Tricky Traders

The weekly market has begun, and eager customers swarm everywhere—unfortunately, even at the stalls of your competitors. How fortunate that, with all the hustle and bustle, the odd bit of sabotage is unlikely to be noticed as rival guilds conspire against each other? In Tricky Traders, two players compete against each other by moving customers, rats, and characters amongst seven stalls in an attempt to manipulate the market to their advantage and win the game.

Over three days, each divided into three phases, players influence the activities in the marketplace with the goal of causing one stall to flourish and another to fall in ruin. The challenge is that each player’s goals are secret! In each day phase, the opponents play two influence cards which are used to move the characters or trigger their various actions. Depending on where they are located, this can mean fame or sabotage for the surrounding stalls. The presence or absence of customers and rats also influences each day’s scoring of fame. At the end of the third day, players reveal their goal cards and calculate how effectively they have supported and sabotaged their target stalls. The player with the greatest total score is the winner.

Time to play: 20-40 minutes
Players: 2
Ages: 10+