My first session of Traders of Carthage was a 2-player game with a casual gamer, so what follows is a "first impression" review geared toward the game as a gateway experience. Others have explained the game rules and components already, so I'll skip over that.

Introducing the Game

There were some bumps along the way, but I can say the session was a limited success. It earns big points right out of the starting gate for (a) having a very dark/vibrant/pretty color scheme without any cartoony art, (b) being small with very few moving parts, and therefore not being an intimidating game when laid out on the table, and (c) for having a listed play time of 30 minutes. Even if she didn't like it, the girlfriend was willing to give up 30 minutes to find that out.

On my first reading of the rules, the game seemed fairly simple, with a weird bit of math for payday Victory Points but nothing too strenuous. That's one of the reasons I decided this was the game to try, instead of something more complex. Unfortunately, it's a bit easier to absorb rules at a casual reading pace outside a gaming environment than when you're sitting at a table hearing them aloud for the first time. After I thought I might have filled the memory stack, I decided to save the payday and VP explanation for our first payday, after the game was underway.

There were a couple expected conceptual stumbling blocks that were overcome after a few turns. No, you don't own one particular ship, you make them all move, and yes, all players get a payday when one player moves a ship into Carthage. Yes, these cards are goods, so the color matters. And they're money, in which case the color doesn't matter. And they're Victory Points, so you flip them over and don't even care about the numbers anymore. And they're proof against pirates, so color and the urn icons matter.

Theme and VP Issues

After a few rounds, the ideas fell into place from a mechanical standpoint, but there was some grumbling about thematic reasoning. She prefers abstract games, but if she's going to play a themed game then the things you're doing should be analogous to something. Merchandise going from the farm to the market makes sense, and reserving cards could even be seen as making special deals with farmers and merchants, but why do you just get to take money for nothing? Why don't you have to sell your goods for money? Why do the ships flow in one direction only? She was having none of it.

And of course the payday conversion to VP was our final hurdle...let's just say that math was an unwelcome guest at the party, even if it was simple math. Multiplying, then rounding, then dividing...and then possibly getting more cards as VP than the number you turned in...it seemed very kludgey, and we both thought there had to be a better way to go about it. Using the cards themselves as VP objects is an elegant concept, but I think a casual gamer would have been happier and more in their comfort zone adding up delivered goods on a scrap of paper and skipping the multiply/round/divide stuff. Eventually, though, we got past that pain and got on with the game.

Gameplay

From our early rounds, when we were just getting the hang of things, it was clear that as a 2-player game, Traders of Carthage can be very static and samey if no one brings any strategy to the table. You take turns increasing your money supply, one of you is able to buy the market first, and then blows their money on the market. The one who didn't buy the market has enough money to be the next person to buy the market, and so on. Assuming a well shuffled deck, ships progress at similar rates, and the lead ship gets a payoff while the others get pirated, the leader goes back to Alexandria to give the others a headstart, and the next color or colors get their turn...for most of the game, we were not only holding the same amount of achievement tokens, we received the same exact tokens from the same exact payday events.

At some point, though, the strategies became apparent. Collecting enough of a trailing ship color to protect yourself from pirates, or preventing your opponent from doing the same. Keeping track of other player's money so you can capture value 5 cards as merchandise before they can, or take them as money to prevent them from becoming merchandise for someone else. Using the reserve piece to help you, without being stuck with a market that's too expensive for you to buy, but cheaper for the other player. Sometimes using your reserve action merely to stall for time and see what your opponent's next move will be, or to keep them from moving one color of ship into pirate territory when they buy the market.

And all this just in a 2-player game--I'm sure there's more to consider and prepare for with more players.

Finally, we might have succumbed to a bit more analysis paralysis than was warranted in such a small scope game, but our 2-player game definitely did not play out in anything close to 30 minutes. It took north of an hour. I enjoyed figuring out a new and somewhat novel system enough that I didn't mind the time vs. game weight ratio, but it was starting to tilt the fun equation the wrong way for my partner, and she was a bit relieved when the 8th achievement token was acquired.

For all her hesitancy about the game, it ended close: 15 VP for me, 14 VP for her. When you consider that I knew the payday scoring but hadn't explained it to her until our first trip to Carthage, I would call that a draw, or even a win for her.

Conclusions

In the end, we both agreed there was a good game here, with a cumbersome VP scheme and some issues with thematic coherence. It seems that, for whatever reason, dual-purpose card mechanics tend to highlight mechanics at the expense of theme logic. And quadruple-purpose cards, well, that's just showing off!

Personally, I was a lot more enamoured of the game than the casual gamer was, and I liked the fact that it's got a "little board game" feel despite being essentially a card game with some wood scoring bits. It's unfortunate that the packaging only fit the achievement tokens when they were on unpunched sheets, and that there's no thumb cut-out on the lid to help pry the tight box open. But it's a very pretty box. Assuming repeated plays and less agonizing over each turn will bring play time down significantly, I would definitely get it to table again. And a house rule or two for simplified payday scoring might improve its chances as a gateway game as well.

[Edits: For accuracy, changed mentions of "payoff" to "payday" and changed achievement tiles to achievement tokens. Removed a mistaken statement about their usage as well. Took redundant title out of Subject.]