Flashback Friday - Merchant of Venus
Love it or hate it? Do you still play it?
Merchant of Venus is considered by many to be Richard Hamblen's masterpeice. It was originally designed on commission for Mccormick Spices as a spice trading game. Mccormick rejected the design as too complex. So Avalon Hill rethemed the game and published it in 1988 as Merchant of Venus; setting it in an unexplored part of the galaxy during a reawakening of galactic civilization with players moving around the board as traders discovering long-forgotten pockets of civilization and buying and selling goods.
After it went out of print, it became a holy grail game for many boardgamers, with people creating their own homemade copies of the game. One of the obstacles to getting it reprinted was that its designer, Richard Hamblen, had become a bit of a recluse and had disappered off the grid. Additionally, who owned the rights and trademark to Merchant of Venus was unclear. On October 24, 2011, in an amazing turn of events, two publishers, Stronghold and Fantasy Flight, both announced that they were reprinting the game. Stronghold had found Richard Hamblen and had reached an agreement with him to reprint the game. However, Fantasy Flight Games announced later that same day that they had acquired the right to republish the game from Hasbro, which Hasbro had acquired through their purchase of Avalon Hill. It was then discoverd that the trademark wasn't registered. Hasbro quickly registered it the next day. Eventually Stronghold and Fantasy Flight Games came to an agreement, and Fantasy Flight Games printed a new edition of Merchant of Venus which included both the original rules, and thier own updated version of the rules.
But was all this fuss and bother worth it? Does a game designed in 1988 still hold up today? Were Fantasy Flight's new rules an improvement?
What do you think? Let us know here. Also consider rating and reviewing Merchant of Venus in its listing in our Board Game Directory. There you can also find all the other articles and reviews we have about Merchant Venus.
It was originally designed on commission for Mccormick Spices as a spice trading game. Mccormick rejected the design as too complex. So Avalon Hill rethemed the game and published it in 1988 as Merchant of Venus
Welcome to Bal-more hon!
This game is a pleasure to play every time. The way some products become more valuable over time and then devalue once they become available . . . really shows what can be done with cardboard if you take your time and design carefully, and then put the time in to refine the concepts.
We have a Merchant of Venus night at our May Gaming Getaway every year, so I'm due to play this coming weekend. Very much looking forward to it.
lj1983 wrote: I really enjoy Merchants. another game I've re-acquired, this time after trading it to Sag. I've yet to play the "new" version from FFG, the classic has just the right mix of randomness and planning.
Thank you for the Plano box by the way.
ubarose wrote: I find the original Avalon Hill version to be more functional and easier to play. The FFG version is prettier, but after playing it, I decided that the changes they made to the components made the game even more fiddly.
I thought Fiddly was one of the Fs in FFG.
Seriously, they always do that. Rare is the FFG game that isn't full of a million tiny bits that need to be configured just so. It's the worst with their reprints because you know it could have been better, like in this case.
...from what I've seen anyway. I haven't gotten to play MoV. It seems like the kind of thing I'd enjoy. Maybe someday.
The FFG reprint of those rules was great. FFG's own "version" was some bloated, over-worked, over-long, Elite-on-a-board garbage.
Much as I enjoyed the AH rules, this is one I did sell on eventually. It ran just a bit too long for what it was, and didn't see regular play.
I haven't ever tried the new FFG rules, and I don't think I ever need to. The original rules are perfect, and the FFG changes look universally bad.
There is not better pick up and deliver game. It’s better than Firefly, Xia, Merchants and Marauders, all of them. Those games have come and gone, but MoV remains, even out of print again.
The FFG rules are the typical overwrought miss-the-mark bullshit with stupid details and fiddlefuck crap that the game got by fine without. But this reprint came at PEAK Fantasy Flight, and that was frankly a pretty terrible time for their designs and remakes. It was almost like Mr. Petersen would call a production meeting and present a PPT with details about how to fuck up a reprint with unasked for shit. Had FFG released it without the classic game in the box, it would have been a total fiasco. Thank god the Stronghold thing happened and the outcome was that the original game stayed.
Agreed that the original AH rules are much better than the bloated FFG nonsense.
One day I get a message from my brother, KingPut, that he found a copy at an estate sale for a sweet price, but it is missing a few chits. He wants to know if I want it. I ask him if it is in better condition than my copy. He replies, “Every copy is in better condition than your copy.”
This is sort of the design space where the FFG redesign dwells, and I don't think it's all bad. I feel like it does ship customization much stronger, and there's definitely more of a feeling of a full on lived-in universe. Its main issue is that it's just too darn long, at least a good hour per player if you are rushing through it. It has its charms, but it's not polished enough to really come off well against the other more complex games I mentioned earlier.
But the original is still great. I play it with some regularity, and I'd probably put it in my top ten. I like the FFG edition quite a bit, in the sense that it's the graphical version I'm most accustomed to.
As for the game itself, I like it and I've only ever owned the FFG version, but I sold it years ago because it wasn't getting played and I needed the cash. I'm not sure if I'd try to get it back at this point, since I have M&M (because pirates) and Firefly (because Firefly.) Still a great game, though.