The Guild of Merchant Explorers Review: It Feels Like a Roll and Write… But... Without the Writing!
An Early Impressions review of The Guild of Merchant Explorers by wakasm — based on 1 play
I had fun with Guild of Merchant Explorers. I want to lead with that because most of what I’m about to say lands somewhere between “good, not great” and “I liked it, I just wanted more,” and I don’t want that to read as more negative than it actually feels. This is a game I enjoyed playing. I think it’s a well-designed piece of work. It’s just not a game I’m itching to play every weekend, at the time of this writing I’ve only played it once solo (I’m trying to get my website up to parity with the hundreds of games I’ve played) and I think that’s worth being honest about up front rather than burying halfway through an early preview or quick fire review.
The weird thing about this one is that I kind of respect the foundation more than I love the full experience. I finished my first game, thought about it, and almost immediately started imagining a heavier, bigger version of the same concept, especially the era wiping mechanic. That’s a compliment to the design. Good bones, a bit too quick, a bit too tight, and a little more of a flip-and-write in board game clothing than I expected when I first sat down with it.
My mixed feelings are weird because I generally love roll/flip and writes as well.
What is Guild of Merchant Explorers?
Guild of Merchant Explorers is a flip-and-fill exploration game from designers Matthew Dunstan and Brett J. Gilbert, published by AEG. You play a merchant guild charting the kingdom of Tigomé, flipping terrain cards each turn and placing cubes on your personal map board to map out that terrain, connect cities, reach discovery towers, and complete objectives. The game plays across multiple eras, and between each one the board wipes so you start the next era with a fresh slate while certain permanent elements and unlocked scoring goals carry forward. The structure borrows the feel of a flip-and-write, but the cubes, boards, and shared objective cards give it a heavier physical presence than that category usually has.
Key details to know:
- 1-4 players, roughly 45-60 minutes per game
- Flip-and-fill exploration using cubes placed on a double-sided map board
- Multiple eras per game, with the board wiping between them
- Objective cards drive most of the scoring and game-to-game variety
- Four different maps in the base game, each with their own twists and adjustable difficulty
- Fully playable solo with built-in difficulty options
- Villages are a core base-game mechanic: fully exploring a region reveals a permanent village that carries forward between eras and acts as a new launch point for future exploration
- The Queen’s Special Orders expansion adds two new maps, 12 goal cards (6 per map), and introduces island tokens and island boards for the new Xawskil map with it’s own mechanics. (I own this, I haven’t played it yet).
What I like about Guild of Merchant Explorers
Wiping the board every era is the best part of the loop
The era reset, where the board clears between eras but you keep certain structural progress, is the thing that keeps this from feeling like a linear map-filling exercise. Each era gives you a fresh start while still rewarding what you accomplished in the last one, and that rhythm is what I think the game does best.
I love games that use this kind of structure. You start somewhere small, you see a goal that feels impossible in the early game… and then by the end you’ve built up enough tools or footholds to actually chase it. The village system here is a very streamlined version of that, and it works really well inside this specific game. I’d love to see a heavier, crunchier game or even an RPG take advantage of this exact concept, because the core idea seems greatfor something bigger than what this game is using them for. That’s not a knock on this game, it’s just that the idea is strong enough that I keep wanting more of it.
The village system gives each run a memory
The village system is honestly the thing that elevates this game for me and I guess is directly related to the era reset system. For anyone who hasn’t played it, villages get placed when you fully explore a region, and those markers stick around between eras as new launch points for future exploration. You’re essentially seeding your own progress, and by the second half of the game you’re pushing into parts of the map you had no real hope of reaching on era one.
The maps, powers, and difficulty options give it real replay value
Between the four base maps, the different powers you can earn during a game, and the built-in difficulty settings, there’s a lot of room to keep coming back. Every map plays a little differently, and because the objective cards shuffle each game, no two runs feel quite the same. I’ll also say it, because I always say it about solo games: I really appreciate that this one actually has difficulty options. If you’re designing a solo or cooperative experience, some kind of granular difficulty or way to escalate as you play is just worth doing, and this one handles it well. Winning on hard feels possible but genuinely difficult, which is the exact spot you want to hit.
I will say this likely 200 times but I do think replay-ability can be a little overrated as a purchasing decision, but when it exists, it’s a great thing to have. For solo, you can play through the maps and difficulty and be done, but I don’t know how many sessions that would take. I’m generally ok with 5-10 plays of a game over it’s life on my shelf but more is always better but not a must for me.
You don’t have to count cards to play well
One minor design choice I really appreciated is that the game gives you all the information you need, so you’re not sitting there trying to track which cards have come out or keeping a mental tally of what’s left in the deck. I know some players actually enjoy card counting (I do too sometimes when I remember to do it), and for them I can see this being a negative. For me it’s a win. It lets me focus on the actual strategy of the turn in front of me rather than spending half my brain on bookkeeping, and I think it’s the right call for a game that already has a lot of fiddly physical state to manage.
Solo has winnable conditions (which is something I always enjoy)
While it’s sort of a glorified beat your own score… you do have to successfully complete all the goals in the game AND then beat certain scores to win at easy/normal/hard. I love games where I don’t have to preset the difficulty upfront (when possible, I understand this doesn’t work for all games) so that if I play and get a really high score, it counts for winning on Easy/Normal/Hard and I don’t have to replay each difficulty one by one to eventually get there. This gives me a checklist of things to do (which I probably included somewhere on this page.
