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Castle Merchants

#18127BGG ↗

2005 · 2-4 players · 45min · weight 1.92 · 369 ratings

v2 v3 v4 wide v4 deep

BGG raw

ID
18127
Name
Castle Merchants
Year
2005
Rank
16442
Min players
2
Max players
4
Playing time
45
Min playtime
45
Max playtime
45
Avg weight
1.92
Num weights
50
Bayes avg
5.53057
Average
5.74903
Users rated
369
Num owned
725
Wanting
10
Wishing
53
Num comments
219
Fetched at
Wed Apr 29 2026 05:34:57 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
Mechanisms (3)
Hand ManagementPick-up and DeliverTile Placement
Categories (1)
Transportation
Description (1265 chars)

Castle Merchants is a tile laying, hand management, pick up & deliver game. You play the role of a merchant peddling his wares to various castles in the land. Since all the merchants are offering the same wares for sale, the merchant who is able to reach a castle first can receive a higher price than those visiting in later turns. You must manage your hand of path cards that you use to place paths onto the board, or to traverse the paths themselves. You may play any number of cards on your turn, but must be careful as you can only replenish your hand with a certain amount of cards regardless of how many you played. Whether or not you want to reduce your hand size to push on farther and beat your competition to a castle is just one of the decisions you'll find yourself making every turn. Merchants must build paths wisely, for if you can't fully make use of the tiles you play, there is a chance that a competing merchant might be able to speed past you on the path and make his delivery to the castle first. Merchants must also be wary of possible rock slides that can make a path impassable and force them to have to change their plans and find a way around the obstruction. The first merchant to accumulate 18 pieces of gold is declared the winner.

LLM v2 (wide)

Not yet enriched at v2 (wide pass).

LLM v3 (deep)

Not yet enriched at v3 (deep pass).

LLM v4 wide (controlled-vocab primitives)

Not yet enriched at v4 (wide pass).

LLM v4 deep (archetype fit)

Not in the v4 deep-pass top-20% slice.