Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Hermagor is not a game that would be easily noticed. The packaging is not attractive with its' muted brown background and nondescript cartoon castle on the cover. Even the picture of the game on the back of the box is not very attractive. And lastly, the gameboard itself is very intimidating. The map looks unorganized, and the imposition of the market place and price grids make it look like a wargame from Avalon Hill's worst nightmare (without the hexes), and gives the impression that the game is more difficult than it really is.
My son and I would have probably passed this game over without a second glance had it not been for the shop owner quizzing us about the likes and level of our gaming group. He recommended this game highly, and we took his advice. He was right! The game is a wonderful gem that touches heavily on strategy, with just a tinge of luck. And although the mechanics are radically different than Railroad Tycoon, my overall impression is that the game is kind of a medieval version of that game, with the movement and financial aspects being very familiar. (Railroad Tycoon is my absolute favorite game, so I don't have to tell you how I feel about THIS game (but I will)).
The components are sturdy, if unspectacular. The game board really could have been designed better. Novice players may have trouble keeping track of regions and dukedoms, and the pictures of the product that can be sold in each village is quite small. The red numbers (used at the end of the game) on the production chart are somewhat difficult to see. On the other hand, having all of this on one gameboard is very convenient.
The product and action tiles are sturdy and easy to read. The house-shaped trade stations and flat production disks are all durable wooden pieces, and easy to handle, although the cylindrical pawns that act as buyers and sellers roll too freely if knocked over (having a flat side to them would have helped). The rules apparently suffered in a few spots when translated into English, but careful reading of them does describe the game very accurately, and the examples they use really help a lot. Overall, they're pretty understandable.
The turns are divided into three phases. In phase 1, product tiles are drawn from a cloth bag and placed in the marketplace area. This is the only time luck seems to enter the game. Since there are more tiles than spaces in the marketplace (especially in a 3-player game), you're never sure which tiles will be drawn. There are three types of tiles. A single-product tile has one product on it, and allows the person who gets it to raise the price of that good. A dual-product tile shows two products that you can sell, but doesn't give you the power to raise a price. There are also special tiles that give you a particular benefit.
Strategy takes over as you place your four buyers in areas of the marketplace to purchase the goods that you want at the lowest possible cost. Each placement costs between 2 and 5 cash, so placing the four buyers can cost you as little as 8 cash or as much as 20. A tile called the `action tile' is then turned over to determine how many actions players may take in phase 3.
Phase two begins with the distribution of the product tiles with each tile going to the player who had the most buyers surrounding it. If two or more people have the same number of buyers around a tile, there are a few tie-breaker steps to go through. Any unresolved ties means that the tile does not get distributed. Once the tiles have been distributed comes the `marketplace buzz', which awards cash to the buyers in the market. How much you gain depends on where your buyers are placed.
Phase three consists of having your merchant go out to the villages sell the goods that you just acquired. There are three possible actions: Move and sell, move only, and sell only. Using roads cost money (tolls), so ideally you'll want to sell as many goods as possible in as short a distance as possible. Each village will only buy one specific type of goods, so the more products that you get from the market, the greater your options are here. If you've done well in the marketplace, you may be able to sell many products with minimal traveling costs. You can cut the cost of tolls in half by moving and selling on different turns, but that also gives you one less chance to sell an item. Once you sell in a village, a trade station is placed on a village and you may not sell there again.
But there is also a strategy to selling. The roads upon which the villages are located serve to subdivide the map into regions. Once you have a trade station on all villages in a section, you may place a production disk on the price chart located on the board. This will give you an immediate bonus payment as well as a final payment at the end of the game. The board is also divided by rivers into three `dukedoms', which serve no purpose until the end of the game. I think it's sufficient to say that players should try to distribute their selling to include all three dukedoms
The game ends when there are no action tiles left to turn. At that point, the final income is calculated in three stages:
-Each player gets a bonus payment for each row on the production chart that he has a production disk on.
-The number of trade stations in the dukedom where you did the LEAST selling is multiplied by three, and you receive a cash bonus of that amount.
-The person(s) with the most trade stations on the main road receives 5 cash. The person(s) with the fewest trade stations must pay 5 cash to the bank.
The cash-on-hand is then counted up and the player with the most money wins. While this 3-step process sounds like a daunting task, it is much easier to do with the game board in front of you than it is to capture it in words here.
So, there's really a lot going on here...how well does it all fit together? Actually, it works quite well. The game possesses a nice balance between what happens at the marketplace and on the selling map. The strategy is somewhat circular - buying products at the market, implement a strategy to sell them, and coming back to the market with a new strategy to buy different products and sell them, etc. A lot of the cash transactions are small, and the strategies are subtle, so a few bad decisions can make or break you. And while not dependent on outright `luck', there is enough randomness to keep each game fresh.
The game is not without fault, though. Because prices usually inflate, but the costs for placing buyers and traveling roads do not, a poor performance in the marketplace, especially in the first round, can be devastating. Being the LAST player to place buyers in the marketplace has a built-in advantage. And the person who obtains the lowest numbered tile gets to choose who will be the first player for the next turn. It's possible for an astute player to control the order for the entire game unless a house rule is instituted not allowing the same player to be the first player for two successive turns (which, in turn, means that the same player will not be the LAST player on two successive terms!)
Overall, this game features a fairly unique balance of the disparate features of buying and selling. It's easy to recognize the importance of what happens in the marketplace, but you must be just as diligent when selling if you want to turn a decent profit. To set the game in a fictitious medieval land really adds a certain flair to it that would be missing if this were set in a modern day rural land. (On the flip side, I could probably relate more to selling wheat than to selling rare dragoin eggs). After one play, this game is already one of my favorites. It certainly has many good points and plays pretty effortlessly once everything is set up. It may never be the next `Settlers', but it is a fine game that deserves MUCH more recognition than it has received - it's much better, in fact, than many games that are far more popular.
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In a distant land, many and many years ago, rose a big and wealthy city: its name, now forgotten by most, was Hermagor. Commerce was the source of its richness, because from all its territory countrymen, artisans and also adventurers brought to the city every kind of merchandise: weapons, ancient books, precious relics, and rare dragon eggs. In this city, you can buy and exchange everything. This made Hermagor famous and merchants came from afar to buy and sell all kinds of goods at the market. Some even undertook perilous adventures to acquire especially rare items. They criss-crossed this wealthy region, creating new paths and roads, adding markets to towns, but always with the aim to become the richest!
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