What I don’t like about Guild of Merchant Explorers
The components are a (tiny bit) fiddly and the art is surprisingly muted
The physical experience of playing this game is honestly its biggest weakness. There are a lot of small cubes and tokens, and it’s really easy to accidentally knock them around when you’re placing new pieces or adjusting the board. This could very well be a me problem.
I kept wishing the boards had recessed spots for the cubes to sit in, but I also understand why they don’t because of how it’s designed. Adding that kind of tray detail would have driven the cost up, and I don’t know how you’d do it practically anyway since all the maps are unique, etc. Maybe a magnetic board. However, it’s mostly annoying when you have to remove all the cubes between eras.
The art is a separate but related issue. It’s pretty, in a soft and illustrated kind of way, but all the colors are weirdly muted, and I found it legitimately hard to capture the game on camera. That’s also a me-specific problem, sure. But even just at the table the board can feel washed out. I don’t know if that’s a deliberate stylistic choice or just how it landed in print. Either way, the game’s presentation is the one area where it doesn’t match the quality of what’s actually happening mechanically. Same with the coins in the game.
It feels like a flip-and-write wearing a board game costume
I keep coming back to this one. Guild of Merchant Explorers feels like a flip-and-write, or a roll-and-write, where somebody decided to swap the pencil out for cubes and call it a board game.
On one hand… I get why they did it. Having a physical table presence makes it a nicer thing to set up and play with other people, and the cube removal that tracks your progress in an era probably wouldn’t translate cleanly to a written format. So I understand the choice.
On the other hand… I just also think the price reflects the board game version of this idea, while the actual experience of playing it feels closer to the flip-and-write tier. If this is your first flip-and-write style game, it’ll probably feel worth it. If you already have a few of these in your collection, I think the value proposition gets shakier pretty fast.
You can’t always play the strategy you wanted
One thing that bugged me across my plays is how often I felt pushed into a strategy I wasn’t actually trying to go for. I’d sit down wanting to chase, say, all the discovery towers, and then the terrain flips would just not cooperate, or my turns would get unexpectedly tight and I’d have to abandon what I was aiming for. On one hand, this is kind of the point of the game. It forces you to adapt tactically, and adapting on the fly can (sometimes) be genuinely fun in a game like this. On the other hand, there were moments where it crossed over from “interesting constraint” to “the game is just telling me what to do.”
I don’t know if it’s the randomness of the flips or the tightness of the resource economy that’s the bigger culprit. I just know the feeling was there often enough that it’s worth calling out. Maybe this is just me, and maybe with more plays I’d learn to ride it better or focus on strategy better. But as a first impression, it stuck with me.
The game ends right when I want more
This is related to the era point, but it deserves its own mention. The game is short, it’s tight, and it wraps up quickly. That’s not inherently a problem. Plenty of my favorite shorter games get in and out without overstaying their welcome. But for whatever reason, this one ends in a place where I feel like I’m still building up to the good part. The village system and the era structure both feel like they could carry one or two more rounds of gameplay, and the board could have been a little bigger to match. I don’t think the game is too short on paper. It just feels short given what it’s trying to do and considering the main mechanic, I just sort of want more, or at least, I think I do.
Multiplayer might just be solitaire at the same table
I haven’t played this one in a group yet, so this is a suspicion more than a verdict. But as far as I can tell from the solo rules, there’s very little ability to block, interact with, or disrupt other players. Everyone’s basically working on their own map at their own pace, and scoring is tracked independently. If you’re fine with multiplayer solitaire, this is a non-issue and maybe even a positive, because there’s no downtime penalty for slower players. But if you like your multiplayer games to have meaningful interaction between opponents, this one probably isn’t going to scratch that itch, and you should know that going in. I guess you can hate draft powers, maybe?
Final Thoughts about Guild of Merchant Explorers
Guild of Merchant Explorers is a decent game.It’s fun, it’s got a clean loop, the village system adds real growth across eras, and the foundation is strong enough that I kept wanting the game to be heavier than it is. But it’s also a little fiddly, a little washed out, closer to a flip-and-write than its price suggests, and prone to hijacking your strategy in ways that can either feel like a fun challenge or a small betrayal depending on the run.
For me, it landed in the “I enjoyed it, I’d play it again if someone brought it out, but I’m not reaching for it on a free weekend” zone. But then again, the idea of beating all the difficulties on each map solo appeals to me…
If you’re newer to this kind of flip-and-fill exploration game, I think there’s a very good chance you’ll like this one more than I did, and that’s not me hedging. The value proposition is genuinely different for someone without a shelf of similar games. For everyone else, mileage may vary, and whether this earns a permanent table slot probably comes down to how much the tight runtime and the multiplayer-solitaire feel end up bothering you in practice. I respect it more than I love it. That’s not a bad place to land. It’s just the place I landed.
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$29.00
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AEG The Guild of Merchant Explorers Board Game Exploration 1+ 10+
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$20.00
Used
The Guild of Merchant Explorers board game, complete, excellent condition
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$25.00
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The Guild of Merchant Explorers Board Game 2022 AEG Games Factory Sealed
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