Preview copy provided by the publisher, Allplay. Note that this is a prototype — artwork is near final, components are not final, final production quality will be even better!
2025 is here, and Reiner Knizia is back at it! …This time with publisher Allplay. Yet those who are familiar with Knizia know that we here at Bitewing Games also get along with him quite well. Take one glance at our 2025 release schedule and that’s all the information you need, haha. But why is that?
Why does Knizia seem to have so many new and updated games releasing each year? Is it simply name recognition? Are publishers drawn to the name “Knizia” like moths to a flame? It’s is just because they need to fill their project schedule, and classic out-of-print Knizia Games are easy shoe-ins? Or is there something truly magical about Knizia’s dusty old games compared to other options? The answer is probably a mixture of all those reasons, and the ratio of reasons definitely varies by publisher.
Personally, I love to find those fixer-uppers in Knizia’s catalogue. When one of the most experienced and brilliant game designers has been cranking out hundreds of ideas for decades, there are bound to be hidden gems that fall by the wayside. Some concepts have an intriguing premise, but don’t quite hit the spot with their initial version. Others only get an obscure version sold in a distant corner of the world. Many more have stumbled out of the gates with a poor production or unappealing artwork. There’s a reason I’ve now played over 200 of Reiner’s best designs — I’m hunting for untapped potential.
Reprinting a stone-cold classic like Tigris & Euphrates is easy (well… it should be easy). Just don’t mess up the artwork and production, and it’ll sell itself. While I love such games, I’m less enthused about printing a new version of them. I got into publishing because of the creative and adventurous challenge of bringing a game to life and making it a success. Games like Tigris & Euphrates are already a major success, they just need somebody to keep them in print. On the other hand, injecting new life into 2000’s Merchants of Amsterdam and making that a success in the modern board game industry? Now there’s a proper challenge. But Bitewing wasn’t the publisher who chose to take a crack at it… instead it was Allplay.
Yet, the masses were not exactly clamoring for a new version of Merchants of Amsterdam. This game neither looked remarkable nor provided a notable experience outside of the Dutch auction clock. As the developer himself (Robert Hovakimyan) noted in his publisher diary: “Everything [surrounding the core mechanism] felt a bit dated. The game consisted of 3 flavors of area-majority: Vanilla, French Vanilla, and Vanilla Bean.” So why even bother trying to resurrect this design? The answer lies within the central idea of the game. On their turn, the player decides which card to discard, which to keep, and which to put up for a Dutch auction.
While there are thousands of auction games in existence, there are very few that utilize a Dutch auction. Out of the 125,600 games in its database, BoardGameGeek only lists 46 games that feature a Dutch auction. And most of those aren’t even true Dutch auctions. Here is the definition of Dutch auction provided by BGG:
“A simultaneous single-bid system in which the lot starts at a very high price, and then is gradually decreased by the auctioneer or other controlling mechanism, until someone agrees to claim the item at its current price, ending the auction. The first bidder to accept the current price is the winner, such that there are no ties. A Dutch Auction is sometimes also called a one-bid auction because of this feature that the first bid made is also the only bid in the auction.
“The purest implementation of this is Merchants of Amsterdam, which features a spring-load mechanism that gradually reduces the price until someone hits it, winning the bid.
“This category also includes the mechanism where items slide down a track, with the cost decreasing as it does so.”
Most of the 46 on the list fall into that latter category of a sliding market (Concordia, Pax Pamir, etc.). While this is a perfectly fine system for a card market, the thing that it misses out on is the real-time thrill of a countdown price. This is far and away the highlight of Merchants of Amsterdam for most fans — the rush of deciding when to smack the diminishing clock to secure the lot. It’s that temptation to bid early to secure the juicy reward for yourself clashing against your willpower to let the price drop down to a more reasonable level. Which kind of pain do you prefer: The regret of spending far too much on a measly action, or the regret of being too stingy with your money and not bidding just one dollar earlier so you could claim victory from your rivals? This is the beauty of Merchants of Amsterdam. This is why a crusty old Knizia game that is now 25 years old (80 years old, in board game years) deserves a second chance.
