CENTURY - Eastern Wonders
Century: Eastern Wonders is part two of Emerson Matsuuchi’s trilogy of ‘Century’ games. Eastern Wonders is the sequel to Plan B Games’ Spice Road (a deck-building game about trading spices).
Eastern Wonders offers some wonderful new flavours in the form of pick-up-and-deliver. The first player to complete four orders ends the game, and most points wins! Once again the aim is to collect spices – ginger, chilli, tea and cloves. The game takes place on a modular archipelago of islands. Waiting on the four corners are specific spice orders. If you can sail to these locations and pay in said spices, you can earn mega points. Whenever orders get completed, a new one replaces it from a stack. Early game, one of the four ports closes, but this rearranges with every later order filled. Each island offers a different trade deal. Trading occurs like in Spice Road: players have a board with space for 10 spices that they can hold at any one time. On a player’s turn, they can sail their ship to an adjacent island to partake in the trade there. They can sail further this turn, but they have to drop off a spice per island they skip. These dropped spices can get snaffled up other players who visit that island on a later turn. To trade at these islands, you must build an outpost there. First to reach that island builds there for free. Future players to reach that island have to pay spices to build an outpost, so it’s even more of a race. If you can build on four different spice islands, you unlock points and bonuses. These could be the ability to sail further for free, or extending your mat (so you can hold more spices). The clever thing about Century: Eastern Wonders is that you can combine this with Spice Road. This creates a separate game all in itself called Sand To Sea!
Game Information
- Players 2-4
- Playing time 30-45 minutes
- Ages 8+