Description

In the 17th Century, the capital of the Dutch East Indies was Batavia (now Jakarta in Indonesia). Many Dutch merchants wanted to get wealthy trading spices and crops. Nobility desire cardamon; cloves were sought for medicine; cinnamon for its deep, sweet fragrance; and ginger and pepper for their strong spicy flavors. Buy spices, send them to Europe, get rich, and succeed as big merchants!

From Batavia (?????????) is a card-drafting game of sorts. In general, each player has a ship, and they'll place cargo cards on the ship until it's full, after which they get a new ship. Whoever fills three ships first wins!

In more detail, each ship card has a hold number and possibly an icon. The cargo cards come in five types (cardamon, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, pepper), and they have a cost, an effect, an icon, and a money value. Grain cards have nothing but a picture of grain, yet they can be valuable, too. Each player starts with a hand of five cargo cards.

On a turn, each player chooses a cargo card from their hand, then they reveal them simultaneously. If they can afford to pay the cost of their card, they do so, discarding cards from hand equal to the cost (with a card of the same color as the revealed cargo card counting for two cards) and handing those cards to their -left-hand neighbor. All cards are passed at the same time. If a player can't pay the cost of their card, they return it to hand, then give their left-hand neighbor one cargo card from the top of the deck.

All players who paid the cost of their new cargo card now carry out the effect of that card. Ginger, for example, lets you draw grain cards equal to the number of ginger icons on your cargo cards and ship card; grain cards can't be placed on ships, but they can be used to pay for cargo. Cinnamon lets you take a coin and place it on your ship, then discard as many cards as you want to take additional coins; each coin helps to fill the hold of your ship.

If the money value of a player's cargo cards (along with any coins they have) equal or exceed the hold value of a ship, that ship is full. The player places that ship aside, discards the cargo cards, then takes a new ship in a different color.

Each player can discard any number of cards from their hand, then each person with fewer than six cards draws one cargo card from the deck. Cardamon icons can let you draw a card even if you have six or more cards, while cloves lets you draw additional cards anytime you draw cargo, then discard the same number of cards that you drew additionally. Filter cards to find what you want!