2022 · Medieval
Merchants of the Dark Road
Players act as merchants who travel treacherous routes during the long dark season to trade, recruit, and explore between cities. Most actions take place in a central capital ring where players collect and produce goods, buy and sell items, hire heroes, and visit special locations such as back-alley vendors or a nearby dungeon for magical loot. Players manage a caravan, manipulate market prices, stock lanterns to ease travel on the dark roads, and deliver goods and companions to distant villages for payment and renown. Final scoring uses the lower of money and fame, so players balance earning coin with building reputation.
- Players
- 1–4 best 3
- Playing time
- 60–120 min
- Age
- 12+
- Complexity
- 3.3 / 5
About the game
- Design
Expansions
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Where to buy it
Shop prices and second-hand copies, checked every day.
On Ludoya's tables
Full stats in Ludoya- 71
- Plays logged
- 112
- Players
- 2h 36m
- Average play
- 38
- In collections
- 15
- On wishlists
6.6/10
from 10 Ludoya reviews
A game about maximizing your benefit as a merchant while remaining prestigious through 13 rounds. PROS - Players getting onto each other's caravans is a pretty nice point of interaction. - The art and theme are interesting and evocative. - Very nice production value. CONS - The whole game feels bloated, with too many moving parts and sub-phases for what it offers (which is not that different from many other light-medium eurogames). The rulebook does also make the game hard to teach and understand for how simple it really is. - Some of its moving parts are way less important than they seem and feel like they could have been eliminated from the design, having only minimal impact but inflating the game and its brutal need for iconography. - There is very little sense of progression through the 13 rounds. Almost no engine-building means a bit of repetition can be felt.
Last played: 2022-01
Rules questions
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Game facts (players, playing time, age, credits) from BoardGameGeek.