, I can't tell you whether one is better than the other, but the result was that you ended up with both games coming out on the same box.
Both versions. Mm-hmm. , because everybody loved this game. It was originally an Avalon Hill game. It was in a cheap little box, and it had old fashioned Avalon Hill markers, which were not terribly exciting. , but everybody loved the Gameplays. So Richard Hamlin game, he's kind of a legend. And, and that's who Stephen Buonocore who had gotten with, he had, he had gotten with Stronghold or his stronghold had gotten with, uh, Hamblen the designer who felt that he owned the rights of the game that had reverted back to him.
Meanwhile, Christian Peterson at Fantasy Flight had gotten with Hasbro and had licensed it from them. So between the two of them, they both thought they owned it. When Buonocore went on the podcast and announced that he was making it the very following morning, Fantasy flight, put out a notice saying, Hey, [00:05:00] we're gonna have this up for sale in the coming months.
And that's when everything got heated and excited. And instead of getting nasty with each other and going into court and being in trouble, the two of them found a way to come to common ground and build this version of the game. And it's just, it's glorious looking on the table. It's really a beautiful game.
And it, and it, it is, it is everything everybody made it out to be when it was very hard to find. It's just a
great play.
Stephen: Yeah. It's. I mean, you talk about table presence. I mean, first off, the board, it's a nice six panel board and the art's nice and bright and it's very easy to read. I mean, even across the board, like over in front of Samuel, I can kind of see what's going on over there.
It's. it, and it's just, it's, it looks great for a sci-fi game.
Chris: Once you get the mechanics down, the game plays very easy. It, it's nice to look at the game pieces. There's nothing cheap looking about it. I mean, I guess they could have made the spaceships a little more [00:06:00] detailed, but
other than that,
Stephen: no. The spaceships are fine.
Yeah. Where are they? Where are they Kind of skimped and the only, the only rub I have against this game is the money tokens. They're very tiny. And the,
Chris: what do you think this game needs, John?
Stephen: The. And the money tokens is way off because we often find that we don't have enough of like, yeah, and they use the tens or
the fives, or
John: they use the same money tokens for both versions of the game.
So you get some odd denominations like in the, in the, in the classic version of the game. There's, there's dollar coins here. We don't even use 'em. Because everything is denominated.
Chris: Well, you do once you own the factory or something like that, cuz then you get a percentage of when people buy stuff. Cuz that, that's where it becomes an issue is, hey I get $16.
Cuz he just bought that
$160.
John: Oh, okay. I was unaware that we ever used the ones. So maybe I'm incorrect on that.
Stephen: When you build the space stations, you get a 10% kickback if they buy from,
Chris: so it's a hundred twenty dollars. You're coming out too and.
John: How does the, how do you play the game? Let's, I mean, let's spend 90 seconds just to essentially explaining what's sitting on the board and talk.
Stephen: Okay, great. [00:07:00] Um, who wants to give that a go?
Samuel: You fly your ship around to planets, buy stuff and sell it at different planets, hopefully for more money.
Stephen: Well, it's always for more money, but yes, more money than other players.
Chris: The nice thing about it is the planets are randomized and they only want,
Stephen: well, let's this back up because he gave the most vaguest. Ridiculous.
John: He didn't even used 90 seconds.
Stephen: Ridiculous overview. Possible. Okay. Okay, so what you have is a, a, a map of the galaxy. That's what 14. That's got 14 planets and. A space station, that's your home base. And then a couple of other features throughout, on each of the 14 planets is a face down card. Uh, when you explore that planet, when you're the first person to enter orbit, you get to flip it over and it's gonna determine what goods can be sold at that planet and what, uh, spaceships and spaceship upgrades you can purchase.
So, . When you're at a planet, you can choose to go down to the [00:08:00] planet and pick up the goods, pay money for 'em. And on the goods token itself, it tells you what other planets will buy those goods from you. So for instance, uh, at Planet 14, they sell, uh, psychotic sculptures. Hmm. And planets or races, 1, 2, 3, and four will actually buy those for 250 credits.
So you buy it for 120 at Planet 14.
John: Then you have to fly,
Stephen: and then you have to fly and find a planet 1, 2, 3, or four. and you can turn around and sell these psychotic sculptures.
John: So, so there are 14 planets and, and you, you put cards down, face down, you shuffle the cards and you drop them down. So every time you play the game, the planets are in, or the cultures are each in a different location.
Each civilization changes its location. So one of the things that happens is about halfway through the game you start finding out. Okay, here's a nice little loop down here where I can buy and then sell. Move one space, buy, and then sell back in the other direction again. And you kind of get this [00:09:00] little churn going the way your company is gonna make money.
And you've got four different people on the board. They may be doing the same loop you are, or they may have their own loop somewhere else. And the idea is to see how well you can do. And frankly, the first person to get to $2,000 wins. Yeah.
Chris: Are there loops? Are there civilizations that buy and sell from each other?
Samuel: Because typically it's like, no, I think you have to do three sell. You have to have like a three.
John: It's, it's usually a three. Sometimes you get a four. That works real well too, too.
Stephen: I think four is the, the minimum because each, each number sells to. Four other ones,
John: but, but you can take one step from one planet to another, and then you can be back on, on a paying cycle again.
So it's, it's each time you play, it's a little bit different. And, and at times it works out really well. It's other times you struggle. And then there's these oddballs because these pieces come out of a bag, so somebody's looking for a ride and you can just give 'em a ride and you pick up a hundred credits doing that, that sort of thing.
So there's other ways to make some money as well. Mm-hmm. and you can, you can build factories at places. And there's, it's, it's, [00:10:00] it's a very traditional. Um, build your business sort of game. It just happens to be set in outer space on,
Samuel: I enjoy that you can, you know, it's buy different ship types and upgrade that.
That's fun.
Stephen: Yeah. It's the very definition of pickup and deliver. Mm-hmm. and, um, it's, I mean, it's straight roll and move. So on your turn with the scout, which is the basic ship, you can roll three dice and the combination of those dice is how many spaces you can move. . Now there's some, there's some spaces that are warp gates that require you ha to have a certain die face to go certain ways, um, that's a little more advanced than I want to talk about right now.
But all that to say is sometimes you don't actually get to go the way that you want to, and you have to make detours
John: just a little bit of adventure when you're, when you're traveling through space.
Stephen: And then, um, as you, as you play along, There are these tokens on the board that, um, I don't know what they're called, but
Chris: first contact, right?
Stephen: No, no, these [00:11:00] tokens.
Chris: Oh, these are the ones that are first contact? Yeah. And then these are the exploration markers or something like that?
