Merchants & Marauders

[Gerald]

Merchants & Marauders is a game with a roleplaying touch: It lets you choose between the role of an influential merchant or a fearless pirate, both searching for their fortune in the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy. The game features a unique trade system and a fast and intuitive combat system which allows you to make critical decisions.

During the game, players can choose from different ship modifications, buy impressive vessels, load deadly special ammunitions and hire famous crew members, ranging from experienced carpenters to dreaded sharp shooters.

Beside all this, your luck, your tactics, your cunning and your negotiation skills will decide whether your captain gains eternal glory and immense wealth - or finds his wet grave under the stormy surface of the Caribbean Sea.

Features:

- 5 different ship types
- more than 20 Plastic miniature ships
- Over 230 cards, from Event Cards to Rumor Cards
- Stunning thematic artwork to draw you in
- 16 unique captains

To find out more about this game, head on over to this link.

[Talismanic (Mark)]

It's advanced Pirates Cove! No, no it isn't, really. Ha ha ha. This game's components are very very good and the miniature ships are superb. Laid out you can almost hear the swell of the waves and the wind in your hair, this is certainly not a game that Tom Vasel would hate.

I watched Tom, AdrianC, AdrianTOO, and Arnold play this at OGM, and it was fun (for me) to put on a (terrible) faux French accent and ask Captain what is best in life.. to board your enemy, take his cargo, and hear the lamentations of the sailors as you ***omize the Captain! All manner of broadsides and grapeshot comedy were bandied about parroted, peg-legged and Yarrred! Kewlness     

[Zinegata]

Technically speaking, I won that trial game as a French Captain, who was the only Captain to never commit a single act of piracy in the whole game.

[SCUGrad]

I remember Sid Meier's Pirates computer game....

What about Blackbeard?  Anybody play that?  Comparison?  Parang mas mabigat  yung Blackbeard.

[Zinegata]

I've played the '08 version of Blackbeard with Pacqui. It's rather fun, but I personally find M&M to be lighter and more playable.

Blackbeard is much more historical and has a wider scope than just the Carribean, but I personally find that M&M's playability makes it a better game.

M&M can be rather unbalanced though.

[maskmanjoe]

Technically speaking, I won that trial game as a French Captain, who was the only Captain to never commit a single act of piracy in the whole game.

Which admittedly is so unlike Tom. He stayed in port most of the time, hardly crossed cannonfire with even the NPC merchants or even cursed the French king. Oh, and his captain was the basis of Talismanic's pron-laden sailorspeak much to his chagrin

Also, this game is hardly Sid Meier's Pirates! No dancing

[Zinegata]

M&M is an efficiency game. So when your Captain is a French dude with man-boobs and all of his abilities scream "BE A MERCHANT", hell yeah I'm hiding in port to keep away from all the bloodthirsty maniacs around me.

[Talismanic (Mark)]

In the three games I played, one after the other, it was the merchants who won 2/3 with one of those being my win as I had a captain with crap Seamanship skills hence crap combat skills.

Doing the merchant route can really be a breeze if you have a captain with high influence. It's easy to rack up glory points with rumor completion, and with the fairly steady stream of GPs from selling in demand goods, the game can be a total blow-out. 

Ah sacre bleu! Ze pirayts zey do not stand ze chance against, ow you say, my magnifique! 

[JayMata]

There is actually an official, optional variant that the designer is beta testing in bgg. Although he maintains that he feels the game is balanced for both merchants and marauders, the variant helps make it easier for pirates. Its been getting good feedback.


When a player enter a sea-zone occupied by a pirate player, the pirate player may make an immediate out-of-turn scouting roll to attempt to engage the entering player into combat. The cost to the pirate player, however, is that on his next turn he only has 1 action.

[Talismanic (Mark)]

There is actually an official, optional variant that the designer is beta testing in bgg. Although he maintains that he feels the game is balanced for both merchants and marauders, the variant helps make it easier for pirates. Its been getting good feedback.


When a player enter a sea-zone occupied by a pirate player, the pirate player may make an immediate out-of-turn scouting roll to attempt to engage the entering player into combat. The cost to the pirate player, however, is that on his next turn he only has 1 action.

