Dale of Merchants Review

The town of Dale - the place to go for the traders. There are new discoveries, new items and the greatest merchants. There is also a very special guild in Dale that is founded by the greatest merchants. However, getting a membership to this guild is not easy and to be invited you must win the annual trading competition.

Animalfolk from all over the world gather in the Dale to take part in such an event. Everyone is focused on the prize - to win the competition and be invited to the guild.

Dale of Merchants is a two to four player deck building/deck destruction game from designer Sami Laakso and published by Snowdale Design. In Dale of Merchants, players take on the role of a participating merchant. You must learn new techniques, trade goods and manage your stock effectively. Build the most amazing market stall quicker than your opponents to win the game and gain access to the guild. Players will use cards from their deck to purchase new cards. Cards will give you abilities and bonuses to be used on future rounds. But these cards must also be removed from your deck to build you market stalls. The game ends when the first player builds their eighth market stall.

Setting Out My Stall of Thoughts

From a deck building aspect Dale of Merchants takes the standard deck building mechanisms of using cards in your hands to buy cards. These cards are more powerful than your starting cards and there are ways to trash the starting cards form your hand. All standard deck building mechanisms which most people will be familiar with. But is there more to Dale of Merchants that a standard deck builder? Well I am pleased to say there is, a lot more, read on to find out.

One interesting twist is that the card you purchase goes straight in to your hand ready for use next turn. Any cards that have not been used in the purchase remain in your hand as well. This makes the planning aspect a lot more focused and controlled. It takes away some of the random nature that is inherent with all deck builders. This seemingly small change has a big impact on how the game feels and differs from a lot of different deck builders.

Another interesting mechanism is the deck deconstruction. To win the game players need to build market stalls, in order, ranging from one to eight. The "value" of the market stall has to be made using like minded animalfolk. This offers interesting choices as you will want to keep the cards in your hand for their benefits/bonuses but you need to play them to build the market stalls. Players will need to determine when is it the best time to start stripping cards from their deck. Start too early and players will be limited with their cards and bonuses. Leave it too late and you will not have enough time left to build your stalls before the other players.

Dale of Merchants comes with six different animalfolk and as part of set up one animalfolk per player, plus one more, is used. This adds some replayability in to the game, especially when playing with lower player count. Players can customise the market based on the type of game they want.

Dale of Merchants 2 is a standalone game but can be combined with Dale of Merchants. Dale of Merchants 2 comes with another six different animal folk massively increasing the replay-ability and variability of the game.

The game is a fantastic deck builder. It is quick playing, easy to teach, has a lot of replay-ability and can be tailored for the group around the table. This is my current go to deck builder when I am after something that has interesting choices but I am in need of an end of night game.