Merchants & Marauders

Having played it fully loaded, with the cut-throat variant and all of Sea of Glory, I can see both camps very clearly. I understand why some people bounce off it, and why others adore it. This is a game for three players with time set aside, not something to squeeze into the gap between two adult obligations. Ten years ago I would have played it to death; now I would save it for a particular sort of evening and a particular sort of company.

Merchants & Marauders puts merchants and pirates into the same salty story, lets them collide, and then hands a great deal of the outcome to the dice. Its mechanisms hold together, and the flavour is everywhere, but luck is not a quiet guest here. It sits down at the table, pours itself a drink, and asks what you are going to do about it.

Player interaction has teeth, particularly with the cut-throat variant in play, and you need to make peace with reversals that feel almost staged for an audience. You can roll sixteen dice without finding a single hit, then watch barefoot merchants impale your pirate; the game is not being unfair when that happens, you are simply expecting justice from the sea.

This wants a fire, a proper cask-strength malt, and friends prepared to laugh when the plan collapses rather than submit a complaint. I would not recommend it to everyone, but for a slow, loose evening of table talk it is quietly excellent — and absolutely worth the hype.