John: Yeah, I think that's, you're reading something like that.
Stephen: So whatever they're called. I'm sorry. We'll, we'll get back to you on that.
John: There's some random stuff out in space.
Stephen: Basically they flip over and they can be artifacts that change the rules of the game in a way. Or they could be, um, like a, like a nova. That basically means you have to pay money to move through that space, or they can be warp gates that will warp you clean across the board. So I mean, it's, it's about as random as a game can get, but still be very, um, still
controlled.
You can still, you can still be
in control over it. So yeah, it's, uh, it's a lot of fun. It's probably one of my top 10 games. , and I know it's due, it, it needs to be reprinted again because mm-hmm. , it's woefully outta print again. Um, but hopefully they can figure it out and get another print run going soon.
So anyone else have any parting thoughts before we give this one a shot?
Samuel: I think my [00:12:00] summary was closer to 90 seconds than yours was.
Stephen: Yeah, but
mine was more important.
Chris: The two of yours combined were 90 seconds. But Sammy, you've got the start player.
So let's get this thing,
John: grab some dice and let's roll
Stephen: hey, I'll, I'll edit a beep in, but **** this game.
Samuel: I thought you were sup.
Nevermind.
Stephen: I mean, I love this game, but we're going for the clean. This, this particular, this play of it was
garbage.
Chris: It was a solid first, a solid second, a solid third.
John: That's true. I was kind of dead center in second place. I wasn't going anywhere no matter what.
Stephen: Very, very, , well, just, just terrible. Fourth.
John: Oh, everybody did fine. It was Ed. Everybody did fine. Okay, so Steven, Steven, Steven had had a rough time tonight. He just kind of couldn't get things rolling, and you were just getting these di rolls that were just killing you. You had a chunk in the game where you were looking to roll a four.
All you needed was one, four on three dice, turn after turn after turn. I, you were not rolling four. And just to rub it all in. We were rolling fours out the wai wide. I, I gotta be honest, three fours in one shot, can't,
Chris: three fours in one shot after Steven had tried to roll four, like three times when
Samuel: he [00:13:00] didn't roll a four.
You kind of just gotta pick a different plan,
Stephen: which is exactly what I ended up doing.
Samuel: I know.
Chris: What did he do? He rolled fours.
Samuel: But you kept trying
Stephen: Well, I had the, whatever the goods were at the bottom left of the board.
John: Right. And you were, so they were, your holds were full.
Stephen: They were like three. They were the three Good.
Mm-hmm. . I needed to go up to the top right of the board where there was a warp gate. That was a four.
Samuel: Yeah.
Stephen: And there was a warp gate down at the bottom of
John: you were all set. All you needed to do was roll the four.
Stephen: All I needed was roll the four and magic, because if I shot across, if I had rolled that four, I could have gone up there sold.
I could have bought. The The fours. The threes are the fours or whatever they are out there. Yep. And then go down to the six. I would've discovered the six and I would've been in very good position. Yeah. All right.
So I missed that.
John: We knew it was the six because all the other
places were already out.
Stephen: Yeah.
So I missed that on the first roll. Okay. No big deal. I can eat a, I can eat a turn and still do okay on this. I won't. I might be able to beat Chris. All right. Whatever. So I miss it the second time around. That's [00:14:00] when you show.
Samuel: Yeah, on the other side of the board
Stephen: and Hoover, everything
John: ate his lunch
Stephen: and Chris got whatever it was that he wanted.
So the third turn, I'm like, all right, well I can limp through this and be
okay.
John: And thank God you rolled a four,
Stephen: but I did not roll a four.
John: You didn't roll a four.
Stephen: So at that point I'm like, you know what? I've got to find another route. And that's when I,
Chris: on the bright side,
Stephen: there was no bright side.
Chris: Nobody's ship exploded and
everybody found their home world.
Samuel: I will admit it was pretty easy for me.
Stephen: No, I didn't find my home world.
Samuel: I had the relic that gave me a four outta return whenever I wanted to
John: and, and to be. Th that is the nature of this game.
Stephen: Oh yeah.
John: Is you gotta roll with the punches. You, you can have all the plans in the world, but something is gonna shift out from under you, and you've gotta be ready to change on a moment's notice.
So you have to have these nice basic foundational pieces going on. You gotta make it so your ship can go faster. You gotta have the shields so you're not eating up all the money on, on your way there. You got, you gotta be able to roll with those punches.
That's all.
Stephen: If I recall the [00:15:00] last time we played, I got stuck in that warp gate.
Center thing
John: on the bottom. Yeah, that's a mess. I never
go there
Stephen: and. . I think I wa I, if I remember correctly, I wasted like four turns in that because I could not roll any numbers to get out of the game.
John: Get you out. Yep.
Stephen: Sometimes I hate this game,
John: so, so our game ran, how long? Our game ran about two hours.
Samuel: Over. Two hours is pretty quick.
Chris: Four player game. We kept it moving and
John: we were cruising. I, and we've played. Faster. I mean, I remember games where like more or less, all three of us were taking our turns there.
Chris: I think there was two or three times that people just kind of zoned out or didn't know it was their turn.
John: Yep.
Chris: I was one of them.
John: Yep. And that's the, we, we we're not the fastest players on earth. We sit down to play one game in the evening, so if it ends up taking a little longer, we don't.
Stephen: Yeah. And the, the other part of it is there's no direct interaction with each other.
Samuel: I wanna take pot shots at Chris.
Chris: There were a couple times I was lined up to take a shot at John, but I just,
Stephen: you're making jokes and I'm trying to make a point.
John: At least be funny if you're gonna do it .
Samuel: All right. Chris goes to timeout.
John: Chris goes [00:16:00] to the penalty house.
Stephen: Chris is in timeout.
Samuel: Oh man, how of this? ,
John: what is it? Typically? Two minutes.
Stephen: All right, start the, start The clock.
John: Clock is on. You've got two minutes to make your point. Steven .
Samuel: All right, Steve,
Stephen: I forgot where I was.
Samuel: Uh, player interaction.
Stephen: Oh yeah. Okay, great. So there's no actual direct player interaction in this game. Mm-hmm. . So the amount of paying attention that you have to do on other people's turns is very limited. Yeah. Uh, the, the only time you really have to pay attention is when people are selling, because my favorite mechanism of the game is, Backing up, I have a Crown Royal bag that has all of the, uh, merchant tokens,
John: right, the chips that they essentially run the economy.
