“Before the Wind” is a nautical merchant supply game for multi-mast sailing ships of the 1800′s (Napoleonic/Hornblower era). Your aim is to supply trading goods to as many ships as possible before the fleet sails with the changing wind. Collect money and sale goods like silk, spices, apples and cheese. Pay money (in Guilders) to have them moved from your hand into storage at your warehouse. Collect a “load the ship” card to move the required sale goods (pictured on each ship card) from warehouse to ship. Ships fully supplied by you means points for your coffers!
At the start of each hand, barter with your fellow merchant suppliers for “action” cards. Guilders are offered, and the card owner accepts the bid, or pays the merchant off the same price to keep the card in their hand. Then each player completes one action per turn:
- Collect Goods
- Warehouse the silk, spices, apples & cheese, or
- Collect money or Load the ship.
The obstacles to overcome include:
- Players choose the “action” cards. If you need the shipping card, for instance, your opponent and other players may decide to lock you out by not choosing that card during the round.
- Each player can only complete 1 action per turn (1-3 above). This can be hard when you need everything.
- Stock the ships (collect points) before your competitors, or risk “spoiled inventory”: all goods in your hand are lost and part of your warehouse inventory.
- Beware of supplying too many ships at once while having a handful of “sale goods” cards (where all goods cards are lost). You may inflict your own “spoilage” by sending the fleet away under “full canvas.”
The Look:
The cards are richly illustrated in full color in two sizes: full sized large and small ships, and half sized cards for all others. The half sized cards are a little hard to shuffle, but seem fine in hand. This game is compact enough to play over coffee in a cafe, but wouldn’t be easy to keep in organized stacks with a young child nearby.
This is a challenging game requiring a player to keep the next goal clearly in mind during changing card conditions and multiple rounds, while evaluating all new cards that appear for better opportunities and a change in the next goal. Required about 30 minutes to set up and learn the first time, about 15 minutes more to become familiar with the game play each round. I was a little confused at first by taking “collect goods” action cards, and not collecting them right then. Also a little confounded by the order of turns and actions, and keeping the next of multiple steps in my mind. However, it was late, and the end of the week. The game play order at least would surely be no problem next time.
This game rewards skillful moves and strategy, with less emphasis on chance than other games. This would be a perfect game for people already fond of long, intricate games, and thrive on long-range planning and detail. (Read: D&D fans, engineers, computer programmers, Carcassone fans (another supply game), and military strategy games) However, playing the game only took about 1 1/2 hours, and that with a first-time learning curve. I look forward to playing it again, now that I know the game play.
