Century: Spice Road Review - JonGetsGames

Here is my Century: Spice Road game review.
Look below to skip to each section of the video:

Positive Review Points - 4:34
Neutral Review Points - 8:07
Negative Review Points - 9:17
Variability - 13:19
Player Count - 14:28
Conclusion - 15:59

[bengrasher]

The house rule I have created to try to fix Negative #1 is: Once anyone buys a VP card, destroy/discard the first card in the actions/exchange row (and fill in from the top). Often once the engines get rolling, the person executing their engine just never buys cards any more, and this can cause the people without engines set up to be basically stuck with nothing to do. Rotating out the early cards (which were less useful to everyone apparently) can cause good new cards to show up and potentially enable the people who are behind to catch up engine-wise. This also mitigates some of the advantage the first player gets by having first access to the cards (critical) and just moving directly into their engine.

[Soulflame]

Hi Jon,

I've played the game 6 times now and it instantly became a favorite in our groups (3 players and 4 players). I do agree with the point you make about the trade row, but there is also another thing we noticed in games: it is very likely (especially at start) that some of the cards have 2+ more cubes on them than they cost, making them better than the starting card of 2 yellows.
I have bought cards with red cubes, because some cards really ARE better than others. The production cards (especially the 'make one brown' and 'make one green and one brown') are super good. There are a lot of cards in the deck that require trading up to get a brown, so getting one just from a card (without costing you cubes) is super good. The green/yellow one might even be better as it is easier to trade up than to trade down. Both mentioned cards have a net value of +4 worth of cubes.
The 3 upgrade card is also very good. I can't understand why they didn't include more of those, or included cards like: get a red and one upgrade. or a yellow and 2 upgrades. So much design space there.
One other thing I noticed that in all games so far, it really came down to whomever could get to 5 cards. Since all point cards are costed fairly (yellow generates 1 point, green 2, red 3, brown 4), the only thing that adjust this, is the gold/silver coins, and if you focus on those, you usually end up with only 2/3 more than someone else who didn't go for gold (and that is not enough to offset a card in total). Because in essence, if all cards generate +2, and all the point cards are equally costed, as long as you don't 'waste' cubes by overfilling your supply, you should always get the optimal value out of them.

Overall I think the game is great. the most important thing is that you almost always have 'nice stuff to do', because each card has a net value of +2/+3/+4. Only 'resting' seems boring, but that is so fast and you actually gain options again, also a positive feeling.


I think the game could maybe benefit from 2 houserules (non-tested):
1. Hide the cubes from other players with a player screen
2. The first card in the row is scrapped (including cubes!) when it has not been purchased for an entire round. Refill the row with a new card at the end. This also makes it less frequent that players get a ton of free cubes from buying something.
- you could also opt to put the cubes on the next card to incentivize buying more, but I think that might push it more to 'luck' since it can tip a card so fast (from 0 cards and uninteresting to 4 cubes and super interesting is a big leap)

Sorry for the long reply, thanks for the great review and game on!

[spiderfingers]

Is it odd that I've been watching your reviews for a little while now but am just now noticing that the conductor wire in the lightbulb spells out your channel initials? Lol

[xfoolsgoldx]

I love it and the more I play it the better it gets. Have played around 15 plays.

[РоманЛапшин-дз]

For those who compare it with Splendor: Play Century on odd days and Splendor on even ))) In Splendor you are exploiting a given engine, it's like driving a car with automatic transmission, so it's about how well you are steering. In Century on the other hand you are provided with a pile of different parts which you manually run constantly trying to adjust it according to the permanently changing situation with goals and it's about inventing and testing a new engine.

[ricke]

I think a couple small house rules could fix these issues (which seem rather large).
Maybe: Whenever the 3rd cube of the same color is placed on a card, those 3 are replaced with 1 cube of the next level. So, the 3rd yellow cube on a card would make all 3 yellows become a single red.

Either way, this game seems very similar to a game I think is much better - Portal of Heroes.

[cursivecurses]

ONE HUNDRED percent agree with the incentivization problems

[jacqueszachariethaddeuspon]

Hi John! I am a big fan of yours and it would mean a lot to me if you would have a full playthrough of zombicide!

[spiderfingers]

Many are comparing this to Splendor. How would you say they stack up against each other?

[RockMAN]

I own this game, maybe I didn't read all the rules but I didn't know you could use a single card multiple times if you have the cubes for it. I thought you used it once and only once until you rested to get you're discard pile back into your hand

[thatPUNKdude]

What if, once the row of cards stalls, you begin discarding the lowest card in the row each time you cycle through all the players taking an action? Would that help resolve the issue?

[EyalItsik]

Ha! First time I disagree with you strongly :)
Most of my games were in 2 and 3 players, and I enjoyed them all quite a bit.

[Hieronymus-Pseudonymous]

The possibility of only "engine-running" past a certain
point in a game seems to be a particular concern of yours.

[jonathandodd]

"Spiced up gameplay" - Unintentional pun?

[Sir_I.I_William]

Couldn't disagree more. This game is really fun at 2-player. Frankly, this review stalled out at some point, ha.