Stephen: So at the beginning of the game, all it is is a bunch of demand tokens, which basically, Get pulled out, eventually put onto, uh, the different planets and you get bonus money when you sell at that planet. Yeah.
John: Sometimes sell that good at that bonus money planet. Yeah.
Stephen: So when you sell a good, you pitch it [00:17:00] into the Crown royal bag and then you.
Shake it up and you pull one out and you replace it. Mm-hmm. . So on the board at any time, there's always the same amount of tokens, but they change.
John: Okay. I guess that is true. Cuz you, it's one out, one in, or one out
Stephen: in, one out, one out, one in, one out. Uh, and if you do a demand, it's two in two out.
John: Right.
Stephen: But what it gives you is. A dwindling supply in certain areas, and then really high demand in other areas. Right. So it really incentivizes you to go to certain spaces on the board.
John: Right. So,
and, and that's part of that role with the punch sink. Mm-hmm. , because you. , you'll be sitting the same. I'm going to seven. And then the planet number eight suddenly gets two demand tokens for what you've got.
Mm-hmm. . And if they're suddenly worth like an extra $150.
Chris: Well, that was the rule,
John: which is huge.
Chris: Sam had wrong where they didn't build on top of each other. You just got the top one.
Samuel: Yeah, we were doing that wrong.
Stephen: You did that wrong. We were doing it right.
Samuel: You looked it up and were like, oh, that's how this works.
Stephen: I had to look it up because you did not believe. [00:18:00] You challenged my authori-ta and you were wrong.
Samuel: Okay. . All right.
John: So, so, so there is, there, there is a fair amount of rule density. This is this, this is a more deluxe game. All right. This kind of thing. And it, and it's right in Fancy Flights wheelhouse. Mm-hmm. . And it's right in Richard Hamblen's wheelhouse.
And he's written. Far more complicated games, but I mean, there's, there's stuff to go on here. This is a deluxe game. This is not something you're gonna bring out, learn in 15 minutes and knock out in half an hour. Yeah. You's gonna not zul.
Chris: This is not, your amateur gamer is gonna enjoy playing.
Stephen: You're gonna, you're gonna learn this game blow game and the second game you're going to say, okay, we got a couple things wrong.
Yeah, let's fix them.
John: Yeah. It's one of those games, it's, you play it once and then you pull the rule book out and you review and go, okay, now that I've got the footing out, how the game, more sense game works. Yeah. Right. Everything can start tuning out.
Samuel: I mean, it's, it's a rule book with percentages. Any game that has percentages in it does tend to be heavier.
John: Okay.
Stephen: Yeah. They're smallest percentage.
Samuel: No, no, I'm not.
Stephen: The percentages are a small part of game. I'm not saying the math is heavy. I'm saying any game that asks you to do math involving percentages is going to be heavier.
John: Well, I think, I [00:19:00] think just looking at the thickness of the rule book will give you a pretty good idea.
And it's uh,
Chris: and it was pretty nice. I think everything was in 50 or 10%. And was there stuff that sold for like 90? I think it was, I think everything was like a hundred, 120.
Samuel: It was like, Uh, it was all tens and I think it was all tens. It was all by tens.
John: Yeah. Yeah. In this game it's all by tens, but if you get, take 10% of $10, you end up with the, every once in a while you end up with $1 and $2, which I had forgotten about.
Didn't upload around three ones and Yeah. I had forgotten about that. I thought everything rounded off to the nearest five, and it doesn't.
Chris: That I think was like, we talked about that as probably the weakest part of this game was the cash. We were constantly looking for tens,
John: physically. Yeah,
Stephen: yeah,
John: yeah. And physically, and, and there's a lot of people that you know, have. Official dollars or their clay tokens or whatever it is. And so that can be replaced relatively easily. Yeah. But for functionally, those are a little bit more trouble. The rest of the tiles, I think all work pretty well. Mm-hmm. and the board is like a carnival. I mean, there there is nothing classy and reserved about this case is I just It is.
It is. Yeah. Yeah. I think my big primary [00:20:00] colors,
Samuel: I think my biggest gripe with this game is how noisy the board. , um, . That's it. I mean, you can partial out
Stephen: the young saying it's a noisy board.
John: Brothers noisy board. Barnan Bailey Circus is noisy as well. But you get to see elephants when you go there. I didn't, I mean, that's
Stephen: anymore,
Chris: not anymore. Its, you can see posters of elephants
John: get rid of the whole circus. Yeah. It's pretty. So now you have to play merchants of Venus.
Samuel: It's pretty to look at. The colors are nice. Mm-hmm. . But it is a very visually noisy board, especially when you get all the tokens and stuff on it,
Stephen: but you kind of need it to. . You need that noise so you can see at a glance.
Oh, and it from across the board, across the table. What's going on?
Samuel: No, no. It's, you know, it, it works
Stephen: because if it were, if it were a more muted, like if it were a more muted art style, I feel like a lot of, a lot of the information we get lost together.
Samuel: I agree. I think, I think part, I mean it's noisy, but it also imparts a sense of, of energy.
Mm-hmm. and, and like, Franticness
John: and fun.
Samuel: [00:21:00] And fun that I think, I think you benefit from because part of the game is rolling the dice and seeing what you get, but it's also really easy to sit down and just like, all right, I'm gonna find the most optimal path, and do that until you win. Yeah. So, and the, the energy helps with that.
Chris: John made a joke about, man, this game needs to be 1, 2, 3, 4 in categories and very sectored and stuff. And that's part of the magic of the game is it's not. Yeah, I agree. You have no idea where nine is. How many times did you pull something up and go, yeah, where the heck is 13? Or where's we knew were two words every
John: time memorized for an hour?
You think you would have a pretty good idea where the numbers are, but you, but you don't. So I realize somebody helped me find seven and somebody points out at the board.
Samuel: Yeah. I mean that's, that's part of the fun is you like, go, where do I sell this? And you end up somewhere random. .
John: It's part of the design of the game that every time you, so, so everybody talks about replayability and they say, well, replayability, there's 32 scenarios.
It's like, no, replayability is when the board changes shape every time you play it. And this board changes shape every time you play it. So no matter how well you did last time and figured out, hey, this is [00:22:00] my nice little corner of the world and I can angle it next time you play, that's not gonna be there.
You gotta find your new angle
Samuel: and, and frankly, that's the magic of this game for me, is that every time you play, it's different.
Stephen: Mm-hmm.
Samuel: , if it were the same every time. This would be, I think, a pretty boring game.
John: Yeah.
Samuel: You'd play it once or twice. You'd go, wow. And then you'd learn the paths and what way to go and how to do things.
