Pick-up and Deliver

Part of the crayon rail games, this game features unique timeline orchestrated by event cards and a distance warp to accommodate the vast distances of the Soviet Union region. The game begins in the post WWII era, with players drawing rail lines and delivering loads wary of the inevitable fall of the Soviet Union. Build an empire from the Black Sea to the Baltic.

Note that the "distance warp" feature was removed during playtesting, and the "inevitable fall" of the Soviet Union is not as inevitable as you would think if that card doesn't get drawn.

As former lab monkeys, players cooperate and compete to free imprisoned monkeys from a well-guarded testing facility. Of course, since the monkeys don’t have keys, they must use their creativity and the items found around the lab to pick, pry, and smash the cages open. The more monkeys you rescue, the more reward you receive.

Merkator is about the rise of Hamburg after the Thirty Years' War.

You visit cities to collect goods or fulfill orders. The collected goods are added to the cities when a player visits a neighboring city. Fulfilling an order provides you with another better, but more complex order additional to the fulfilled order which you keep and can fulfill again, although the number of orders you can own is limited. Each order itself is worth a certain amount of points at the end of the game. Also you can exchange these points for special cards which provide additional goods in certain cities or more victory points if you fulfill certain conditions at game end.

Depending on the city you want to enter you either receive a resource called "time" or you have to spend it. By paying a certain time-fee you are allowed to accompany another player on his trip to a town to fulfill your orders in this town (but not to collect goods). The game ends when a player receives the order with the highest value by fulfilling the order one level below.

A Medieval game of trade and commerce, Die Händler is set in Europe, where trade wagons carry wares between six cities on the board. Essentially, players buy goods, load them onto wagons and send them for maximum profit in other cities.

The whole game looks very inviting. The medieval cities depicted on the board, together with the player crests, cardboard coins, money pouches, sticker decorated wagons and wooden commodity pieces, immediately creates the right atmosphere for the players.

There are six cities - Paris, Cologne, Brugge, Gent, Vienna and Genoa - which are interconnected by roads. Three wagons carry goods from one city to another. No-one owns the wagons or controls any of them single-handedly, and in principle a player can put commodities on any transport. There are six different commodities - salt, iron, wine, silk, cloth and food - all of limited supply.

The goal of the game is to make money by delivering goods to the towns, and use the money to buy increases in status. The game ends after a certain number of deliveries have been made and the winner is the player with the highest level of status.

From the back of the box:

Venice, the 1400's. You are a young merchant trying to make your name in this legendary port of vibrant commerce. Trade in spices, silks, gems, iron, and grain can bring great wealth... if you can bend the market to your will. Buy goods as they enter the city docks and sell them to the tradesmen who need them. Increase your profits by buying shares of the shops that use the goods in which you trade. Gain gold and prestige by fulfilling the orders of the Guild Hall craftsmen.

But Venice is a city of fickle demands and mercurial politics. Spend your ducats wisely and look for help from powerful people such as the Guildmaster, the Harbormaster, the Tax Collector... or perhaps a Thief. Even the humble Gondolieri have powerful connections in Venice. In the end, the most important thing to remember is the simple rule of commerce... buy low and sell high! Only those with the most gold and the highest prestige can truly become... Masters of Venice!