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Market of Alturien Price: £33.99 This item normally ships in 2 - 3 days. RRP - £39.99, our price = £33.99 Board Game; 2-6 Players; Ages 10+ by Mayfair Games The medieval marketplace of Alturien is awash in intrigue and action. As many as 6 different merchant families compete in a merciless trade battle. All seek wealth, influence, and power. In \'Alturien\', your merchants vie for the attention of 7 unique trader customers of varying wealth. They stroll the market, while you entice them to ignore your rivals and buy your wares. Using your income, you build new trading halls and create your own mercantile empire. But beware! One of the customers is \'Gustavo the Weasel\'! He steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Watch out if your prosperous, for Gustavo is a wily crook! If you\'re the first merchant to acquire sufficient wealth and 3 prestigious prizes, you rise to a noble rank and win the game! The Market of Alturien contains: * 20 Hexagonal Business tiles * Gameboard * 7 Figures: 6 Customers & 1 Thief * 72 Buildings (6 Colors) * 14 Prestige Cards * 12 Investment Cards * 6 Market Leader Cards * 1 City Guard Card * 70 Bills Currency * 6 Game summaries * 2 Special Dice Review from Counter Magazine 2-6 players, 60 minutes designed by Wolfgang Kramer reviewed by Stuart Dagger Der Markt von Alturien is the first of a planned series of 5 or 6 games set in the fictional, medieval state of Alturien. The second, Die Hauptstadt von Alturien, is due for release in the Autumn. A major series from a major designer: it sounds at first like an exciting prospect, but the gilt disappears somewhat when you read the small print and discover that these first two games are in fact re-treads. Der Markt (Market) is a revised version of Kramer\'s 1989 game City, and Die Hauptstadt (Capital City) one of his 1994 game Big Boss. The board for this one shows the market square of a medieval city. It is marked out with pitches for the market stalls and there are pathways running between the rows. Players create their retail empire by claiming pitches and putting on them stalls of various sizes. Money comes from a set of customers who move round by die roll and shop where they stop. The money a player earns is used to expand the business, to make various other investments and to buy ``Prestige Cards\'\'. Victory is won by acquiring a pre-set number of these cards. Each player has a set of 12 ``trading houses\'\' and at the start of the game places 4 of them on to vacant lots to give an initial set of 4 ``businesses\'\'. Certain locations are ``special\'\' and bring in more income, but at this stage you are only allowed to claim one of these. The other thing you will be paying attention to during the set-up is the division of the market into six coloured areas. Each area has a ``market leader\'\' card which goes to the player with the most trading houses in the area and which also provides an income boost. The other part of the set-up sees the placing of the six customers. These are stand-up figures and have a facing which will determine their direction of movement. They also have wealth ratings - one 3, two 2s and three 1s - which help decide how much they spend each time they shop. There is a seventh character, the thief, who is used to target other players\' businesses, but he enters later in the game, after players have become sufficiently well established to be able to absorb the hits. Your turn begins with the roll of a die. It is a standard 6-sided die, but with the `6\' replaced by a `1-3\'. You then select one of the figures and move him forward by this number of spaces. If his move ends opposite a market stall, he will spend money there. The amount spent is his wealth rating times the number of trading houses on the site, with a further bonus of 2 if the stall holder is the market leader for this area. Number of trading houses? This a point where you have to avert your eyes from the theme. The trading houses stack and can be used to create structures up to 4 storeys high. No, I\'ve never seen a 4-storey market stall either, but the mechanism is needed to make the game interesting and so you just have to accept that stuff happens when you take an old game and give it a not necessarily appropriate respray. Think of it as a ``big stall\'\'. Normally a customer will only make purchases if you have moved him this turn. The exception is the ``special locations\'\'. If a customer is standing outside one of your special-location businesses at the start of your turn, he will shop there provided you don\'t move him. This means that on good turns you will have more than one source of income. In the final part of your turn you have the option of making an investment. This could be opening a new business by placing a trading house on a vacant site, expanding an existing business by building an extra storey, moving a trading house from one location to another, buying an ``Investment Card\'\' (advance game only) or buying a Prestige Card. All of these bar the last one will increase your chances of making money, but it is the number of Prestige Cards you have at the end of the game that will really matter. The rest is just a means to an end. So early in the game your main concern will be with bettering your financial prospects and trying to gain as many of the Market Leader cards as you can, but once people start buying Prestige Cards, you can\'t afford to be left behind. You can only make one investment per turn and so hanging back in the race and then making a sprint from behind isn\'t a viable strategy. The thief acts like a customer with a wealth rating of -2 and so with him the aim is to get him to stop outside someone else\'s stall, preferably a nice big, multi-storey one. The money he steals goes to the player who moved him, and as a further incentive to move him, a player who does so at least once in the course of their turn gets a further die roll, thus avoiding the ``Shall I take the big income myself by moving the Grandee or damage the leader by moving the thief?\'\' dilemma. In this game you can do both. A further nice touch, of the sort you get from a designer as skilled as Kramer, is an anti-bullying device in the shape of the City Watch. This is a card that gives you immunity from the thief. The card rests with the last player to be robbed, unless that player was still the richest (counted on money + assets) after the robbery. The aim is to get three Prestige Cards and as soon as one player achieves this, you are in the last round, which is completed so as to give everyone the same number of turns. If more than one player achieves the target, cash in hand splits the tie. I have never played the original, but I\'m told by Dale Yu, who has, that the changes that have been made, though all improvements, are not major. So what we have here is a repainted and slightly revised version of an 18 year-old game that even then would have been seen as a bit run-of-the-mill and not one of the designer\'s best. That being the case, you can\'t expect any radically new mechanisms, since any idea that was innovative when the original was published will have been used again in games that came later. The inevitable result of this is that, although the game plays well enough, it feels a bit old-fashioned. Der Markt von Alturien is not by any means a bad game, but even for those like me who never saw the original, it is liable to seem workmanlike rather than inspired. Dale\'s verdict was that it is one of those games that is good for 2 or 3 plays but which will then be forgotten, and I agree. More ...

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