And you'd stop caring. Yeah. But because it changes and the trade routes shift and move around every game you'd go, oh, let's see where I take things this time.
Stephen: Yeah. There's a lot of complete randomness in this game with the layout of the board and then the. The warp gates, the in and out of the, the commerce tokens.
The, the relics that show up. Cuz not all of the relics show up. We only had four of the six warp gates out.
John: It's a fair chunk of them that don't.
Chris: Yeah, normally you don't, you see two, maybe three war gates. This is the most I think we've ever seen,
John: you've ever seen.
Chris: And there was a lot of relics.
Samuel: Frankly, I think the relics on the warp gates are more, way more [00:23:00] interesting than the Yeah, but
Chris: I mean, you think about it, you were, you had like six of the
relics.
Samuel: Oh, I had four. I had the mulligan die, the spy eye, the autopilot, and the gate lock.
Stephen: Okay. He only had four.
John: I threw mine away,
Chris: threw years away,
John: and I think I had the crazy gate one and I turned it into a shield.
Chris: But those are, you're making 60 to a hundred bucks on a trade. Picking those up, it's a,
Samuel: oh yeah, there, there was plus 400. It's nice. It was plus $400
Chris: and it definitely helps with traveling. Again. You didn't care about the gate locks at all cause you could just, oh, I'll go this way, this way, this way.
Samuel: Yeah. No, it, it let me. Yeah, for sure. And that's because my strategy in the beginning of this game is always fly around and hoover up as many of the exploration tokens as you can.
Uh, both because I really enjoy exploring in games. I think that's a lot of fun. And also because the relics are super cool and I love tweaking the rules. Frankly, I'm a little disappointed. John got the, the crazy name of it, the Crazy Gate thing.
John: That's not the name of it,
Samuel: that's not the name of it, but basically every turn [00:24:00] instead of standard movement.
Jumped to a random, uh, semi-random warp gate, and he was just teleporting all over the map. And he threw it away because he got stuck or he wanted to land on a planet.
John: Any planet,
Samuel: any planet. And every turn he ended up teleporting.
He gates. He couldn't reach anywhere.
Chris: Well, when he first got it, there were no gates out. Then all of a sudden we turned it over four.
Samuel: I thought it was really cool. Um, Great. Apparently
Stephen: it cool or was it cruel?
Samuel: I've, he would
Stephen: looked the,
Chris: like you'd get like real close to the
planet but not land on .
Stephen: Yeah. He would come out the one gate and he would need eight and he would get a seven. He would need nine to get to land on a planet and he would roll a seven or an eight every time he did that like four times.
John: Part of is is the gate I needed to get. Was a one. Yeah, it was place. So I, in order to be there, I needed to roll a one. So I had two dice left to cover about, I think it was nine spaces, is what I needed. So it's
Chris: Well, you could've like, tried for different gate. You could, could, you could've chose the one.
Yeah.
Samuel: You could have tried for a different gate or gone for a [00:25:00] different planet.
John: Yeah, but none of those were solved on my problem. That's why I was going for the one, I mean, I, I was there for a reason and, and when I first got it, That that one was the second gate out on the board. I'm like, okay. So the four and the one were gonna bounce me back and forth and back and forth, and I was gonna have a nice little set there.
Mm-hmm. , and then it just said, Nope, that's just not gonna work. And that's how it went. And then with the other two gates coming out, I'm like, at that point this thing just becomes,
Stephen: oh, the other two gates were awful. Yeah. Five and six. They were down two spaces away from each other.
Samuel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Away from each other.
Stephen: When I first revealed him, it's basically like I go from. to the, to the, I went from the five and then to the sixth, then back to the five, and then back to the six because of the, the ways that my roles were mm-hmm. . And it's just like, yeah. I mean, I had just wasted another turn going back and forth between these
two games.
Samuel: Yeah. I could set my dice, I could set one of mine to a four, so I used it to jump to the side of the board. Yeah. Um, but I just, I really liked the crazy thing John had because I thought it was really neat. Changed his gameplay entirely. Yeah. Um, and it didn't work out well for him, but I would've loved the chance to try and make it work myself
John: even if I, [00:26:00] it's just been another spot.
It might've worked real well
Stephen: and had the other two warp gates not been on top of each other and been a little more, if you had like a warp gate in each quadrant, you could have made it work.
John: Okay, so here's the killer and this, this is the killer in this game, is this is this thing. You start thinking about the entire time you're playing cuz you guys.
You got a spaceship and you carry stuff from one place to another, well, in order to do that, you need to fill your ship up, all right? And once your ship is full, you've got to dump goods because that's where your money comes from and that's how you get space to pick up something. You've gotta complete that transaction.
So I have a ship with two cargo holds, and I cannot get to a place where I can dump the goods. I cannot get to a place where I can sell and buy. And that's what was killing me with that. If I had had the ship that had five spaces, then when you end up going to the wrong place, Oh, okay. I'm here. I'll grab something here.
And you've got five spaces to fill that up. So if I, if, if I've been able to get the big freighter, then that might have made a difference. But with the scout ship early in the game, it was just the kiss of death cuz I was full. So I, or
Samuel: if you had the clipper, you could've gotten farther.
Stephen: I want to say. If you had the [00:27:00] freighter, you would've only been rolling two, two dice.
Yeah. And you would've gotten nowhere on a one.
Chris: Well, he would've wouldn't. He would've gone over and shot,
John: wouldn't have had to need to go to that one place. Cause I, I would've had three more slots and I could've kind of low around You would've been to. Two D six spaces from any warp gate,
Stephen: he would've been limited to one D six plus one from that warp gate, from that war, from that warp gate that he kept rolling.
John: Yeah. Yeah. But I'd be far more likely to not roll one of the warp gates, because if I only had two beds, potentially the war gate throw down middle four or five and six.
Samuel: Good luck. Yeah,
Stephen: yeah. Anyway, um, yeah, it's, it's, it was pretty zany how old
Chris: it was a, this was a neat game.
Samuel: Thought it was za. I will say another thing I enjoy is the way they do ship.
Mm-hmm. , there's four classes of ships and you roll between two and
Stephen: two. Three, three and four.
Samuel: Yeah. 2, 3, 3 and four. So between two and four dice, depending on your ship type. But there's also different drive types where you can skip over certain colored spaces on the [00:28:00] board. Mm-hmm. . So you can skip over yellow or red or yellow and red, which really makes you go fast, even with the freighter where you can haul a bunch of stuff and just, I remember just flying through space in previous games because you're skipping every other space.
Stephen: and you almost have to have the combo drive
if you get a freighter.
