Fine porcelain! Bolts and bolts of fabric! Spices
for sale! Dye! Dye here! Precious metals here!
These are the sounds you hear as you walk through the Italian
marketplace. In "Medici," you are a merchant sailor
whose job is to buy the most valuable loads for your ship. In
addition, you are also trying to corner one or more of these
commodity markets. However, your ship can only carry a maximum
of five loads of goods at a time. Therefore, you have to be
careful in your bidding at the auctions where one, two or three
loads are available for purchase in a lot. You also have to
watch out because there are other merchants there also bidding
for these valuable goods. Once you have purchased your five
loads, you are finished buying for this buying session. Then
each of the merchants sell the loads on their ships. The more
valuable the items you are carrying, the more florins you will
receive. You will also receive florins for purchasing the most
goods in any
of the five different commodities. After three buying sessions,
the game ends and the merchant who has the most florins wins.
Each turn, the dealer turns over up to three cards one at
a time. The dealer can decide to stop turning over cards after
one, two or three cards have been revealed. Most of the cards
contain one of the five commodities and a value of 0 to 5. There
is also one special card with the value of 10 representing very
valuable bulk cargo. This card is neutral and does not represent
any of the five commodities. So while it is helpful in letting
you have the most valuable loads in your ship, it does not help
you corner
any of the commodity markets. The revealed cards will then be
auctioned off amongst the players. Each merchant gets one bid
on the revealed cards, starting with the player on the dealer's
left and ending with the dealer. The high bidder takes the cargo
and adjusts his money indicator. The deal then passes to the
left and the process continues. This happens until all of the
players have five cargoes or until the deck is exhausted.
Once the buying session is complete, the merchants sell their
cargoes. The players adjust the commodity markers to indicate
the commodities purchased in this buying session. Each player
totals the value of the cargoes carried on their ships. The merchant
with the greatest total value receives 30 florins, the next highest
merchant receives a lesser amount of florins and
so on to the merchant with the lowest value receives no florins.
Then each of the commodity markets is evaluated. The merchants
with the greatest and second-most amount of each commodity purchased
receive florins. In addition, if a merchant has purchased six
or more of any commodity cumulatively over the three buying sessions,
the merchant will receive bonus florins during the payment for
the individual commodity.
There will be three heats of the game, one each on three different
days. Players may participate in one or more heats. Each heat
is scheduled for one hour. I will try to limit each game to five
players, although there may be some fiur- or six-player games
to fill out the field. The winners of each game in each heat
plus enough second-place players to complete a field of 25 will
then advance to a single elimination semi-final round. The winners
of each of the semi-finals will advance to the final immediately
following the semi-final.
Please note that some players prefer adjusting the markers
on the individual commodity markets after each auction while
some players prefer to wait until the end of the round to adjust
the commodity markers. I do not care which way the participants
do this as long as they agree. In addition, please note that
the seating order will be random for the semi-final and final.
However, for each heat, the players may use random seating or
not at their discretion.
As many of you probably know, Rio Grande Games released an
American version of the game, which has a couple of differences
from the German version of the game. We will be using the rules
in the German game for this tournament. Therefore, those players
who own the German version of the game will not have to worry
about any rule changes. For those players who only know the American
version of the game, here is a list of the two rules differences
in the versions.
1. In 6-player games, the player who has the third highest
total cargo receives 10 florins, not 15 florins.
2. The American version has an extra 5-florin bonus space
on the third highest level of each of the commodity markets.
This space will not be in effect for this tournament.
This is your tournament, which I am happy to run for you.
Therefore, if you have any ways that I can improve this tournament,
please let me know. I can be contacted via e-mail, snail mail
or personally at the WBC. I will consider all ideas presented
to me for future tournaments.
|