Traders of Carthage is a game where players buy goods from the market. These goods are then sold when the ship for that particular good reaches Carthage.

The Goods

There are 4 different goods, each represented as a certain color card. Each card has a value of 2,3, or 5. Higher value cards are worth more, but lower value cards allow for better storage against pirates. Cards are used as goods which are sold when the ship carrying that good enters Carthage. Cards are also used as money used to purchase more cards (goods).



The Market and Farm
The market is represented by a row of 5 face-up cards. A player on his turn may a) buy all the cards remaining in the market or b) take a single card from the market into your hand. Cards in hand are exclusively used as money. The value on the card equals its monetary value. When goods cards are purchased from the market, they are placed face-up before the player. When market cards are purchased, the ships will move (see below).

Above the market resides the farm. This is represented by 3 face-up cards . When the market is empty, these 3 farm cards are moved to the market and 2 new cards are added to the market. Then 3 new farm cards are drawn

The Board

The board represents a map of North Africa and 6 ports. Ships start in Alexandria and move westward to Carthage. When a ship makes it to Carthage, all players sell that particular good (i.e., when the green wine ship lands at Carthage, all green wine cards are sold). Ships are moved when any player buys market cards. A ship moves westward 1 port space if a card of that ship's color is bought; ships will move 2 spaces if 2 or more cards are bought of that color. When a ship(s) lands in Carthage, it is returned to Alexandria after the sale.


Pirates

When a ship(s) make a sale, any ships on the 2 spaces just prior to Carthage are plundered by pirates. If this is the case, players lose all goods of that plundered ship's color. To minimize losses, players can store goods by discarding market cards with 1 or 2 pots on them (value 2 cards have 2 pots, value 3 cards have 1 pot). 1 card gets stored for each pot icon. Note the lower value cards have a better storage capacity.



Scoring
When a ship(s) lands at Carthage, all goods of that color are sold and scored. VP's are represented by face-down goods cards kept in a separate pile. The number of VP's (cards) a player gets equals the value of his highest value card being sold X the number of cards of that particular good being sold rounded up to the nearest 5, then divided by 5.

So lets say the blue ship makes it to Carthage and a player has 3 blue cards (values 2,2,3), that player gets: highest card value (3) X #of cards (3) equals (9) rounded up to the nearest 5 (10) divided by 5 which equals 2 VP's. Thus 2 of the 3 cards are turned face-down into the VP pile.

Achievement Tokens
For each sale of a particular good, a player receives an achievement token matching that good. Each achievement token adds 1 to the highest value card in a set of goods being sold. So in the above example, if a player had 1 blue achievement token, he would get:

highest value card 3 + 1 (4) X #of cards # (3) equals 12, rounded up to the nearest 5 (15) divided by 2 equals 3 VP cards.

Note that the game ends when any player receives his eighth achievement token.

Reserving Cards
A player can perform 1 of 3 actions on his turn. The first 2 are mentioned above: 1) buy (all) market cards or 2) take a single market card into hand (to be used as money). The third action is to place a reservation token on any card in the market or farm. By doing this you are guarenteed that card in that no one else can get it. This means that when a player buys all market cards, he is buying all market cards that are not reserved or contains that players reserve token. Each player gets 1 reservation token

My Overall Impression
This is a very interesting game with interesting choices. Its not just about hoarding market cards. The trick is to realize where the ships move as a consequence of acquiring market cards. Ideally, you want to try to score ships where your opponent has minimal or (even better) no goods of that type. At the same time, you want to strategically position the ships so that after a sale, there are ships located in the pirate zones, which in turn cause significant loss to your opponent(s) while only minimizing your own loss. You want to take certain colored cards into your hand (as money) if you don't want that particular color ship to move. Further manipulation can be done by clever use of the reserve tokens.

The more I play this game, the more I really like it. The strategies are somewhat deep. You can really mess up your opponent with careful manipulation of the ships. The game itself takes about 30-45 minutes with 2 players. Admittedly I have not played it with more than 2, but my gut feeling is that I would like it best with 2, since each player has more control over the ships (in a 4 player game, it seems there will be too much happening before your next turn to really be able plan ahead).

The game comes with a nice board and nice wood tokens. The cards are thin; I recommend card sleeves (as usual). The game is pretty small overall and would make an excellent travel game. In fact, this is one of my favorite 2 player card games (I consider it a card game even though it technically has a board). For comparison, some other card games I really enjoy are Up Front, St. Petersburg, Settlers of Catan Card Game, San Juan and Race for the Galaxy.

I give it a solid 8.0