Century Spice Road is a strategy game where you take the role as a spice merchant in hopes of selling your spices at high prices and to amass the largest wealth. This game launched in 2017 so is quite a new game and is designed by Emerson Matsuuchi. This is the first in a series of games that explores the history of each century with spice-trading as the theme for the first instalment.
This game is for ages eight and above, and for two to five players. It takes around half an hour to 45 minutes to play. Inside this game, it comes with four plastic spice bowls for storing the cubes, along with yellow, red, green & brown cubes, cards, gold & silver tokens and instructions.
It is pretty straightforward to set up the game as it is fully illustrated in the instructions but I would recommend plenty of table space.
Each player picks a Caravan card. The player with the first player symbol will be the player to start the game. Each player also gets a Create 2 card and Upgrade 2 card along with the number of yellow and red cubes according to the table shown on the instructions. Shuffle the Point cards and Merchant cards well. Then place them in the middle of the table as shown with the tokens above.
Each turn, players must perform one of four actions:
- Play: Make a trade or harvest spices (by playing a card from hand)
- Acquire: Establish a trade route (by taking a Merchant card)
- Rest: By taking back all of the cards you have played (like Create 2, Upgrade 2 and Merchant cards)
- Claim: Claim a Point Card (Orange card)
Once a player has claimed their fifth Point card, then whoever has the most victory points wins the game.
It didn’t take us long to understand the concept of this game. It is fairly easy once you get into the game that even my nine year old knows how to make a trade. There are lots of tactics involved though. It did take us at least 30 minutes or more to complete the game so it is a fairly long game but it is worth playing especially if you have four people. It is an interesting game concept that requires you to apply strategy to win the game.
We all enjoy playing the game and will definitely play it again and again. We would recommend it. This game can be purchased from all good toy retailers, eBay and Amazon. For more information visit Asmodee website.
Disclosure: We are members of Asmodee UK Blogger Board Game Club. We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review, however, all thoughts and opinions remain our own. We have included Amazon affiliate link to the product. If you click on this and buy, we may earn a small commission.