The only problem is that Merchants of Amsterdam hasn’t aged well. The physical clock is prone to breaking for many owners of the game. The game still tastes like three shades of vanilla, which is only more bland in contrast to the many wild and wacky area majority games and auction games that have been released in the ensuing decades. In order to be a modern success, this design clearly needed a full makeover. Enter Robert Hovakimyan.
Merchants of Andromeda passed through three different development teams over the course of many months before it finally found its sweet spot. It’s a fascinating story that I was fortunate enough to hear about during a development discussion with Joe from Allplay and designer Robert Hovakimyan. Lucky for you, we recorded the conversation if you’re interested in the thoughts and processes that go into board game development (especially for this title). I’ll spare you the details here, but suffice to say that Merchants of Andromeda has had an absolute roller coaster of a development journey. Fortunately, the result was absolutely worth the trouble. After two plays with a preview copy, Merchants of Andromeda is a strong candidate for one of my favorite releases of 2025. Of course there are many more releases that I’m excited to play this year, but this game has set the bar very high. This is a design that, finally, lives up to its full potential.
While Andromeda has of course kept the Dutch auction mechanism, the card committing concept, the basic idea of events, and a couple of the most interesting area majority ideas (the resource tracks and the Andromeda board), everything else has been fully redesigned by Robert Hovakimyan. The vanilla area majorities of Amsterdam have been wildly diversified into thrilling mini games of voting and space defense and planet exploration. The deck of cards has been honed to produce tough decisions and exciting opportunities. The events are now spicier and invite political table talk. Even Allplay has fixed the problem of an expensive and breakable auction clock…
We’ve been using a simple smartphone timer to countdown the current bid value where players can call out the current number to claim the lot (and if that is your preference, it’ll certainly work in the final version). But Allplay is developing an app where players hold their fingers on a central phone and the first person to remove their finger wins the auction at the current value. This also removes the unintended effect of the original clock where the game favored the player with the fastest limbs and everyone was at risk of getting smacked or scratched.
While the Dutch auctions of Andromeda are plenty thrilling, the entire game surrounding those auctions is now packed with drama as well. Take the defense board, for example. Here you grab the five dice, chuck ‘em, and decide how to split them up. The group of three dice will determine which enemy ships advance down their tracks — potentially gobbling up player tokens or entering within reach of your own counter attack (both are great options for you, as long as your opponents are taking the hit from the invaders). The group of two dice will determine where you add your tokens — this can often earn you resources or trophies or a lead on that column… all of which improve your standing. The invaders always move before you add your tokens, so this timing can matter a lot too. It’s common to hear players praying to the cosmic gods that a certain number does or does not get rolled any time a defense action is taken.
You’ll also get a lot of laughs and groans from the exploration board which has a very push-your-luck vibe. There are three planets plastered with hidden tiles that you can choose to explore. Pick any one tile and start flipping them face up one-by-one until you decide to stop or you find a curse (which forces you to stop). If you manage to conclude your exploration without stumbling upon a disastrous curse, then you may claim any two of the tiles that you revealed. Hitting a curse means that you get only one tile instead of two. Then all the unclaimed tiles are flipped face down again and players have to hope they remember where the seen traps and treasures are. Even if you are supremely unlucky and the first tile you flip is a curse, it’s not soul crushing (despite your neighbors’ cackling), because you get to keep flipping tiles until you find a non-curse to take.
Even the most “vanilla” of the boards have some compelling nuances to them. The Andromeda board consists of four sectors where players compete to have the largest cluster of tiles. The twist is that the sector with the most tiles will become the most valuable sector (I.e. score out the most points for first and second place players there). So while you want to pile more tiles in your best sector, you’ll also find yourself tempted to spread out into new sectors when your tile is next to a bridge. If you place your tile on both sides of the bridge, then you immediately earn three bonus dollars (and money is your score, baby!).
Meanwhile, the production board looks like your standard bundle of generic Eurogame resource tracks. But this one is far more interactive than what modern Eurogames tend to do with tracks. Each time you earn a resource, you advance up the matching track. If you are in first or second place on those tracks, then you’ll score points each time this board scores out. But here’s the real kicker: The track with the furthest player token will score the most points, the second furthest track will score less, and so on. Not only do you want to be ahead of your opponents on the same track, but you also want to be ahead of the leading players on other tracks.
