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Game Info
Year
2010
Collection
Ratings
Mechanic profile
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Vibe profile
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Description
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.
UPC 4015566030602
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All mentions
Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 4
This page: 4
Sentiment:
pos 1 ·
mix 1 ·
neu 0 ·
neg 1
Showing 1–4 of 4
Video _eGXZPyXBrE
Top List at 14:24 sentiment: mixed
video_pk 129723 · mention_pk 369172
Click to watch at 14:24 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
mixed
Pros
- Mechanically speaking, always enjoyable.
Cons
- Terrible components.
- Small, tiny, bland cubes for resources.
- One color represents two different goods.
- Abstracted map is not very concrete or captivating.
- Graphic design is not very captivating.
Thematic elements
- Merchants acquiring goods and fulfilling contracts
- Renaissance
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- contract fulfillment — Players fulfill contracts by acquiring and interchanging different types of goods.
- Resource Management — Players manage various goods to fulfill contracts.
- Technology tree — Advancing through contract levels unlocks subsequent, more rewarding levels.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- Magic: The Gathering, the classic grandfather of the collectible card game genre.
- It's lots of fun seeing the people perform and seeing them do their best to to their teammates uh to guess the titles of these different things.
- So, it will become a bit repetitive, but at the same time, that's going to help you uh establish or cement these concepts in your brain so that in future rounds, when people give fewer clues because they're more limited as to what they can do and say, you're going to be able or more likely, you'll be more likely to guess these things cuz they're already in the back of your mind, hopefully, if you have good enough memory.
- And basically, it's kind of semi-cooperative cuz two to six players can play and they're all breaking into the same bank and they're not trying to stop one one another, but they are trying to be the player who basically comes back with the most money.
- So, it's not cooperative in that sense. We're all We all have kind of like the same goal and we're not necessarily directly interfering with one another, but indirectly, we're absolutely trying to be the one who gets the greatest advantage.
- Because, again, there's a little bit of a time track. And once that time track hits the end, uh there's some predictability to it, but there's also some unpredictability to it cuz there is some die dice rolling towards the end of the game, just kind of like I mentioned in uh Android Infiltration.
- But, there is some variants that allow for players to never be knocked out completely, just lose a whole bunch of their health, uh get set back as far as losing some of their treasure, but they're still in the game.
- But, it's a tile placement game where as the game goes on, you're revealing these different tiles that represent rooms and chambers and corridors along the dungeon.
- But I actually enjoy that unpredictable nature.
- Um, none of the pieces here are really impressive.
- But, mechanically speaking, I always enjoy this game.
- This game, such a fun game.
- I will say that these games all ranked higher on my list in previous years.
- But, Agricola has made the cut and is still very close to making it to the top 50 right here at number 52.
- And the fact that it's a little bit on the stingier side as opposed to Caverna, I actually prefer that.
- This game here is one of his more famous games.
- Um, it's a fun game.
- Simple deck building.
- And I find that to be really cool.
- It's a bit on the heavier end of some of the solo games that I play.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video jvoYxwIT1as
Getting Games Discussion at 23:55 sentiment: positive
video_pk 91905 · mention_pk 246714
Click to watch at 23:55 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
none
Cons
none
Thematic elements
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- resource trading; set collection; contracts — engine-like tableau with contracts; upgradeable contracts; set collection
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- it's an ongoing ripple effect of me changing the channel up and not making reviews any more
- I've been thinking about doing this for a while and I finally went about changing my audio setup in here
- thanks for watching
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video BoGd-w7rUjo
Getting Games Impressions at 39:21 sentiment: negative
video_pk 91807 · mention_pk 246469
Click to watch at 39:21 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
negative
Pros
- Intriguing incentivization system
- interesting contract mechanics on board
Cons
- Balancing and pacing issues; players struggled and game didn't meet expectations
Thematic elements
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- area/board control via country tiles — Players activate countries to collect resource cubes and trigger country-linked bonuses; endgame triggered by conditions.
- contract / set collection — Contracts with country associations are drafted; completing contracts yields draws from a contract stack instead of direct points; resource management and timing affect endgame.
- incentivization mechanism — Take actions to incrementally increase incentive for opponents to take certain actions; resource cubes are collected from country tiles and trigger chained effects as groups decide when to act.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- The basic idea of this game is you have a pool of dice and on every single turn you will roll all of your available dice and then on every turn you must draft a face up a person from one of four different piles in the middle of the table.
- I really enjoyed it, it was really pretty unique and felt like a very different gaming experience.
- it's a race to a certain number of points... it escalates in interesting ways.
- I jumped out of my chair, I just couldn't believe I won by a single point.
- Magnus Storm is a big thumbs up for me after one play.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video YJqiNnqJnpk
Top List at 32:22 sentiment: other
video_pk 78287 · mention_pk 190726
Click to watch at 32:22 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
really fun, underrated
Pros
- underrated
- interactive movement
- awareness of opponents
- interesting end-game timing
- unique solo mode
Cons
- looks bland
Thematic elements
- order fulfillment
Comparison games
- Yokohama
- Messina 1347
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Order Fulfillment — has order fulfillment and it's it's kind of similar to Yokohama and Messina in a sense, but you're you're traveling around this board um gathering cubes and kill you know allocating these cubes onto your own storehouses to be able to fulfill these cards.
- resource collection — gathering cubes
- solo mode — The solo game is pretty cool and neat.
- traveling — you're traveling around this board
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- I really liked how uh bombastic the cards get in allowing you to do, you know, things on your own board and how to explore it.
- Uh especially with the military aspect and, you know, creating or increasing the military might that you have to um impose on other opponents and when these battles really made our games uh come down to these in addition to uh the just straight-up deck building and um you know, playing cards from your hands and worker placement aspects that has a lot of good mechanisms that I enjoy.
- This game I really enjoyed for the theme. I like the the thematic story and the arc of this game where the plague gets pretty bad uh during the game, uh but then slowly as you start to unders- or, you know, uh combat the disease, you start to uh rely less and less on taking out the plague and more and more coming back to repopulate Messina.
- it's still a game that is is tough for me to play sometimes just because um you know, I if I think I know what is going on with the strategy of this game and and and you know, the the more that I have to learn from it and so it kind of deterred me from playing it more
- But yeah, uh as as bland as it looks, it's actually really fun order fulfillment game.
- Um it's not as deep or complex as Magic or Hearthstone or some of the other card games are, but it probably will get to that point at some at some point.
- I wish that the meta game was more diverse. It hasn't been so since the start of the game.
- And Wingspan for me, while it's a masterpiece of of a design um in my opinion, I really was really drawn to all of the birds and the individuality of these cards.
- It does take a while to play, I think if you're playing with new people, which was kind of a deterrent for me for bringing this game out more often.
- So, this is one of the latest Uwe Rosenberg games back in 2022, one of my favorite games. One for the solo version of this game. I think that is the peak way to play this game.
- And so I I hold it in high esteem.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Transcript Navigation
Showing 1–4 of 4