DVS Games

Melvia sighed as she looked out of a window atop the colony's defensive tower. She could see the colony center below, the forest beyond its clearing, and the new wood shop halfway between the two. Something felt funny, as it mattered not whether her Imperial colony was on a distant planet or a distant continent.

In any case, it had been several months since any new Imperial soldiers had arrived on the excuse of "monitoring" the colony workers. Perhaps within a year the colonist's work on a secret weapons center would be complete, and then before too long they could successfully revolt and have freedom! The Imperial soldiers were clearly intended to politely discourage a revolution but the colony she knew and worked so hard for would not remain subservient. The colony had even secretly begun hiring mercenaries for the eventual battle for independence.

In the meanwhile life was mostly routine. She and her fellow colonists harvested resources, built more buildings for their colony, paid taxes, accepted the trickle of immigrants, and dreamed about freedom. Admittedly freedom would be much of the same routine except for the taxes, but that was still worth dreaming about.

She had heard that a new group of immigrants was on its way. More immigrants came after the colony had improved its housing, adding more elegance with wood paneling and better furniture and expanding the kitchens to be decent instead of merely functional. Some day the colony would have grown enough to allow its workers more free time. At that time they would be able to afford to build and use a community center. Then immigration would really improve. But until then the colony gratefully accepted what new hands did come its way.

Grannel had also become quite a big help lately. He had recently received some special training as a lumberjack which enabled them to harvest wood more quickly. If only such training would be offered more often, and to more of them.

At least wood had been doing well in the market for three years straight. The westward colony center produced mostly precious metal, whose market price had recently crashed. Unless something helped them a lack of food would soon lead to emigration from that colony.

The past few months had been especially bountiful, for several lairs of an exotic winged rodent had been discovered in the mountains. These had been fetching a high price, highly demanded by some of the Imperial zoos. That extra income had helped fund the new wood shop. Hopefully the supply of those exotic creatures would remain.

The defensive shadow's tower had slowly progressed as Melvia had rested with her thoughts. She noticed its new position and, with another sigh, left her respite to return to work.

Markets and Mercenaries is a simple and quick board game that combines the interesting features of many more primitive "build a colony" computer and board games (resources, buildings, market economics, special events) while excluding features that tend to slow such a game down (exploration, territorial expansion, conquest). The game uses a Monopoly-like path around the board's outer edge allow random events in a way that carefully prohibits luck from overriding strategy.

Players use wise resource management and strategic construction of new buildings to expand their colony. Resources are not only traded among players but bought and sold with the Empire in a market with varying (and manipulatable) prices. The colonies also build up military strength to use at the conclusion of the game when the colonies jointly declare independence and the Empire responds with an invading army.