Merchants of Andromeda isn’t just content to let you pick and choose your battles among all these interesting mini-game boards. It also asks you to manipulate the way these boards score out when their scoring does trigger (which happens three times per board per game). This manipulation of course comes from the Galactic Senate — those oily political snakes who keep meddling in your merchant business. On the senate board, you’ll see three charming vote boxes, each with a candidate card in front of it that randomly came out of the deck. During the game, you will resolve three elections. Each time a candidate wins, their policy enters play and affects players’ standings or scores. Usually, these candidates will boost the next scoring of a specific board. If Major Bang-Bang wins, then he’ll heavily incentivize attacking invaders. If Search McGee takes office, then you’ll score even more points for finding those precious relics on the exploration board. Other candidates support communism or socialism by tearing down the richest players or boosting up the resource-poor, respectively.
If these candidates randomly forced themselves upon you Merchants of Andromeda, then it would make the game feel too unfair and random. But this is a democracy, dang it, and thus you players will vote to influence government policies. By the time an election has closed, each player will have inserted three or more votes into one or more of the boxes. Certain action cards grant you bonus votes which can swing the election in your favor.
But we haven’t even talked about the action cards yet! What a treat these are. On your turn, you’ll draw one action card at a time and decide where to assign it: Discard, Keep, or Auction (in the final version of this game, these options will likely be retitled to the more intuitive “Resource, Action, Auction”). Once you commit a card to an option it is locked in… no changing your mind after you see the next card from the deck (this is much like Biblios, which is one of my favorite aspects of that classic game). Each card has two elements: an action on top and a resource on bottom. Whatever card you “discard” will grant you its resource. Whatever card you “keep” will grant you its action. And whatever card you “auction” will grant both the action and the resource to the winner of the auction (which could even be you, the active player). It’s always a thrill to take your turn and decide which resource to claim, which action to take, and which card to auction off. While you don’t earn the money from the auction (it goes back to the bank), it is vital to not give your opponents the chance at a card that is supremely helpful for them. Even when it’s not your turn, you’ll be very involved in the regular cadence of auctions and events.
As you work your way through the action card deck, you’ll reveal event cards which move the marker along the event track. These events usually trigger the scoring of a specific board. As I alluded to, each mini-game scores out twice during the game and once more at the end. Each of the mini games I described has some kind of area majority underlying it — even the vote board scores out majority points for the players who best supported the losing candidates! Because the order of the event scoring is visible and unchanging, it is wise to time your actions accordingly. It’s obviously much better to get in on space exploration right before it scores versus right after. That kind of timing will influence how high players are willing to bid on an action card, which allows for a nice fluctuation of bid values during the game. But even the event board has variability in the form of hidden special events. These face-down tiles will eventually be revealed as they are reached, and they force players to make tough but interesting decisions.
With so much going on across these boards, it’s hard to believe that this game comes from Allplay who is famously known for their simple and compact games. It’s a minor miracle that they fit such a big experience into their standard $39 box. Some folks might even worry whether this one is too complex for their group. But I’ve had the chance to teach this game to six different people so far, and after roughly a 10-minute rules teach they have all caught on right away and loved it. A newcomer even won my last play of it by claiming the most important auctions for his strategy while letting us bid our fortunes away on everything else.
But that’s what I love most about Merchants of Andromeda. It’s a far cry from the exacting calculations of auction games like Modern Art or Medici. You can’t math your way to victory. For one thing, you don’t always know how good a defense or exploration or election will turn out for you. Andromeda is a wacky game full of surprising and dramatic moments, and you have to roll with the punches. For another thing, you simply don’t have time to math out the best single bid value because that timer is ticking down and if you don’t bid now then somebody else might claim it! Andromeda is about shooting from the hip, playing from the gut, and embracing the crazy chaos.
Combine the refreshingly unique Dutch auction system cooked up by Reiner Knizia, the wonderfully flavorful ideas injected by Robert Hovakimyan, the hilariously charming sci-fi artwork by Torben Bökemeyer, and the blessedly compact production by Allplay, and you have an absolute winner in Merchants of Andromeda. I’ve played and ranked hundreds of Knizia games at this point, and already it appears that Andromeda ranks among the absolute best.
Merchants of Andromeda is available on Kickstarter until February 13. Check it out here.
Article written by Nick of Bitewing Games. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.
Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.