Samuel: Right. But once you do, you're making banks,
John: you can go like crazy. Yeah. And that's the, that's
Chris: a route that I normally take. Yeah. I want a different strategy this time to not work there.
John: Yeah. I,
Samuel: I really enjoy how that works.
John: And, and, and that's, you know, I always say I like a game where you can put your own personality.
And so when there's some games, I can sit there and close my eyes and say, okay, how would Chris play this game? How would Stephen play this game? How would Sam play this game? And, and each of. Bring something different to the table and, and how would I play this game? Obviously, although I don't try to figure out my own brain on that kind of thing.
But I mean, at one point, after watching Chris do really well with that monster freighter, I mean, he's loing along, but when he delivered he just pile of cash game
Chris: $600, please.
John: Right? So at that point, I'm like, so the next time we played, I'm like, you know, I'm gonna play [00:29:00] Chris's game. I'm gonna see what this is like.
And if there's a moment of frustration when you're not getting anywhere quickly, but then suddenly you unload and it's like, I am cash fat. I've got everything I need to do whatever I want.
Stephen: And the other part of that, Depending on how the game sets up.
Chris: Yeah, the game set up totally different.
Stephen: Sometimes the, sometimes that strategy won't work, and then sometimes you look at it and you're like, okay, the clipper strategy, , like I've done the clipper strategy a couple times.
John: Yeah. Later and faster. Mm-hmm. .
Stephen: So you have only two cargo spots, but you know what you can do with two cargo spots, you can carry four passengers.
John: Yep. And if the passengers are out there to grab, you can do great.
Stephen: And sometimes, like you said, if the passengers are there to grab mm-hmm. , you can do that.
Sometimes the passengers don't come up. Yep. Or they're so spread out, it's not worth trying.
Chris: I was in the clipper and I picked up a cup of passengers. We had an unfortunate airlock incident with one on a planet , but other
than that, I delivered two. Yeah, I mean, there just weren't a lot of passengers up there.
John: The first time I played this game, I ended up with $1,990 behind the guy who won with like 2010, and I was doing nothing but [00:30:00] delivering passengers cuz they were all over the board and nobody else. , they were all carting cargo and they were full so they could never pick 'em up. And I was just, I, I could go in any direction and there was something to deliver.
And that's the, the way this game sets up, the way those pieces come out of the bag, you're gonna get a different play every time you play this game. And that's, I, that's Hamblen's thing. He just has a way of figuring that out. And, you know, we've talked about really well developed games. This game, in spite of it being built in the 1990s, was just really well developed.
The, you know, the, the Baltimore boys at Avalon Hill played the heck out of a game until they got it honed down to what it should be. And this was one of the examples. And that's, I, I'll be honest, that's why I typically reach for the classic game because I'm much more trusting of the work they were doing in the eighties and nineties.
At Avalon Hill than I am with the work that's getting done now and is moving too quickly. There's still
Stephen: 19 eight, sorry. 1988.
John: 1988. Thank you very much. So it's, it's earlier than I thought. [00:31:00] Um, I think there are good games coming out now, but I think there's an awful lot of games coming out. I'm like, it just wasn't quite tuned up enough.
And, and with something like this, you, you feel the tuning. It may not be your kind of game, and that's fine. I understand that. . But what it does, it does really well. And if it's your kind of game, it's the kind of game you're gonna want to come back to every six months.
Stephen: Yeah. I know. I don't know what they are, but I know there were some edits that were done to the classic game and the original 1988 version.
Okay. And I think, if I recall, it was just the number of spaces between the Okay. The, the planets and then the overall layout. I think they
fixed,
John: I, I know. . They made things clearer.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. That I know. I don't, oh, and the other thing is like some of the planets were like planet seven and seven A, seven A and seven B.
Mm-hmm. every planet. or every good ship to three, every good ship to the next four planets. Mm-hmm. . But there were a couple of planets where there [00:32:00] was a A and a B. So those would go to five planets. Okay. And me just describing it that way.
John: Tells you just how
Stephen: fun that was. It's convoluted. Yeah. What they've done is they've gone one to 14.
Yeah. And then the, the, the, the goods that would ship to five places instead of four places. They've just renumbered 'em to where it makes sense that way. Okay. So you look at it here.
John: So that's, that's a
clarity change. It's not mm-hmm. a game changer
Stephen: because it, cuz it used to be like, there was like at the bottom of the good, it didn't say this good delivers to 2, 3, 4, and five.
It would, the rule was it delivers up to four spaces.
John: up to four numbers above it,
Stephen: up to four numbers above. That was just the rule. Okay. Okay. And so you had that seven A and that seven B, so that you had two extra pla, two extra places that you could drop that good off.
John: So they de-clunck-ified it for that
Stephen: essentially thing.
John: Okay. I haven't, I haven't played the original since like 2008 or something.
Stephen: Yeah, so they, they made polish and, and, um, and clarity changes, but they didn't change [00:33:00] the system that much at all. Okay. Uh, now, Advanced game or the, the standard game, I guess is, is what Fantasy flight's calling it. If I recall, again, I've read the rule book, there's a lot more ship customization that you can do.
Okay. And then there are event tiles that you draw. Okay. So
Chris: I'm sold,
Samuel: I'm in, I love ship customization.
Stephen: Yeah. So
Chris: may game athon, we'll play it with the standard.
Stephen: What was the game? Oh, so El Grande, we were talking about why, why we thought Sam didn't like El Grande. Right. And we came to the conclusion that it's too simple.
there's essentially two running gears to El Grande. Yeah. It's putting the people out and then the area majority part of just scoring. Yeah. Right. So really the, it's, it's a very simple game. Now, if there was some kind of board on the side that you had to manage some kind of a resource to be able to put your guys out, or, uh, a resource to be able to put [00:34:00] out more grande for,
John: or there was demand in Catalonia for people,
Chris: or you had to explore catalonia to figure out where the Castile was.
Stephen: That would make for more,
John: and he's got the jump gate in medieval Spain.
Stephen: That would make for a more interesting game for Sam because
Samuel: it would
Stephen: Yes. He's, he, he's a millennial and that's what it's,
Samuel: it's the ADD.
Stephen: He, well, that too. He needs the extra levers to pull , I feel like if needs the extra, um, um, I feel like if we put, if we put out stimulation, if we put out the, the standard board, I have a feeling that these two, Chris and Sam would like it a lot better and me and you probably would. Can we go back to the,
John: you know, Steven, we have two copies of, we
Stephen: go back game, we back to the classic game.
