OUR REVIEW

EUROPE IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

Warriors & Traders

FIGHT BARBARIANS AND DEVELOP YOUR REALM

Games from Poland and the Czech Republic (long live Vlaada!) have become familiar to us for several years now, but games from Bulgaria, do they exist? Yes, they do, and with Warriors & Traders one has appeared on the scene that features tons of components. Hundreds of tiles and various overview charts need to be sorted and inspected before the first game. The preparation of the game and setting up the board can easily take half an hour. To familiarize you with the rules of the game needs many times this amount of time. On the homepage of the publisher you can find revised rules in English and also rules in German.

The game board is double-sided, on one side the board depicts large parts of Western Europe, on the other side Eastern Europe (I have always known that Austria belongs to western Europe, is the case, here, too). All regions (Provinces) that comprise capitals, trade posts, normal and contested locations, are equipped with the corresponding tile. This tile shows, besides the name, the raw materials (resources) which you can acquire when you own this location. When each player has been randomly assigned part of board or has chosen a part, the capital is equipped with a fortress, four princesses and one infantry unit (with value 1 for attack and defense).

A location is owned by a player when at least one of his tiles, regardless which one, is placed on the location. All other locations are equipped with a Barbarian Army or Fortress. At the start of game each player is only surrounded by Barbarians.

Finally, each player takes all units - Infantry, Archers and Cavalry - and the fortresses of his color, and also a Progress Sheet / Play-mat with three rows - production, trade and military - as well as three development markers which you can place at the base of the sheet any way you wand. Resources markers are provided for money, food, goods and weapons. And then there are victory point markers. In relation to the number of players you must collect a given number of victory points. After ten rounds the game ends in any case, and you then win with the highest number of victory points. Victory points can be accrued for nearly everything you can image. For each main province and each fortress that you own you and for each destroyed opposing fortress you score 3 victory points, for killed barbarians and princesses (yes, really killed!!!!) you score 1 point; destroyed opposing armies score you points according to their strength, and so on….

A round of the game comprises four phases. Starting player is always the player whose capital of his assigned starting region has the lowest number. In the supply phase the units must be provided with food according to their strength. A unit that is not sufficiently supplied or not supplied at all starves immediately and is removed from the board. Princesses need to be fed. No wonder they were always so slim. Furthermore you count the resources of all your locations and multiply them by the factor provided from the Progress Sheet. Therefore you should take care to put more and more development markers on the board to enhance the multiplication factor. 0 is present as well, so income from weapons makes no sense without a single military advancement as 0 times 0 still results in 0.

In the trading phase you can trade with the bank at the ratio that is stated on the Progress Sheet, for instance 1:7 at the start of the game, with the chance to improve this up up to 1:1 which at the same time is the equivalent of a trade monopoly. You can trade any way and in any ratio with other players, provided you are connected with a player by a trade route and have your own location with a trade post at your disposal. This opportunity to trade with other players was very rarely or not at all chosen in the games I played as you can improve the trade ratio with the bank rather soon in the game and, furthermore, everything that I trade with my fellow players (opponents) in one way or the other profits them. If you want to trade with fellow players, you should rather play Settlers.

In the development phase each player has the opportunity to execute two actions, you play again in turn order according to the numbers of the capitals, first action in ascending order, second action in in descending order, so the player who goes first is also the last to act. Technological advancement enters one of the important development markers into the Progress Sheet in one of the three rows and thus improves the row. A new army unit can be bought, albeit only one that is made available by the military track on the Progress Sheet; the stronger the army the more expensive it is. Upgrading an army unit, for instance from infantry to archers, is somewhat cheaper, but this action, too, depends on the military track. Building of new fortresses (Forts), depends on the position on the production track. A fortress strengthens the defense value of a province enormously, so a fortress is preferably placed into a threatened province. At long last, you can decide to declare war on  another player, which takes up a separate action. Only then the respective players can in due course invade the provinces of the other player, but only for a pre-given number of rounds.

In the maneuver phase armies can move according to their action points (corresponding development markers on the military track needed). Then all conflicts are resolved, most often you will fight against barbarians. Then, after conflict, you can move all princesses one step and one step only within your own or within unclaimed provinces. The fights are basically resolved by 1:1 exchange mechanisms, without any dice or other chance element involved. Thus an archer with his attack strength of 2 can chase away two barbarians of strength 1 from a disputed location. But those barbarians then would retreat, according to given rules, into a neighboring province, as they are only reduced to strength 0, not destroyed. And this, especially in case of a disputed location in your own corner of the board, is not really of an advantage, therefore it is better to kill a barbarian by reducing his strength at least to -1. This has the additional advantage that the barbarian is removed from the board and that you also acquire a victory point on top of it.

It must be mentioned that - contrary to a barbarian, your units can only retreat if you have reached at least level 4 on the military track.

As you can see from these examples, that a continuous advance/development on the Progress tracks is of enormous importance, especially as a number of actions or acquisitions and even additional additions on top of the standard two actions per turn are only possible when you have achieved to position a number of development markers on certain tracks.

After playing several games with varying numbers of players this is one of the points here I have to criticize the game (even despite not mentioning all the rules in detail): The games all flow too evenly for my taste. First you buy a few additional army units, then you eliminate the barbarians in your neighboring provinces, but conquering a barbarian fortress is nearly impossible at the start of the game due to is defense value. When conquering provinces you must keep an eye on resources which they will yield, because without a good mixture of resources in the trade phase there really is now progress or development. Princesses are used to occupy newly conquered provinces, etc. As soon as the game is advanced a bit, a few scattered conflicts are happening, but this is mostly avoided, if possible, as it is not very helpful for your own development due to the loss of armies.

Towards the end of the game due to lack of other alternatives mostly fortresses are built, as the barbarians in the meantime are too strong - their strength rises at the stage of pre-set rounds to a value of 2 and then 3, especially as you have meanwhile acquired the necessary resources for building fortresses.

For me, the game simply lacks variety, lacks surprises in the course of the game, and not even a declaration of war against another player changes this, as even this is usually quite predictable. Maybe the version to let players play in teams, 2 against 2 or 3 against 3 will somewhat relieve the uniformity. As a conclusion I can say that Warriors & Traders definitely is a game that is fun with the right group of people, even over a number of games, but in order to be really enticing one to multiple play the game runs to uniformly, in some groups of players interaction is completely missing. The game in alliances and the solitaire versions are felicitous alternatives.

Gert Stöckl

Players: 2-6

Age: 12+

Time: 120+

Designer: Andrej Novac

Art: Maria Marin, George Necula

Price: ca. 45 Euro

Publisher: NSKN Legendary Games 2011

Web: www.warriorsandtraders.com

Genre: Resources management and development

Users: For experts

Version: en

Rules: cz bg de en it kr ro ru

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Europe in the Dark Ages is a rarely used topic

Very beautiful, stable and copious components

Conflicts are resolved without a chance element

Compares to:

Resources management games

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 4

Gert Stöckl:

A basically very well done and interesting game, which is also good fun for some games, but is playing too uniformly for frequent replay!

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0