Century Eastern Wonders Review

After a great journey along the Spice Road you arrive in a land of Eastern Wonder. Your camels laden down with delicious turmeric, the greatest of all the spices – No don’t listen to those liars trying to sell you cardamon that’s basically a poison, no, please buy my turmeric…

The great sea now stretches before you and a wealth of new delicacies await to be claimed, traded, and sold for profit. It’s time to do it all over again.

Players: 2-4
Time: 30-45 mins
Age: 8+
Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi
Artist: Atha Kanaani, Chris Quilliams
Publisher: Plan B Games

The sequel I was keeping my copy of Century Spice Road around for: Eastern Wonders. Spice Road was a reasonable game but had some issues that left it firmly in the OK pile for me. But Spice Road’s components can be integrated with those of Eastern Wonders to create the Voltron of board gaming: From Sand to Sea. Two games to review! So can Eastern Wonders or it’s mutant offspring leave me dazzled in wonder, enough to keep all the components from both games around for the final instalment of the trilogy next year?

Century: Eastern Wonders

Eastern Wonders continues the fine form of cube swapping from its predecessor but now spread across a great archipelago that might be somewhere like Indonesia. Who knows. The spices have actually changed to ginger, chillies, tea and cloves, but you would hardly know as they are still the same set of colours and, as such, are only ever referred to by that. Let’s not get too caught up with theme then. Anyone who has played Spice Road would know what to expect. Mechanics. Only.

But now with boats! Fundamentally, Eastern Wonders takes the card driven cube trading engine of Spice Road and converts it into a spatial puzzle. Players move their little boat about the modular map, visiting islands which allow them to trade cubes according to what is printed on the island. The same idea of spotting combos of trades that let you run your engine most efficiently is present here but unlike Spice Road, that game of combo spotting is not over once you’ve bought the cards.

That is because running your engine is no longer as simple as playing a card or picking up some points. Now you need to move, either to the island where a given trade can occur, or to one of the port locations in order to trade in and score victory points. Your neat combo might work in one part of the map but you’ll inevitably want to make your way across to the other side of the board to hit a particular scoring tile and once you are there, it is generally more efficient to make the most of what is nearby rather than dashing back to your initial set up. In this way you are constantly adapting to and exploring the available options.

Movement in Eastern Wonders requires you leave a spice cube on each space you pass by, so moving long distances becomes very expensive. Players visiting those locations can then get bonus spice. This is just like Spice Road’s market mechanic which, while wonderfully interactive, only stayed interesting for the first third of the game as play shifted from buying cards to just playing cards. Here that interaction can last the entire game, although another mechanic also encourages you to plot a more sedate path through all the islands.

Here you see your player board covered in a rash-like accumulation of wooden trading posts. These will be built on the islands you visit to give you access to the trade actions of that island, but that’s not all they do for you. As you pop them off, you’ll reveal victory points, and as you clear columns you’ll earn special bonus tiles that can boost the effectiveness of your actions. This adds a whole extra dimension to the gameplay. While trading in specific combos of cubes at the ports will still be the main source of your points, filling the board with your trading posts is an effective earner especially with the bonus opportunities too.

These bonus tiles are simple but truly rewarding, and since you can earn multiple of the same type, you can really pick a strategy to pursue. One lets you move an extra space for free, another lets you upgrade cubes whenever you build a trading post, a third expands your cube hold. Each requires some effort to get the most out of but when pursued to their fullest can be extremely effective.

I really like Eastern Wonders. Which says quite a lot after Spice Road. The new game is that little bit more meaty and challenging, with that much more strategic agency and even more scope for building up to efficient plays. It still has some of the same issues as Spice Road: the limited direct interaction and the rather dry theme. While I feel the spatial puzzle dramatically elevates the game, particularly with how it interacts with the new scoring opportunities of the player boards, for some it makes the gameplay that much harder to parse and the board does get overwhelmingly full of bits towards game end. Players can also get a bit caught up in the game of placing out trading posts and forget to chase the ports which actually end the game. So it’s still not perfect. But I guess there had to be a reason to pick up the next set, right?

Rating: Wonderful

From Sand to Sea

The cards are back, baby! Time to smoosh Eastern Wonders and Spice Road together into the curry that is From Sand to Sea. That old card market is back and showing off the same neat purchase mechanic that doesn’t quite live up to its potential (Aside: if you want a card market that shows off what Century was trying to do, go buy Majesty, it’s phenomenal. Aside over.) but so is the map.

Now you have two ways of trading your spice: playing a card like in Spice Road, or visiting an island just as in Eastern Wonders. And these two parallel game elements overlap in the ship movement rules. Now, rather than dropping off cubes you must discard cards for every space moved. As in Spice Road, you lose an action to pick up all your spent cards.

You can play the… er… sand game and focus on cards, but you’ll miss out on the easy trading post builds and points, and you can’t ignore the ports. You can focus on the sea game, but because you won’t have picked up as many cards, your movement speed will be limited and you’ll waste time picking up your hand. The balance lies somewhere in the middle but the actions of other players will constantly pull you towards one or the other. It’s a very nice dynamic.

However, on a turn by turn level it becomes even more overwhelming than Eastern Wonders. It’s not just a case of where do I move to get the best trade, it’s also which set of actions do I not use in the next couple of rounds until I pick up my hand again. These are decisions that have to be made every time you move but rarely feel like you get them right. In the best case scenario, you don’t regret the cards you discarded. Which kind of takes some of the joy out of moving across the map.

You also lose half the bonus tiles, and the more interesting ones at that. This was a part of Eastern Wonders I really liked and it’s immediately gutted. I understand why: those abilities are effectively on the cards you can get from the market. But it doesn’t feel the same to use a card you’ve bought specially over a bonus you’ve earned.

So at the end of the day From Sand to Sea is something I’m glad I have the option to play but I’m not convinced it is better than Eastern Wonders. If you already have Spice Road then fantastic! But my money would currently say to only pick up Eastern Wonders. At least until part 3 arrives next year.

Rating: Over-Spiced

Our copy of Century: Eastern Wonders was provided for review by Asmodee UK. You can pick up a copy for £34.99 RRP from your local hobby store.