Chris: We can play back to back. We can play one standard and
John: no, no side by side.
Samuel: Same time you take a turn, same time standard. You take a turn in class,
Chris: two tables, you get over there, you take a turn,
it would go, it's how fast it would go though.
Samuel: It would be a
Stephen: weird turn. Oh my god, my, my head hurts so bad right now.
Samuel: Well, even, we'll even we'll have, we'll have a fifth person set it up so [00:35:00] that as close as possible. The randomization
is the same too.
John: Yeah. And, and, and you know, the last thing. tequila shots to go with it.
Samuel: That's right.
Stephen: The other thing to note about the standard game is there are a set number of turns.
Okay.
John: So, oh, okay. It's, so it's pretty different.
Stephen: It's there, there are quite a few differences I think in the spirit of the game is about the same in that mm-hmm. , you know, the planets have, um, you. Different cultures that come up in different places. So the cultures are all randomized and the goods are all randomized.
I be, I still feel like the, the, uh, the goods bag is, um, still there. So I think the spirit of the game is still the same. It's just the, the levers they go along with it are different. So, , we've, we've talked pretty, pretty extensively about our experience with Merchant of Venus. We've touched on the history of it a bit.
Chris: I, I have one experience I'd [00:36:00] like to share that. You can probably tell a little better than I can.
Stephen: Oh, okay. So this is tangential to, to our game. So we were at GenCon.
Chris: Yeah. Cuz we were in the GenCon released auction area.
Hold on. Second, we, we used to like to go and hang out in the auctions.
Stephen: So this was released in 2012. So this had to been GenCon 2011. Yeah. So 12 years ago. We like to. One of the thing, one of the highlights of Gen Con for us is twofold. We love the auction because it's an opportunity for us to offload a bunch of games, make a little bit of money, but at the same time, it gives us the opportunity to. , see and pick up games.
Chris: Pick up some of the classic games that you,
Stephen: the classic games that find we might not be able to find elsewhere. Yeah. So up comes a copy, new and shrink, like unopened, 1988. Merchant of Venus. Starting bid is a hundred dollars. First person's. Someone's like, okay, great. A hundred dollars. Yep. Okay. 110. Sure.
[00:37:00] 110. It goes up to $120 in stalls. , the auctioneer's like, okay, look, I cannot let this sell for $210. Hundred hundred 20 for hundred hundred $20. Sorry, hundred 20. I cannot let this sell for $120. I mean, the reserve, there was no reserve on it. So technically he could,
Chris: it was sold.
Stephen: And the guy that is trying to buy it for $120 is like, shut up and give me my game.
Exactly. But he just kept going. He's like, no. He's like, I'm, someone's gonna need to gimme one 30. And so he. The auction up to about a hundred and
Chris: I mean, it took like 10 minutes before everybody said, oh, I'm just gonna pay an extra $10 just to shut 'em up.
Stephen: Yeah. So I think it ended at like 150, but you know, this was a game that before second edition was announced, was going for like $200 on a decent. Played copy. A new and shrink copy at that time was going for around 400 to $500.
Samuel: Except for this one.
Stephen: Except for [00:38:00] this one. Because
Samuel: you said they announced the reprint.
Stephen: They had announced the reprint and everyone was just gonna, why pay $500 for a game when you can just pay retail, I think was $60.
Chris: But the, the people that were in that auction that heard that guy. Going and going and trying to push
John: it shut up and move on.
Chris: I'm sure there's somebody listening to this podcast that's gonna sit there and go, I was in that room. I remember that. Mm-hmm. , they just drop us a light on Discord or something.
Just say, I remember. I mean, it was, it was very memorable to both of us. Yeah. We still joke about it all the time.
Stephen: It just was like, he would not let it, the auctioneer would not let it go.
Samuel: I'd be mad if I was,
Stephen: and the guy that was trying to buy was fuming and everyone in the crowd's like, look, give it to him.
Chris: Give it to him. It's a hundred.
Stephen: It's $120. That's, that's all anyone wants to pay for it. Give it to him. And he's like, it's funny at first, and he was like, no, this, this game should be at least going for $300. He said that like twice
Chris: I know. And people in the room, it, it started to turn on him. Wow.
John: Yeah.
Stephen: Anyway, so that was, that was that story. We've got other GenCon auction stories that we may get to, but [00:39:00] um,
Samuel: at least this one was kind of wrong.
Chris: They're legendary.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so
Samuel: I won,
Stephen: circling back. We've, we've talked about the game, we've talked about their experience that we've had this time. Talked a little bit about, uh, the presentation and how busy the board is.
Uh, yes, Samuel, you won. Why don't you go ahead and tell us what your final thoughts are?
Samuel: So i. Don't remember winning this game regularly. I'm sure Steven will check.
Chris: It just happened a moment ago. Well, I
Samuel: said regularly. Oh. So I did just win. And also John, I think, did I win by more than one turn?
Chris: No. Cuz he would've gotten
John: no, in another turn.
I probably would've been over 2000. But you would've had another turn to make some bucks too, so, okay.
Samuel: Um, it's you, cause you were the last player.
Stephen: So this is your first win that I have logged.
Samuel: Okay. I mean, I don't play this. . Um,
Stephen: we typically play it twice. Yeah, a couple times a year. Um,
Chris: wasn't that long ago we played it here,
Samuel: but it was, I really enjoyed it.
Um, normally I would probably say this isn't the kind of game I would [00:40:00] enjoy, just because as you mentioned, there isn't a ton of player interaction. Mm-hmm. , right? Mm-hmm. . Um, you can compete a little for demand and for passengers and, you know, there's li there's limited quantities of things on the. . Mm-hmm.
But there, there's still plenty of stuff on the board. Yeah. You're very unlikely to be going for the same thing as everyone else. Despite that, I think it's a fun puzzle to try and solve. You get to see how things shake out and try and come up with your own route and make it work. And I really enjoy that aspect of this because it's different.
It's different every time. Yeah. If it weren't for that, uh, you, you'd have to talk me into playing this game. But it is different. So it's a fun little puzzle. That said, I'm gonna give this game a solid seven. Okay. I enjoyed it. Um, I certainly know people who would enjoy playing this. At the end of the day, I think I'm, I'm glad I don't have to own a copy.
Stephen: All right. Awesome. So let's see. John was next.
John: Okay. Um,
Stephen: tell us about Merchants of Venus, John. [00:41:00]
Samuel: How does it make you feel?
John: It's, it, it, it's a game where you can kind of wander around and do what you want. So I, I think they, is that a called a sandbox game? Yes. Sand. Yeah. That's what they mean by a sandbox. I like games with maps and games where you kind of gotta figure out how to get from here to there and where it actually makes a, a material difference in what you're playing.
