Century: Eastern Wonders - Sand to Sea

Plays: 3Px1.

Century: Eastern Wonders is the second game in the Century series, after Century: Spice Road. They are independent games, but can also be combined into a different game, called Sand to Sea. Later when the third game in the series Century: New World is released, it too can be combined with the earlier games to create new games. I have only played Sand to Sea and not Century: Eastern Wonders by itself. So this post will just be about the combo game and not the individual one.

The Game

When setting up the map for Sand to Sea, tiles are drawn randomly. Some spaces will have no island.

The full setup looks like this. Sand to Sea does not use all the components from Spice Road and Eastern Wonders. It uses a subset from both. On the right are the merchant cards from Spice Road. You have a row of four for players to pick from. The map tiles in the middle are from Eastern Wonders. The spices (cubes) on the left can be from either game. Spices are your resources. The game is about collecting spices and upgrading them, and eventually trading specific sets of them to fulfill contracts, which have point values. Once a player fulfills his fourth contract, the game ends. Highest scorer wins.

Taking a merchant card from the card row is one of the four actions you can do on your turn. The second one is simply playing a merchant card. When you play a card, you put it on the left side of your player board. Cards have 3 types of abilities. Some let you collect spices. Some let you upgrade spices to other more valuable types. Some let you convert specific sets of spices to other specific sets. The rightmost section of your player board is your storage area, and it holds up to 10 spices. In this photo you see some facedown cards on the right side of the player board. This is related to the third action type - sailing. Every player has a ship on the board. Your third action type is to sail. You get to perform the action allowed by your destination. For each step you sail, you must either move a card from the left side of your player board to the right, or play a card directly from your hand to the right side of your player board. Ideally you want to use your cards twice - firstly for the ability of the card itself, and secondly for sailing. Once a card is on the right side of your player board, it is of no use to you temporarily. You need to take the fourth action - the reset. When you reset (it's called "rest" in the game), you bring all cards back into your hand. You won't do anything else that turn. You'll start all over again next turn.

Everyone has a ship on the board. They don't block movement, but if you do sail to a spot where others are present, you need to pay them a fee (of one spice). So ships do hinder movement somewhat. Islands simply let you convert a set of spices to another, just like merchant cards. You need to have built a trading post on an island in order to use its power. If you are first to build, it's free. Otherwise it'll cost spices. In this photo, the pink and white players have built trading posts.

On the player board, the trading posts are arranged in a 4x4 grid. 4 rows and 4 columns. When you build a trading post on the map and need to take one piece from your player board, you need to check the island type, which is in one of the four spice colours matching the four rows on your board. Also you always take the leftmost piece from the row. The first trading post you build from a row is only worth 1VP, but subsequent ones are worth more. This entices you to build trading posts on islands of the same type. Now if you look at the icons along the top, these are bonuses you get when you complete columns. If you build all four trading posts in the first column, i.e. at four different island types, you gain a merchant card. For columns 2 to 4, you get to choose between a bonus tile and a merchant card. So you are torn in two directions - do you go for rows or columns? Or neither? You also need to consider whether the islands are useful to you in the first place. Sometimes it may not be worthwhile to build only for the sake of completing a row or a column.

There are three types of bonus tiles. From left: (1) Storage expansion, increasing your capacity by 3. (2) Victory points. (3) One free move when sailing. In the game we played, none of us managed to get any bonus tile. I think it's very difficult to do because you need to complete your second column to get a bonus tile. Also in the game we played, I went for speed, forcing the game to end quickly. This made it even more difficult for anyone to complete the second column.

Let me shift one row of trading posts out of the way, so that you can see the point values for each position within the same row. A total of 8VP is attractive.

On the right, the tile with the big 15 on it is a contract. If you sail here and you have 3 brown spice and 1 green spice, you may trade the spice for this contract worth 15VP. Contracts are the biggest source of VP. They appear at the harbours in the four corners of the map. When a contract is fulfilled, another will be drawn to take its place.

One contract shuffled near the top of the draw deck is this out-of-service tile with a big red cross. If you draw this tile, the harbour where a contract has just been fulfilled is now temporarily closed. You need to go elsewhere to fulfill contracts. The next time a contract is fulfilled, that other harbour will close, while this one will reopen for business. Once this out-of-service tile appears, there will only be 3 active harbours at any one time.

The Play

I played with Ivan and Tim, and we were all new to Sand to Sea, although not new to the Century series. Sand to Sea has the same style as Spice Road. On your turn you only do one simple thing. You have only four options. The flow is straightforward. You collect spices, you upgrade them, you turn them into other spices, and eventually you trade them in for contracts which are worth VP. Merchant cards and trading posts on islands are your tools. You need to build up your tool repertoire as you go, but they are mostly a means to an end. You need to decide how much effort to spend on improving your toolset and how much to spend on actually scoring points. The row and column consideration when building trading posts is a side quest. If the scores from contracts are close, then this aspect may become the game decider. Player interaction is in the form of grabbing merchant cards, racing to fulfill contracts, grabbing spots for trading posts, and hindering ship movement.

I went for speed. I just wanted to get the right spices quickly and then go grab the contracts. I didn't bother much with completing rows or columns on my player board. In the area where my ship started, there were a few islands which synergised well, so I only built a few trading posts in this area. I did need to take some merchant cards. They synergised well with my trading posts too. I operated with very few trading posts, and not that many merchant cards either.

I played white, and you can see my board presence was minimal. Ivan was pink, and Tim black. Tim was most aggressive and systematic in building trading posts. He had trading posts on all four yellow islands. He also had a full set of islands in four colours. So he had both a complete row and a complete column.

You do need to race for the contracts. At one point I forgot to watch what spices others were collecting, and one contract which I was working towards was fulfilled by Ivan ahead of me. Luckily for me the next contract matched the spices I had pretty well. I only needed a little effort to get to the right combination. I was quite lucky in that my merchant cards and trading posts synergised well. That meant good efficiency. I was the only one who managed four contracts when the game ended. My trading posts did not score me many points, but my contracts were high valued and that secured the win for me.

The Thoughts

Sand to Sea is a medium (or low-medium) complexity strategy game. It is brisk. The key is putting together an effective set of merchant cards and trading posts. They are your engine to help you gain spices and upgrade spices. Compared to Spice Road, now you have a spatial aspect. You need to think about which islands you want to use, and you need to think about movement on the map. The game naturally becomes more complex. There are more moving parts. However the pace is still quick. Your actions are simple.

One thing which Sand to Sea and Spice Road have in common is the game ends quicker than you expect. It is easy to think you have time to build your perfect little engine. You don't. While building your engine, you are also racing and grabbing points. I find this tantalising. You feel you want just a bit more time to refine your engine. You need to remind yourself you don't have that kind of luxury. The other feeling I have when playing the game is many things I want to achieve require many small steps to complete. I need to think a few step ahead, and I need to wait round after round for my turn to come to execute the next small step to realise my plan. That feeling of anticipation is wonderful. I can't wait to get to my next turn. This may be why the game moves so briskly.