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OltreMare
Author: Emanuelle Ornella
Publisher: Mind the Move
Year: 2004


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Trade is an intriguing business and in real life it involves money. The two to five players in OltreMare however deal with points that are used for buying goods (cards) but these points are also the victory points that are required to win the game. The cards are the substantial part of the game; with these, players try to accumulate points.
Players start with four cards. On each of them one of the seven goods (cloth, salt, grain, wine, wood, spices and silver) is depicted; on the card is shown how many of this type are in the game. In their turn, players should try to play the cards on their own goods pile in such a way that they make the largest series of one kind possible; the cards show how many points are awarded; for instance for one card you get 1 point, for two of the same goods that are successively discarded 3 points, three goods give you 5 points, and so on.

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A player can play one or more cards, but he is restricted by the last discarded card from his previous turn. On the bottom of each card small ship icons tell you how many cards from your hand must be played next turn. A player has to carefully plan his move and decide which of his cards he should place on top of the pile. A single played card in a turn could very well be the start of a long series; the only requirement for this is that the series may not be interrupted by any other type of goods card. Collecting more uninterrupted cards than the length of the series is useless and will not give you any extra points. However this sometimes can happen as a player works on a series in multiple turns and forgets to count how many he already collected. It is not allowed to lookthrough the collected goods pile, only the top card is visible!
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The number of Venetian Lion icons on the card on top of the pile determines the maximum number of cards a player may hold at the beginning of his turn - this restriction is only active on the top card on the goods pile; another reason for a player to look twice what sort of card he will play last! If a player has more cards than he may hold, he discards those face down on a separate ‘pirates’ pile. At the end of the game every card in this pile scores one minus point. Every card can have up to four icons that also affect a player’s abilities. A played card could depict a pirate. For these, blind cards must be drawn from the stock pile and discarded on the ‘pirates’ pile.

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New handcards can be gained by playing a card with a market on it; for one played card with a market the player may draw 1 card, for two 3, and for three and more the maximum of 6 cards. To get new cards, a player can also buy one or more but he has to pay 3 points for every bought card. Players start with 11 points, and do not get very far during a long time in the game before they have played some cards with points and at last move a bit forward on the scoring track - and be able to buy more cards for points, going back on the track again!
Money (points) is earned by playing a card with coin icons. Trading with players to collect long series of goods will add to the earned points. For every time a player trades with an active player he gets a trading point; in a scoring phase the first three players will earn additional points for these.
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A player has to move his ship one space on the board for every played goods card that depicts a ship. The ship is small cube that travels from harbour to harbour along depicted sea routes. In these harbours players can collect counters that give privileges like being protected against pirates (so a player does not have to put cards on his pirates deck when playing cards with pirates), or taking extra money. When collecting a counter, the old one gets obsolete and is turned face down but still counts for scoring.
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