So this game is right in my wheelhouse and I can't say, Particularly any better at it than anybody else. I think I win my share and that's fine. Um, but it's just, it's, there's interesting things and it's, you, it's kind of a heuristic play. You've got some, some basic general rules on how to succeed, but then you have to apply them moment to moment, even between turns.
You're sitting there, you can end up changing your mind because of, um, the way other people have cruised on by. And you sit there and you say, there's not a lot of player interaction. . Um, the nature of a pickup deliver game is you get in there and you swipe it out from under somebody and you move on to a lot of modern games.
There's every bit as much player interaction here as just about everything that's coming out where, you know, at [00:42:00] best you're putting your guy in somebody else's way so they can't get their two brown cubes or whatever it is. I mean, I guess, I think I, I, I think it rolls along with everybody else from that perspective.
Stephen: I mean, yeah, there's definitely indirect interaction. Yes, there's a race to get the good, to get the good price, but you can't. . You can't block somebody from going into a space. Sure, you can buy the last, that's it. Whatever.
John: But yeah, I, I see, I, I even, I even think blocking is a weak tee. Now, if you, if you could shoot somebody or you could steal their stuff, you show up at the same space port and you can grab their stuff like, Off of their flight deck.
That would be some player interaction and that would be kind of neat. Yeah. But similar to what the way we were talking about heat. I mean, this is a game where you can put a fair number of house rules in to just kind of give it whatever flavor you want to make it more or less lucrative, that sort of thing.
Samuel: Yeah. I, I suppose from my perspective, um, I didn't really interact with any of you guys at all over the course of this game. Mm-hmm. , right. I didn't really care what you did. Your actions did not [00:43:00] impact my choices. I just did my own. Yep.
John: So all, all in all, I enjoy the game. It's a game you pull out once a year, once every six months maybe.
Um, and part of that is because there's a fair amount of brain load here. I mean, it's not a light game that you knock out in half an hour. And I actually had a very bad day at work today. I had production down at work today, so I can kind of keep staggering in here and, and sat down on the couch. But as it turns out, um, I managed to get through this pretty well.
I mean, there's, it is, you know, there's a little bit of rule density. But, um, you can always look that up and it's just, it's, it's fun to fly your ship around. It's, it's a game. You can come in third place and still say, you know, I did okay, because I came up with $1,500.
Samuel: You can't see it in fourth place though.
Stephen: Why are you rubbing it in?
John: No, you can, well, you, I,
Chris: I'm the one who can say, you know, I did okay. I finished up with like, 1620 or something like that.
John: So I, I mean, ob obviously you don't wanna come in last place. You're better off coming in first place, but at the same time, it's similar to a lot of economic games.
And that's fundamentally what this is. You're driving a ship instead of building a, a, a [00:44:00] factory or something. But it's, it's at the end of it, you can say, yeah, I kind of got my stuff going. I got my big ship and I'm making, making business. And, and that's, that's, uh, that I did okay. Even if I didn't win, I did okay.
I actually built something. It's nice to be able to look at something you built and say, this is mine said the. No, no,
Samuel: I just, john, everything you're saying, I
agree with.
John: I didn't say you didn't.
Samuel: It doesn't normally happen.
John: What doesn't normally happen.
Stephen: Yeah. There's usually friction between you two.
Samuel: Yeah.
Yeah. There's usually friction between our viewpoints, but
John: there's constantly everything friction between us.
Samuel: But everything you said, I agree with.
John: Okay. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I disagreed with most of what you said. No, we can just call it even.
Samuel: All right. That does make me feel better.
Stephen: So give us a number, John.
We'll see if we can agree to disagree on a number here.
John: It's, it's, uh, I think, uh, I hate, I hate to go too big on this. I'll, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll go with a really, really strong seven and, and, and it's, it's a game to keep in your pocket. This, this game is quote out of print, which really means it's out of stock because I don't sort of [00:45:00] monopoly and.
Parsi, there are no games that are like being printed constantly. They get done in slugs. And this, I don't think
Stephen: Ticket to Ride,
John: I don't, and tickets to Ride, but even that's done in
Samuel: settlers of Catan.
Um,
John: but um, but this, this is a game that, that is a little hard to find. But if you, if you wanna find, and the thing is, if you buy it used.
You're gonna sell it for the same price. You buy it if you decide you don't like it. So it's actually probably safer to buy this as a used copy than to try and find a copy that's new. And the copy that I bought was used and it came with Plano boxes and everything was sorted and neat and it's really sweet.
And I actually got a lot of value add. Probably the box that I got for half price was a better purchase on buying it new and having to punch everything out myself and organize it myself. Mm-hmm. .
Stephen: So there was a lot of punching in this game, that's for sure. Oh, I. All right, Chris. All right. Chris, you were a third place?
Chris: I was third place and I did okay. I can Was 1620
Stephen: so I can get mine over with
Chris: . Yes, yes, yes. . Um, I disagree a lot with what John was saying. There were times I was on the board and I was like, at the beginning of the game, I was like, [00:46:00] man, I am gonna shoot John, because that's what I wanted. I wanted a little bit of conflict. There isn't conflict in this game.
Samuel: There's really not,
Chris: which is nice. It was two hours. It was quake, it was fast paced. You'd do a lot of thinking, a lot of planning and stuff.
John: Conflict and interaction are two different things, but fair enough.
Chris: There. I mean, it would be nice, you know, I don't know if you could do something like, oh, tractor beam or,
John: heck yeah,
Chris: it, it just push somebody onto another spot.
Samuel: Oh yeah, that'd be cool. I'm all in. Or like leave a, leave a a mine floating in space or something to like block something.
Chris: I think that would be cool, but that would be another game. This game is really good the way that it is. Yeah. So I don't think you need to change it, but for me,
Stephen: oh my God. How long would that game be?
Chris: I know for this version of the. You know, it, it was good and it does what it's supposed to do and I enjoy playing it all the time. Um, you know, it's a game that it does What it, it doesn't outstay its time on the board
Samuel: Nice, nice one.
Chris: So overall,
Stephen: no, [00:47:00] you're gonna have to say that again cuz I swore.
Chris: It doesn't outstay, its time on the table. Doesn't overstay. Its welcome,
You really have to stay on top of the game status.
John: Go ahead. Call it a nice filler game. Call it a, uh,
Chris: it is definitely not a filler game.
