Merchants & Marauders — board game details

About the game

What is Merchants & Marauders

Merchants & Marauders lets you live the life of an influential merchant or a dreaded pirate in the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy. Seek your fortune through trade, rumor hunting, missions, and of course, plundering. Modify your ship, buy impressive vessels, load deadly special ammunition, and hire specialist crew members. Will your captain gain eternal glory and immense wealth - or find his wet grave under the stormy surface of the Caribbean Sea?

In Merchants and Marauders, players take on the role of a captain of a small vessel in the Caribbean. The goal is to be the first to achieve 10 "glory" points through performing daring deeds (through the completion of missions or rumors), crushing your enemies (through defeating opponents and NPCs in combat), amassing gold, performing an epic plunder or pulling off the trade of a lifetime, and buying a grand ship. While some points earned from performing various tasks are permanent, players earn points for amassing gold, which can be stolen or lost (or at least diminished) if their captain is killed. Points due to gold are hidden so there's some uncertainty about when the game will end.

A big component of the game is whether (or when) to turn "pirate" or remain as a trader or neutral party. Both careers are fraught with danger: pirates are hunted by NPCs (and other players) for their bounty and blocked to certain ports while traders are hunted by non-player pirates as well as their opponents and generally have to sacrifice combat capability for cargo capacity. Although players can kill each other, there is no player elimination as players may draw a new captain (with a penalty) so it's possible to come back from defeat.

Specs

Game details

Players: 2–4
Age: +13
Duration: 180 min
Difficulty: Heavy
Type: Board game
Year: 2010
Mechanics: Action Points · Area Movement · Bias
Categories: Adventure · Fighting · Nautical
Designer: Christian Marcussen · Kasper Aagaard
Publisher: Asmodee · Z-Man Games · Asterion Press · Conclave Editora

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Community data

Merchants & Marauders on Meeplay

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125Plays logged

44Own it in their collection

7.6Average rating

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Reviews

What the community says about Merchants & Marauders

D

David_Trovador8/10

1 Partida, muy ameritrash de ser mercader o pirata en el caribe, de la temática será de los mejores. Hace falta jugar una segunda, en la primera vas dando palos de ciego, y no te conoces bien las ventajas de cada zona de mar, de las mejoras de barcos etc.

K

kesulin10/10

Buen juego que consigue implementar la vida del pirata de manera divertida, sin un reglamento exageradamente complicado. Quizás habría que ajustar los atributos del Galeón, muy superior a los otros barcos. Aunque hay diversidad de opiniones al respecto.

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