Published card games
Century: Spice Road
Fill the most profitable spice orders by improving your hand of merchant cards, and finish with the most points.
- players
- 2–5
- minutes
- 40
You’ll need the game box. Marquoir sums up the rules and keeps score.
Setup
- The game is for 2 to 5 players.
- The point cards (orange backs) are shuffled; lay out 5 face up next to the deck.
- On the first point card, place twice as many gold coins as there are players; on the second, the same number of silver coins.
- Each player gets two starting cards, one producing 2 turmeric and one "Upgrade 2", which form their hand.
- The other merchant cards are shuffled; lay out 6 face up next to the deck.
- The spices (cubes) go in their bowls, from cheapest to most expensive: yellow (turmeric), red (saffron), green (cardamom), brown (cinnamon).
- Each player gets a caravan card; the one with the first-player symbol shows who starts.
- Starting spices: 3 yellow for the first player, 4 yellow for the second and third, 3 yellow and 1 red for the fourth and fifth.
How to play
- On your turn, take a single action out of four.
- Play a card: lay it in front of you and apply its effect. Spices: take the cubes shown. Upgrade: raise one or more cubes by as many levels as the card shows. Trade: give back the cubes at the top to take those at the bottom, as many times as you can afford.
- Acquire: take a card from the merchant row by placing any one cube on each card to its left; the leftmost card is free, and you collect the cubes placed on the card you take.
- Rest: take all your played cards back into your hand.
- Claim: hand in the spices required by a point card and place it face down in front of you. The first two spots in the row also give a gold or silver coin.
- A caravan holds no more than 10 cubes: discard the excess at the end of your turn.
Scoring
- Each player adds up the value of their point cards, 3 points per gold coin, 1 point per silver coin and 1 point per remaining cube that is not yellow.
- In Marquoir, the sheet has these four lines and does the sum.
End of the game
- As soon as a player takes their fifth point card (sixth with two or three players), finish the current round, then count scores.
- The highest total wins; on a tie, the player who played latest in the round wins.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have to upgrade all the cubes on an Upgrade card?
No. You may use only part of the upgrade, and even raise the same cube twice.
What happens when the gold coins run out?
When the last gold coin is taken, the silver coins slide up to the first card in the row.
The box
- Released
- 2017
- Age
- Ages 8+
- Designer
- Emerson Matsuuchi
- Artwork
- Fernanda Suárez
- Publisher
- Plan B Games
- Mechanics
- Hand BuildingTradingResource Management
- Contents
- Starting and market Merchant cards
- Point cards (orders)
- Caravan cards
- Spice cubes in four colours and their bowls
- Gold and silver coins