During the fourth and last day of Spiel.Digital, I had the opportunity to speak with Fabio Lopiano, the creator of the fantastic Merv. During the live, the creator explained to us how the idea for this interesting title was born and he also showed us an in-depth game session. Accompanied by Giuseppe area of Goblin den, we immersed ourselves in the fantastic city of Merv, one of the most important cities located on the Silk Road in the 1th century. The title designed for 4-60 players with an estimated duration of 75-XNUMX minutes (probably for those who are regular players) consists of facing three game turns, each consisting of four possible actions.
Merv and the Silk Road
This fantastic title presents us with a 5 × 5 grid representing the city of Merv, in which the twenty-four building tiles will be arranged in a completely random way, only the camel market tile will always be placed in the center of the board. Each player will have their own avatar, to be placed on one of the spaces of the track provided. Once our meeple has been placed, we will be able to activate a space on the player's grid, which basically directs the actions and a series of in-game activities.
Activating a space provides basic resources and also allows you to activate a particular action indicated by the building tile. There are many possible actions:
- Caravanserai: pay resources (provided that they are all the same, or "white" of the real jokers), to be able to draw cards, determined by our level of influence points. This will obviously allow us to earn points and unlock real bonuses;
- Palazzo: players can place courtiers in the rooms of the palace, this obviously will have a cost but will allow us to get points, depending on the room, which we will have collected gradually;
- Library: you can spend up to four resources, this time different, to take scrolls, which will give us fixed or one-shot bonuses;
- Mercato: the market is a fundamental part for the cities of the silk road, for this reason by placing outposts, we will be able to earn interesting goods that will help us during the game;
- Mosque: religion is always present in eastern cities, for this reason the mosque will have its own particular structure, within which to level up to obtain tasty advantages;
- Walls: the city of Merv is used to receiving attacks from the Mongols, so fortifying its defenses will help us to increase the influence we will have on the game.
If players have no intention of taking advantage of the building's ability, they can decide to advance on the favor track or deploy a soldier to defend the city. There are several activities besides these, because contract cards have been inserted, which can be fulfilled by players to receive rewards, and there is the unselectable square that is activated to obtain a reward of resources and much more.
Once all four players' turn is over, things will happen that aim to upset the tactics a bit:
- each player gets points for each courtier entered in the palace;
- each player scores points based on their influence in the city;
- starting from the second round, the Mongols destroy the first two buildings they come across on their way
This, as we said at the beginning three times, and it is then that the game will be considered closed. The players count the points and determine the winner.
Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road it is a title that combines several interesting mechanics and has sub-phases capable of upsetting one's strategy, which makes it really cute. In this case Lopiano seems to have exploited all his experience deriving from the two previous titles, combining different game modes within the same title, which is appreciable and very fun. The glance once the board is set is truly fascinating, even if unfortunately the digital realization makes us lose some details. For the moment we are very convinced of this title, which is already available for pre-order on the Osprey Games website, at a cost of around 55 €.
