OUR REVIEW

New edition of a Classic game

Merchant Of Venus

2^nd Edition

I would like to start with a bit of information to keep matters clear: The game "Merchant of Venus" war originally designed by designer Richard Hamblen and published in 1988 by the Avalon Hill Game Company. 24 years later, in 2012, Fantasy Flight Games published this new edition of the space-topic classic game, which introduces quite a few new features.

Besides a huge amount - standard for Fantasy Flight - high-quality components the game features a double-sided game board and two different rule books. One of them explains the "classic" game, which is based on or recreates the original version of Richard Hamblen from 1988. The other rule book describes the "standard game" that has been designed by Robert A. Kouba and deviates from the rules of the classic game. My review deals with Robert A. Kouba's standard version.

Before you can start with this standard game you have to put in quite a bit of sorting efforts. The countless markers must be separated from those featuring in the classic version and also separated among themselves into markets, commodities and technologies of fourteen alien cultures and stacked accordingly outside the board. Furthermore, you need to prepare the respective card decks and to sort the remaining components, including the boards, according to player colors.

All this might be not more work than is needed for other games of that caliber, but it definitely takes time - a storage box with compartments or additional Ziploc-bags could facilitate preparations for later games.

When the game has been set up, each player chooses a pilot whose spaceship starts from the Galactic Base, the starting point of our travels as an intergalactic trader. In this role we explore the depths of space, scouting for star systems of known and unknown alien races, in order to face the dangers of outer space with the assistance of their technologies and to sell valuable commodities for a profit, using interstellar trade routes. Whoever manages to accrue most money during 30 rounds of the game, will win.

In such a round in Merchant of Venus, comprising four individual phases, the active player must first decides in which direction he wants to fly with his space ship. When this decision is made he uses a minimum of three dice to determine the speed of the ship. The total result of the six-sided dice you roll tells you not only the number of spaces that you can enter in this turn, but also and foremost decides the rest of your turn, as your turn is terminated prematurely when you - despite technology upgrades in your ship - fail to land on a neighboring planet.

And that fact has landed us directly with the rule that - rightly - sticks in the throats of most players as a noticeable amount of luck surely contributes positively to challenges and risks of a space adventure, but should not be able to take away complete turns from a player.

Should you - all the same - manage to reach one of the fourteen planets that is still unexplored, you then try, after the initial movement phase, to establish first contact with the alien race indigenous to the planet. We learn information not only on the technological progress of the population, but also the local market as regards to supply and demand and, furthermore, as a first visitor we are given a discount on commodities and services of the planet. In return, we happily and intensely advertise the planet's advantages so that from now on all other players, whose ships stop for a pause on this planet, may trade with the resident population. The fact that in this transaction phase each player has only one buying and one selling action at his disposal does not facilitate the decision of equipping the ship with new upgrades including laser, shields and propulsion devices against dangers of further travels, or to load up with important commodities for export. At any rate, one can freely load or unload ambassadors of the respective people, albeit on the condition that there is enough room on board, which goes for all commodities. Wholesalers among players luckily always have a choice of waiving their movement phase and instead implementing as many trade transaction as they like before the fourth and last phase begins.

In this last phase you decide on the construction of space ports, should you have enough liquid capital for this purpose.

A space port blocks one of two landing stages on the respective planet and takes money off each player for each transaction that is effected via such a port. On top of this, the cost for constructing a space port is remitted to the player at the end of the game, so that such a port is a long-term investment without any risk.

All in all the standard game variant of Merchant of Venus, in its basic concept", can be taken as a "pick up and deliver" game with strategic possibilities for planning of routes and risk management from rolling dice, which is providing good fun at the beginning and which features beautiful design and a nicely implemented topic. The representations of space itself and the respective alien races are excellent and merge seamlessly into the scheme of the game so that we expect a challenging space adventure with our first glance at the game. The design of the components only enhances this expectations, so that the exploration of new star systems, the large selection of technology and the planning of trade routes make a player's heart beat faster.

Unfortunately the initial marveling peters of during the game and after about half of the game, that is, after all planets have been discovered, the game is losing momentum. With all information known and available you only need a bit of calculation to find the most profitable routes and to use them continuously, travelling to and fro, there and back again. New ambassadors, for which we provide transport, and mission cards which direct us to different goals, introduce a nice tactical component into the rather uniform game, but do not really save the day when the game is taking too long.

With a total of 30 rounds to play, in which it can happen sometimes that due to the arbitrariness of the dice you lose your turn altogether, while others ponder the choice of their planet over intolerably long minutes, the irritation factor reaches its limit pretty quickly.

At a pinch, before you waive the cool SciFi Flair and the fundamentally interesting mechanism completely, you can find a variant for a shorter game in the rules, which only comprises 14 rounds. Using this variant you will play an all-in-all shorter game to a quicker end, but this unfortunately also goes for the more interesting start-up phase of the game, so that the fun is limited, here too, and I was looking for fun in this fundamentally well-devised game that fills a complete evening.

Dennis Rappel

Players: 1-4

Age: 14+

Time: 240+

Designer: Richard Hamblen, Robert R. Kouba

Artist: Henning Ludvigsen

Price: ca. 80 Euro

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games 2012

Web: www.heidelbaer.de

Genre: SciFi, economics

Users: With friends

Version: en

Rules: de en it jp

In-game text: yes

Comments:

High-quality components

Well-implemented SciFi topic

Almost no interaction

Over-long playing time

Much sorting needed

Compares to:

Merchant of Venus, Avalon Hill; other SciFi economics games

Other editions:

Heidelberger Spieleverlag, Arclight, Asterion Press

My rating: 4

Dennis Rappel

Merchant of Venus can, due to its fantastic design, be recommended especially to SciFi fans among experienced players. The many alien races and technologies contribute substantially to the game, but are too imbalanced and similar in their effects to justify the scarce interaction and over-long playing time.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 0

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0