Sometimes just one sentence is all you need to set the entire tone and atmosphere. When you look up Merchants of the Dark Road, the first thing you’ll read is:
“After half a year of daylight, we must now prepare for the dark season. The roads will be treacherous, but they will still need to be braved by a select few in order to keep our cities thriving.”
And as we’re entering winter and the cold is setting in all around us, there is nothing better than an excellent thematic board game to warm the spirits, and that’s precisely where Merchants of the Dark Road comes into the picture and thrives.
Produced by Elf Creek Games, a company synonymous with high production value and quality in board games, Merchants of the Dark Road is nothing if not a feast for the senses. Everything, from the box the game comes in, to each piece, screams quality. Not only does that lend towards the table presence that Merchants Of The Dark Road demands, but it also makes playing the game feel so immersive and luxurious.
The items players will collect throughout the game are beautifully designed and, while made from cardboard, have some outstanding metallic gold foiling that grabs the eye. The board itself is also impressive, with the market’s rondel magnetically attaching to the board and each piece of the board coming together like a puzzle, leaving the designers with massive room for changing the game up with future expansions.
In Merchants of the Dark Road, players take on the role of a few brave merchants who are willing to face the dangerous paths between the cities to vie for the fame and fortunes that await. The game is set within the fantastical world of Lumi, where thematically, the entirety of Winter is spent in darkness.
Players will spend their time dying, selling, transporting and delivering both heroes and goods to various cities over thirteen rounds, one for each week of Winter, and at the end of the game, money, victory points, and prestige will all play a part in deciding which merchant will walk out of the winter darkness victorious.
The way that scoring is handled within Merchants of the Dark Road is one of the game’s more exciting aspects. First, players will determine their base score by looking at their money and prestige and then taking the lowest of those two scores.
Any victory points earned throughout the game are then added to the base score to get the final score and decide the winner. While this scoring system might sound complicated, it creates a fantastic money/prestige/victory point management system that’s hard to beat while playing.
Usually, this is the point in my board game reviews that I’ll go through how the game works. While I’d love to go into detail regarding Merchants of the Dark Road, it’s too complex and too much to cover fully. So while I will explain the general flow of things, many elements will likely have to be omitted.
Each player will have seven six-sided blue dice when the game starts called night dice. They will also have one six-sided orange die known as the illuminated die. Are you still following? Good, let’s make like a good merchant and go on.
While Merchants of the Dark Road has a giant, vast game board that might seem overwhelming initially, players can only move between five spaces within a circle.
On each player’s turn, they will pick one of their night die from their dice pool and use it to bump one of their other night die into one of the three action slots on their personal player board/waggon. And while this concept might sound downright confusing now, it all makes sense when you read the rules and have the dice and boards in front of you. Trust me.
Whichever night die got bumped will determine how many spaces the player can move within the city. Each of the five available spaces within the city is situated within reach of two different districts, each of which plays a different role in the game.
For example, going to The Great Bazar allows players to buy goods, The Queen’s Commissions allows for the acquisition of commissions to take goods to outlying towns, and The Dark Market lets players gain goods of… suspicious… origin for cheap.
But one of the most important places players can visit is Yurg’s Excursions, where players can travel to an outlying town to deliver heroes and goods and fulfil commissions. Usually, players must decide which of the two available districts they’d like to visit when they move. However, remember that illuminated die I mentioned earlier?
Suppose players activate their illuminated die when they do the whole dice-bumping manoeuvre. In that case, they can visit both districts adjacent to where they’ve moved or choose to visit the special buildings that can only be visited using an illuminated die.
This bump-a-dice-to-use-an-action-and-move mechanic is unique to The Merchants of the Dark Road and helps make something as simple as moving into a wonderfully complex little mental puzzle that can significantly reward players for planning ahead.
This system encourages players to constantly think about what they want to do, not only this turn but in the following turns as well. It also encourages careful balancing between the actions you need and where you want to visit on your movement.
Now I know this all sounds like a lot, and in truth, it is. But the magic happens in the flow of Merchants of the Dark Road. Every round has this natural flow and progression when you get past the rules.
It’s a game best enjoyed with the same group of friends because your first game together will be spent hashing out all the finer aspects and rules. After that, players can genuinely strategise and start having fun with all the various parts of the game.
There is also another tiny type of mini-game when managing your inventory. Each player’s board has a set inventory space, each item has a different size, and players can only carry as many things as they can fit into their demarcated space. Think of this as a super simplistic Tetris-style origination.
The game also comes with a full solo-play mode with two campaigns for players playing alone to enjoy. But, Merchants of the Dark Road isn’t the type of game you bring out to play alone.
It’s the game you bring out on a cold winter night, surrounded by good friends and even better snacks. Because, after all, what good is a victory when there aren’t people to sing songs about you, and what good is a victory song at an empty table?
Merchants of the Dark Road isn’t a game I’ve gotten to play as much as I’d like, but it is a game that I always want to play. While it seems overwhelming when you first look at it, it’s a game that almost everyone who loves board games is sure to enjoy, and it’s a game I’ve never regretted bringing to the table.