Ohoho, ze scouting roll you say, she do not want to play dice with you ho ho ho 

Still, it can be hard to get a success on 2 dice.

[Zinegata]

I'm actually inclined to agree with the designer that it's actually balanced between pirates and merchants. Merchants can avoid combat entirely, but doing so requires a lot of turns being spent in port.

As an example, for a Merchant to sell goods, he has to do the following:

Turn 1: Port Action, buy goods. Stay in port to avoid pirates.
Turn 2: Take 3 actions to move to a second port
Turn 3: Sell goods. Maybe get 1 Glory if you got 3 in demand goods, plus 18 gold.

While a pirate can get huge returns by doing the following:

Turn 1: Move out of port, scout, Get about 10 gold from merchant raid, and 2 goods. Move back to port. (Yes, this is all in one turn)

Turn 2: Sell goods for another 6 gold in port. Move out of port, move to another location.

Turn 3: Scout and get another 10 gold from Merchant raid. Move into port. Port action - sell your goods for another 6, and buy a frigate or galleon with you 32 gold + 10 starting gold. This nets you a glory AND a big ship.

If you're lucky or canny - you can even get a Galleon as early as the start of Turn 3. I got mine by raiding San Juan (+3 gold when Merchant Raiding) and then heading to Curacao where Galleons are cheaper.

-----

The key really is that people need to realize that the most important stat for being a pirate is Scouting because of how lucrative Merchant Raids are. Anybody with 3 scouting should definitely be a pirate - as 3 dice all but guarantees a successful scout check and a lucrative Merchant Raid that nets you 16 gold a turn. Seamanship's effect on scouting is often negligible anyway - if you're using a sloop (you should!) the only way you'll fail at catching a merchant is if the merchant draws a lucky "Cannon" hit.

So forget about seamanship or leadership. If you want to pirate, look at your scout score.

Seamanship/Leadership really only come into play when you have a big ship and want to fight - which you should definitely consider doing if you have a good Seamanship/Leadership score. Even if all the other players are hiding in port, NPC ships are all over the place and are worth 1 glory each.

NPC ships are even nice enough to move towards you and scout for you, thus saving you actions!

Alternatively, you can decide to go semi-legit once you have your big ship. You'll only have 2 or 3 notoriety anyway by the time you get your big ship - which still leaves you lots of ports that you can operate in.

[Gaebril]

Had two really good games over the weekend - 3p and then 5p. Yes, we had to fake an extra starting board for the fifth player, but it still worked well. Won the first game as a Pirate - got a +1 cargo upgrade early then kept raiding the Merchant ships (and throwing cargo overboard) until I could get three of a kind.

I'd have to agree that the strength of being a pirate isn't about excelling in PVP combat (because they don't), but rather in getting quick and easy glory from raiding. Just gobble up those merchant ships like free VP candy. This makes 3 scouting the most important skill number in the game.

One of the most thematic games I've played in a while, really rich and fun.

[maskmanjoe]

glad to read a non-merchant win in this thread. I was thinking that playing merchant was broken. Any feedback on how to handle the challenges pirates are often beset in this game (like the NPCs)?

[Rolf]

That's interesting...I've played this twice, and in both times, a pirate player won (well, the first time, Jay started as merch and finished/won as pirate)

[Gaebril]

Avoiding Naval ships isn't much harder that avoiding the NPC pirates if you're a merchant. The map is wide enough to just go around them, and they don't really activate that much. In fact in my win as pirate, we were drawing an event card for each player turn (instead of one event for the entire group), and I was still able to dance around them reasonably well. As for having unfriendly ports, well I had the pirate character that could take illegal port actions.

But seriously, I wouldn't play pirate unless my captain is made for it. A good pirate can get glory a lot faster than a good merchant, but you need 3 Sea and 3 Scout to do it well. I also wouldn't seek out PvP unless I figure the odds to be in my favor. And when the heat gets too high, don't forget that you can retire your captain and keep your money! Toss those pesky bounty tokens, and start a new life with a head start that only blood money can buy.