| Reviewer | Reviewed On | Publisher | Designer | Published In | Rating |
| August 15, 2005 | Blindluck Studios | Mark Morehead and Scott Lininger | 2005 | 5 |
| Buy It Now | More Info |
I'm not sure exactly what the problem was, but I think it was the auctions. A player has so many options on their turn but can only take one of them. Normally, that’s a good thing, making a player choose wisely on their turn, but in this game it becomes drudgery. Games aren't exciting, tend to drag on, and seem to be full of long, pointless auctions. I'm not sure what exactly could fix Caravans, as some of the mechanics are nifty and fun to think about it, but currently the game just isn't enjoyable.
Each player receives a player board in their color, which shows ten cities connected to each other by various routes. Each city has a commodity associated with it (such as Salt, ivory, and Bulrah - a lizard beast) and a number equal to the amount of routes that connect to that city. Each route passes over land or sea and has a number associated with it (the cost). Players also receive ten city tokens and twenty-one plastic route markers in their color, as well as a Camel marker. Players receive a "Right of Passage" card for the player on their left and five gold chips from the bank. The rest of the gold is placed in a pile on the board, next to the "Pirate Queen" and "Eyes of Shamesh" tokens. Players each have a deck of route cards - one for each of the ten different resources. These decks are shuffled and three cards are dealt to each player. The remainder of the decks is shuffled into one large, common deck that is placed in the middle of the table. The oldest player is given the "Shah" favor token. Players then may place two route markers on their boards for free, and the game starts!
Each round is made up of one bidding phase and one building phase. In the bidding phase, cards from the route deck are turned face up until there is one face up card for each player in the game. Then, starting with the Shah, each player may choose one thing on the table to bid on: the Shah, the Pirate Queen, the Eyes of Shamesh, a Right of Passage Card, or a route card. The player starting the auction makes a bid, and bidding passes around the table until everyone but one person has passed. (Starting bid can be zero). If the winner of an auction pays gold to the bank, they must turn their Camel card over and can no longer bid money in auctions (although they can bid zero). Each player gets to start one auction with the winner receiving the item up for auction. After the last auction, the building phase begins.
In a building phase, players have multiple choices for actions and take them in turn order, starting with whoever has the Shah.
- They can trade with another player. (Something that never happened in our games.)
- They can sell a right of passage to the Bank, giving them gold coins equal to the number of city markers on that player's board.
- They can claim a route by two different methods. One, they can pay the resource matching either of the two cities connected by that route plus one gold to the bank. Or, they can pay the number shown on the route (from seven to eleven gold.) Either way, the player places one of the route markers on the route to claim it as their own. If a player owns the Pirate Queen, sea routes cost one less gold; and if they own the Eyes of Shamesh, land routes cost one less gold.
- They can claim a route on someone else's board. This is done the same as a normal route, but the player must have the Right of Passage to that player's board.
- They can take control of a city if they control the majority of routes into it. The player places one of their city markers on the city and removes any trade route markers opponents have on any routes going into that city.
- They can destroy an opponent's route by paying double the normal cost.
The game continues in rounds such as these, until the last route cards are turned face up from the deck. At this point players total up their points. Players receive one point for each city they control. Also, if a player controls a city on an opponent's map that has the same resource as a city they control on their own map, they receive three bonus points. The player with the most points is the winner!
Some comments on the game…
1.) Components: The components of the game are fairly modest, as Blind Luck Studios is a small, independent publisher. The cities and route markers are plastic chips and glass stones and are of different bright colors. The cards are thin and long, and have nice artwork on them. The player boards are the best components of the set. They each show a completely different map (although they are all variations on the same theme), as well as a summary of the bidding and building phases. The Right of Passage cards are neat because they are basically a miniature board, giving players a chance to study their opponent's map without leaning over their board. The Shah, Queen, and Eyes are standup cards that don't do a good job of it, so we just laid them down when we played. Everything fits fairly well in a thin, long box. The components for Caravans aren't spectacular, but they do look good and are quite functional.
2.) Rules: The rules are on four pages, but there are no illustrations (although examples are included.) It took a while for me to understand them; but when I did, the mechanics fascinated me. The rules are a little more complicated to teach others, as they really aren't intuitive. The auction itself is a bit confusing for new players. A Question sheet is included with the game, but it's more of a "hint" guide than a FAQ.
3.) Auctions: I can't talk about the game without mentioning the auctions, which I disliked so much. There are a wide variety of things to bid on each turn, and yet each player can only choose one thing to bid on. Yet all of these things are of such importance, that winning only one can be annoying. A player can win more than one auction if they bid "zero" and win an auction, but only foolish players will allow others to accomplish this. In one game I played, the Shah was NEVER bid on; because while turn order was important, no one ever had the auction to waste on him. The same thing happened with the Eyes of Shamesh and the Pirate Queen. While initial auctions for them were high, eventually they lost all value because it is so much more important for players to get resources to complete their routes. Many times, for a player to accomplish anything in the game, they need several resources. It's annoying to simply pass your turn, and then sit through a round of auctions - three times in a row! On paper, the auctions sound really neat and intriguing. In practice, they are mind numbingly boring.
4.) Money: The money in the game is rather odd. Some people were rolling in money the entire game and didn't know what to do with it. (You could always buy routes, but they are ridiculously overpriced). Others got very low in money and never could come back because of it. If a player gets low in money, they don't have too many options, other than begging from other players (which won't happen), or bidding on a Route of Passage and reselling it back to the bank, which takes too long to be effective. The money didn't match the gameplay.
5.) Cities: I liked the route/city routine of the game, as it reminded me of one of my favorite games, Kahuna. But while Kahuna based its entire gameplay on that one mechanic, here it's more of a long, arduous chore. It takes a long time to get any kind of network built, and it's pretty much impossible to take down someone else's cities. By the time you've gathered enough resources in your hand to do anything, the game is almost over.
6.) Fun Factor: And for me, that was the deciding factor in the game - I just didn't have that much fun. The building phase, which sounds like you can do a swirling array of options, is mostly occupied by the blasé word "pass". The game centers around irritating, slow auctions. I love auction games, but not this one. If the game could ignore the auctions and concentrate more on the other aspects, there might be a really neat game here. As it is, I didn't have much fun.
7.) Variants: There is a variant in the game that actually makes it harder to build cities, as random "Outsiders" come in and destroy players' routes. We had a hard enough time even building the routes - why would we want the game to be harder? From a personal aspect, though, I wouldn't mind finding a variant that made the auctions more interesting - like allowing players to pick two things to bid on, etc. I haven't thought of anything that works yet, but I'll keep my eyes open for good variants, and the game seems like it should work on some level.
Because of the gameflow, the unique mechanics just won't save Caravans of Ahldarahd. If auctions were more interesting, and if the building phase actually allowed a player to do something other than pass three-fourths of the time, then I would gladly play the game again. I DO think that Caravans has potential - Children of Fire, another game with nifty idea, really clicked together and is a great little game. But currently, it will sit in the pile of "games I never play." I need fun in a game.
Tom Vasel
"Real men play board games."
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