Istanbul: Choose & Write
OVERVIEW
Welcome back to the Istanbul Bazaar!
Once again, players take on the role of shrewd merchants whose goal is to gather goods and lira, then trade them for the precious rubies needed to win. In Istanbul – Choose & Write, instead of a common set of locations in the middle of the table, each player has a bazaar in front of them as a game plan, a personal tracking sheet where players will mark their choices as they play.
On their turn, players must choose to play either a Location card or a Guild card. Location cards will allow all merchants to perform the action of the specified location, or the action of an adjacent space on their sheet. If a player would rather prevent others from taking this follow action, they can instead play a Guild card, which is expensive but triggers powerful effects.
Fans of the Istanbul game series will recognize familiar locations in Istanbul – Choose & Write, such as the Large Market and the Gemstone Dealer. However, thanks to the innovative Choose & Write mechanism, this visit to the bazaar will challenge players in a completely new way.
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Customer Reviews
We were at Thursty Meeples, Oxford and saw this and as we like the other Istanbul games and games with paper boards (That's so clever or Castles of Burgundy dice game) we thought this would be a winner.
Unfortunately, on first play we were disappointed. We play two-player and it proved very tricky. Some of the spaces you can't use on the two-player version which made it harder as you can't get enough goods or lira.
The game ends when you reach 10 rubies or the 'location' deck is empty. When that deck was empty I had 4 rubies, my husband had 2.
Not sure why it was so hard and we were so far from 10 rubies. Maybe we'll be better next time. We might try playing with all the locations on the board and see if we get more rubies.
