First Impression: Hermagor

By Andrea “Liga” Ligabue
September 8, 2006

Publisher: Mind the Move / www.mindthemove.com and Rio Grande Games / www.riograndegames.com
Designer: Emanuele Ornella
Artist: Czarnè
Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 90-120 Minutes

Game Played: Playtest and Final Version Prototype
Number of Plays: Playtest - Several Times, Final Version Prototype - 1

In Hermagor, players are merchants involved in trading goods.  They acquire the goods at the General Market and then sell them at the Villages, building at the same time a Trade Station.  As soon as a merchant has a trade station in each village surrounding a particular region, he can build a Production Building. 

Getting goods and moving on the map will cost money. Deploying buyers in a good way at the General Market, Production Buildings, and selling goods will earn players money. Money is also earned at the end of the game.  At the end of the game the player with the most money wins.

There are 24 tiles available in the Market: 8 different types of goods, 12 double goods and 4 special tiles.

Each turn (and there are only 4-5 turns) players first compete in collecting goods at the General Markets.  These will be refilled each round (20 spaces) using 4 buyers. Deploying a buyer will cost a different price according to his position on the Market. Mixed with the goods there are 4 special tiles to perform a special action.

After all the players have finished deploying buyers, goods are awarded to the players with the most buyers close to the goods. Nice rules will break most of the ties. As soon as you get a single product tile you can also increase the value of that product.

After that each player will try to sell goods by moving his merchant on the map. Each road, connecting two villages, has a value and you have to pay that amount of money to move. You can only sell goods you have tiles and only in villages you never sold before.

Each time you sell goods you also deploy a trade station in that village that will earn you money in the future every time another merchant sells a good there. The number of actions (move, move and sell, pass) you can do with your merchant on the map range from 3 to 5 according to a randomly taken tile. After the last turn there is a special scoring phase in which you get points from possessing Production Buildings and also trade stations. The player with most money will win the game.

The game is nice and the rules quite simple. Is it not difficult to know what to do: try to acquire the goods you can sell better and closer to the actual position of you merchant, trying also to complete regions as soon as possible to get production buildings. Of course, the other players will prevent you from doing this. Since every action in that game costs money (or gets money) and since money is victory points, you have always to balance and keep an eye on costs vs. results. I think that using money is better that standard visible victory points otherwise the game would have too much point counting.

I think it is a good game, more for gamers than occasional players, in line with the standard the designer is used to. I really would like to play it with the finished graphics and materials because I think clear and nice graphics will really help game flow. It is not a game to play with gamers used to calculate everything before making their move.

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