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Gather round adventurers and see my wares! I hold here a mystical box in which wonders and mysteries can be found! Open it and you shall see four enchanted polyhedrals! Roll them, roll them, roll them! See what combinations they provide you with! Use the fates to provide you with what you need and craft the most wonderous items available! Can you too become one of the Merchants of Magick?
The Game
In Merchants of Magick, you are a shoppe owner who specialises in the enchantment and craft of items. You will have a revolving door of customers who want particular items and are willing to wait whilst you craft them. Wait too long and they’ll move onto another store. In this roll and write game, you will be rolling four dice and choosing how to utilise two of them a round to focus your research or crafting talents. Each item or enchantment has one or more circles that contain a number and an arrow.
An upward arrow, as seen on the crafting (left) side of your sheet requires a number equal to or above what is in the circle. A downward arrow, in the research (right) side of your sheet has the opposite. To make it more of a challenge, the column the number is in will have a die size restriction. For example, to craft in steel, you can only use a d6, whereas elemental magic can take a value from a d8, d10 or a d12.
Fiery Sword
You will be attempting to fill in the circles that complete parts of an order, such as a fiery sword. To do this, you have to fill in all the materials on the crafting side for a sword and the energies needed for fiery. Once you have completed both of these, you can claim the fiery sword card if it is in front of you.
On the way, as you complete one of the two components, you will get a potion that can be used to modify the die value for you.
Just as well, as some of the values are actually impossible on the die alone (a 7 on a d6?!). You’ll also gain points for each enchantment or item you complete and any order you can claim. Potions can also be used to let you claim extra dice to use on this round. You can do this six times a game, the first three are free.
Two other factors can influence your scoring: the mastery and the sponsored adventurer cards. The mastery cards kick in when someone has completed five circles of a particular material or magical energy, scoring 8 points for the first person or persons who reached this goal this round.
The card is then flipped over and anyone who reaches the goal in subsequent rounds will gain 4 points instead. The sponsored adventurer requires three specific items which have the same enchantment. Once you have filled in these objectives, you gain some extra bonuses, such as potions, a free circle to put anywhere and bonus points if you hit all three items.
At the end of each round, any order cards that have been claimed are replaced with a facedown card from the deck and you slide a card clockwise, ensuring you end up with the right number in front of you for the player count. After ten rounds, you count the points up and the highest point total wins.
My Thoughts
Let’s get into this. I love this game. I love roll and writes as a general rule – Cartographers and Dinosaur Island Rawr & Write are in my top 20 games, with Cartographers taking pride of place as the most played game of the last year. Also, Ilove Dungeons & Dragons, I’ve reviewed a couple of the books and I DM regularly.
One of my favourite NPC’s was a magician who had turned his hand at magical item selling and crafting and being able to play this game reminded me of how much I enjoyed that character. A lot of roll and writes suffer from dice luck but this game provides so much mitigation, it’s almost a non-entity. You can almost always do something and score more points somehow.
Crafty players can plot out their strategy based on the cards that they know are coming from their opponents. Playing this game last night, I went into an incredible lead in round two by completing my adventurer card and ended up losing by 18 points.
This game is so well balanced, and it comes down to how you play to the cards that come up. Sure, there’s some luck involved but if you plan well enough, it almost doesn’t matter. If you like a roll and write, if you like magical themes, if you like fulfilling orders, if you like any of these things, you will like this game.