Samuel: No, no. It's a high engag,
Chris: high level. It's engaging. It is engaging. It's, it's a very engaging game. There, there was, I mean, we're all planning, plotting. Nothing changes on the board except for maybe there's in demand over here, but what you have is what you have.
Samuel: Yeah. You can totally plan out your turn ahead of time.
Chris: Yeah. It was, there were a lot of times it's like, oh, I'm flying. I didn't make it there. It's the next person's turn.
John: Yeah. This time, three people can be taking their turn simultaneously.
Samuel: Yeah. I mean, even if it's, even if it's 90, Solitaire. Everyone's solving the puzzle in a different way.
Chris: It's, yeah, and just trying to be the fastest and the best at it. So my rating on this, I'll give it a, a straight seven. It's, I enjoy it, but you know, there are other games that I could put in front of it. Okay.
Samuel: Steven, you came in last. Steven
Stephen: sub [00:48:00] subjectively this particular play. I want to rate it so so low,
John: such a, you're talking like a basement Seven ,
Stephen: I mean, like,
Samuel: Like a cellar.
Stephen: Like a cellar. Seven, seven . Look, I did not do well this game. We can, we can put that out there. We can get it outta the way. Despite that, the classic game of merchants or merchant of Venus is fundamentally it's, it's such a beautiful game. It's so good that despite how bad I did, I can see. I can just see past it and, you know, we've played this, I, I have four games logged, I have five games logged.
Now I know we've played this at least a dozen times within the group over the years, and I have very fond memories and I'm always looking to play this game. Like I know it's a time commitment, so sometimes you have to take that into account, [00:49:00] but man, it's a lot of. even when you're losing. Yeah. You know, the die rolls, they, they never went my way, but every time the whole table was groaning with me, they,
John: they, it tells a story.
Stephen: I mean, it was,
John: there was a story,
Stephen: it was an event that I could not roll a freaking four mm-hmm. three or two, three rolls in a roll, and then even two rolls after that. I still couldn't roll a four. And,
Chris: and then John rolls three of 'em.
Stephen: Yeah. And, and then Triple John. Triple, yeah. Triple fours. So, , what, how many games can you think of that can actually do that?
John: Yeah,
Samuel: yeah,
John: yeah. How, how many games allow you to be that obnoxious grandfather that tells you the innate stories about stuff you don't care about? Because at some point in your future, you're gonna be like, you know, son, when I was playing that game and you're, you're, you're gonna have a hundred stories.
And there's, you know, we've played hundreds of titles and there's probably 600 of them. If we saw the name, we'd go, I don't remember that at all. Merchant of Venus is one of the titles that you [00:50:00] remember, the game, you remember individual plays and the kind of things that happened.
Stephen: And not only that, in the games that I have logged, I have not won a single time.
John: Oh, you tell us this now.
Stephen: Yeah. So also in the games that I've logged, because I logged the scores as well, the highest I've ever earned was 17. Oh.
John: Hundred,
Stephen: 17. Hundred, hundred. 1700.
Chris: You won 17,000. You won.
Stephen: Sorry. 17,000. Let need to add 1700. So one time I did. Okay, so you've come in second. I, I don't know. I'd have to like really dig into that.
Samuel: 1700. Could be that could be a second.
It could be second.
Chris: Could've been third
Stephen: missing. Third. Yeah. Yeah. So depends. Was it solo? It was 1100. 1700 is respectable. Whatever place you're in, so, yeah.
John: But you know, Steven, two more turns and you would've been there. You, you were just getting your footing. Yeah. This is, you were so close to, I probably would've been out of the park that you had.
Stephen: I probably would've played like, play this game again. 1450. Two turns from now. Mm-hmm. . Okay. [00:51:00]
Samuel: So, but then you can spend all your money on a, a big pickup and then you go and you win.
Stephen: And then I would need like another three turns. Right? Well, you know, so I mean, we'd be playing for another hour and y'all would be at 40,000.
Samuel: Yeah, probably.
Chris: We, we could have sandbag. So yeah, , um,
John: we'd do that for you,
Stephen: but regardless,
Chris: so next time, just remember
Stephen: objectively, this is a great game based on how I played. I want to rate it low. , based on what I know of this game, objectively. Objectively, it's a seven. Okay? So I'm happy that we got to it, and I'm going to be happy that.
Okay, well, they're all right. So Chris is showing us online what the prices are on eBay.
Samuel: It's like 80.
Stephen: They're pretty reasonable.
Chris: $75. Can I
Stephen: go out and buy a copy?
John: Because like I said, if it turns out you don't like it, you sell it for the exact same price.
Stephen: Honestly, $80 is cheaper than what this would be at retail if it was reprinted.
Chris: Exactly. All right. Hey, if you take it to GenCon, the guy won't let it go for anything less than 120.
John: [00:52:00] Right. And you may get Plano boxes in it when all is said and done. I mean, just, it makes perfect sense.
Stephen: So anyway.
Samuel: a grudging seven from Steven?
Stephen: No, no, not Grudging.
Chris: That's a cellar. It's, it's, um,
Samuel: Steven, he's
Stephen: an objective seven.
Samuel: He's overcoming his base nature to Yeah.
Appreciate the objective game.
Stephen: Yeah. So, , that's Merchant of Venus.
Samuel: Oh, I had one more thing I wanted to say.
Stephen: Okay, go ahead.
Samuel: Um, it's kind of back to component quality. Okay. Um, so you have 14 different civilizations mm-hmm. and they're all different and they sell different goods to each other and it's cool.
What I really, really liked is on the card where you flip over and you see what civilization you've discovered. There's a picture and like a little, little lore blur. Mm-hmm. at the bottom of it that I really enjoy. When games have things like that, because it's not necessary.
Stephen: It's not necessary,
Samuel: but it adds, it adds flavor, adds a little bit of spice. Like I saw there's the, like there's one species that apparently used to rule the galaxy until they ended up being devolved and now they worship their previous [00:53:00] students. And when you look at their lore, they've evolv, they've like ascended into the next plane. And what's left is actually their after images. Mm-hmm. that just make freaky art.
Stephen: And then the eep eeps just
say eep.
Samuel: Yeah. And it, it's, it's fun. I just enjoy, it's a nice touch.
Stephen: I mean, that's all. Anytime. Anytime. And you know, this is something that we've noticed with Fantasy C Flight that they happen to do really well. Such as with team manager. Yeah. So, I mean, anytime that they can make the effort and do a good job with it is definitely appreciated.
Chris: They tell a good story.
Stephen: Yeah. So go out, get on eBay, get this game, give it a shot. It's really good.
John: And then let us know how your game went.
