Le Marché de Samarkand

Players run competing stalls in a bustling market, buying goods and camels via a Dutch-auction mechanic where the seller calls down prices and the first player to accept buys a revealed card from another player. Each player has a personal deck of ten commodity cards of varying values; every round players simultaneously reveal one card from their hand to create a market pool. The active seller decrements the price from a starting value and players may stop the countdown to purchase a chosen revealed card by paying the current price to its owner. Ties for the same card cause all tied players to pay but receive nothing. Acquired camels increase a player’s hand capacity; at round end each player may only keep a limited number of revealed cards based on their camel slots. Scoring combines set-collection by color (score equals the size of the smallest color set) plus points for individual card values, while unfilled camel slots incur penalties. The highest total victory points after several rounds wins.

Players: 3–5 best 5
Playing time: 30 min
Age: 8+
Complexity: 1.8 / 5