Kris Hall: Hermagor – An Under-Appreciated Gem

The Appalachian Gamers don’t own every game published.  No gaming club could (except for CABS).  But sooner or later we play most of the major games that are produced by the major game companies.

A couple of weeks ago, we finally got around to playing Hermagor, a sort of fantasy-economic game designed by Emanuele Ornella and published in the USA by Rio Grande Games.  And after playing a game, I wondered why I had not heard more about this brain-burner.  A quick trip to Boardgame Geek showed me that the game has gotten mixed reviews.  Some folks like it a lot, and others have major reservations.

I’ll say up front that the Appalachian Gamers reaction was positive.  I was badly beaten in my first game, and yet I appreciated its smart design.

In Hermagor, players represent merchants in a fantasy kingdom who try to sell various goods in the towns of the kingdom, and who then place trading stations in these towns.  Once a player has placed a trading station in every town on a border of a province, he can place a production building on the board, or (in some cases) place a token on a track of Nobles.

Let’s start at the beginning of the turn.  A number of tiles are placed on a market grid.  Most of these tiles represent goods that can be sold, but a few have special abilities (such as decreasing travel costs in the kingdom).  Players take turns placing buyer tokens on the market in order to claim tiles.  There is a cost for placing tokens which varies depending on the location.  Tokens placed directly on a goods tile or between two tiles have a smaller cost than a token placed at the intersection between four tokens.  After all tokens have been placed, ownership of the tiles is determined.  Whoever has the most tokens adjacent to a tile claims it.  If the numbers of tokens are tied, then the player with a token directly on top of the tile claims it. 

After tiles have been claimed, players collect cash based on the locations of their buyer tokens.  The more that their tokens are lined up in straight lines, the more cash a player gets.

After market tiles are claimed, players draw an action tile to determine how many actions occur that round.  Players then may move their trader token from the city of Hermagor at the center of the board (or from wherever their token ended up on the last turn) along roads to various towns.  Each stretch of road between towns has a price associated with it that must be paid to travel on it.  Players pay the price of their roads, and then sell their goods at the appropriate towns.  Each town is willing to buy only a certain good, and players must have that good in order to sell there.  If a player sells in a town, he may place a trading station there.  A player may only sell in a town once, and this is major consideration when planning strategy.

Once each player has taken the appropriate number of actions, the round ends, and the process begins again.

When I first started playing the game, I thought Hermagor was a buy-low, sell-high economic game.  But about halfway through, I realized that actually making a profit on selling goods is far less important than enclosing provinces with trading stations, and then placing a production building on the board.  These production buildings generate the big money in the game.  Players will often pay more to travel to a town than they earn from the subsequent sale of goods, but this is still often reasonable as long as it helps enclose a region with your trader stations. 

The game ends when the last action tile has been drawn and that round is played out.  Final scoring is made more complicated by two factors.  First, the board is divided into three regions, and players earn extra money according to how many trading stations they have.  The catch is that only the region with the smallest number of their trading stations is counted towards bonus scoring. 

Second, there is a major highway in the center of the board, and the player with the most trading stations on the highway earns bonus points, and the player with the fewest stations on it loses points.

So what kind of game do we end up with?  A minimal-luck brain burner.  Players can base a turn’s strategy on the tiles available in the market, but there is no guarantee that a player will be able to obtain the tiles he needs.  A player must work with whatever tiles he gets, and must not only find towns nearby where he can sell his goods, but must set himself up for the next turn.  Leaving one or two towns in an area without trading stations on them can be frustrating because paying the travel costs of returning to the area later in the game can be expensive.

And while a player is considering all this, he must keep the end-of-game bonus points in mind as well.  Trading stations should be spread evenly through the kingdom to maximize points, and they should be placed on the main highway, as well, to at least avoid the end-of game penalty.

Is Hermagor a perfect game?  No, there are some obvious problems.  There are so many cash transactions in the game that the use of paper money is awkward; we used poker chips in our game and were very glad we did.

Players prone to analysis paralysis may want to avoid this game as well.  I could easily see turns stretching out to intolerable lengths as slow players try to find the ideal move.

The game has an odd theme, too.  I wonder if fantasy gamers are uninterested in an economics game in a fantasy setting, or if economic gamers distain the fantasy setting.  Either way, the game is an exercise in calm calculation, not a beer-and-pretzel fast-playing dice fest.

But I appreciate Hermagor for what it is.  I played rather badly in my first game, but I believe that even with lots of experience the game would be a challenge.  There is just too much to think about to ever feel confident that I can always spot the optimal move.

I wouldn’t want to play Hermagor every week, but I’m glad it has found a place in the Appalachian Gamer library.  It is a smart and difficult game. 

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