Don’t Trade This Board Game Away! ⛅️☺️❤️ #boardgames #tabletopgames #games

0:00 On the planet of Aquarius, there are a series of sky islands where traders move between the islands by using anti-gravity powered stones. This is a game where players take on the role of sky merchants as you lay tiles and try and build as many trading houses as possible in order to gain the commercial rights on the most number of islands. That is Merchants of Sky Islands essentially is a tile laying game. There are four different types of trading ships in the game. The green one nets you victory points, and the other three net you resources, including wine, canvas, and flying stone. At the beginning of each round, players will earn one victory point for each trading house they've already placed on the map. Each trading house then produces resources that matches the particular airship on the tile that it's on.

0:45 Throughout the game, you'll be enhancing your presence on the sky islands by building one of three structures: towers, trading houses, and ports. each of them with an identical cost of one blue, one white, and one red resource cube. As tiles get placed out and as the map expands, you want to make sure that you have the greatest presence and influence on the largest islands because the size of the islands ends up being a multiplier for the victory points at the end of the game. At the end of the game, the towers and the ports are going to help you boost your influence. A trading house with a towel nets you two influence, whilst a trading house with a port nets you one. For each island, only the player with the greatest influence is going to be able to get the points for it. They'll get one victory point multiplied by the number of tiles that were used to create that island link.

1:32 This is a deceptively simple game to play, yet it's quite a challenging one to think about spatially. Do you close off an island early or open it up? Because closed islands at the end of the game are worth double victory points.