Kashgar: Merchants of the Silk Road

Kashgar: Merchants of the Silk Road puts each player in charge of three caravans moving spices from Asia to Europe. At the start, each caravan consists of three cards stacked vertically, showing only the top portion – the caravan member ready to act. On your turn you may perform **one single action**, picking the top card of any of the three rows and following the instruction printed on it. After use the card is placed at the back of its row, forcing you to cycle through the other members before you can reuse the same one. Actions range from gaining gold, acquiring spices, hiring mules, swapping cards, to even disrupting an opponent’s caravan. There are also cards that add new members to the rows or let you fulfill one of the four delivery contracts placed in the centre of the table. Each player has a personal resource board, moving markers for gold, spices and mules as cards are played. The win condition is to reach 25 points, earned from character cards and completed contracts. The core engine can be described as “open deck‑building”: throughout the game you expand and reshuffle the pool of actions available in your caravans. The pace is brisk with virtually no downtime, and once the card repertoire is mastered a wealth of strategic combos emerge – from short, efficient caravans to long queues that generate powerful effects. A typical game lasts about 45 minutes, supports 2‑4 players and has a gentle learning curve, though the text‑heavy cards may require some practice for non‑German/English speakers. In short, Kashgar delivers a thematic trade experience with action‑queue and deck‑building mechanics that appeal to both newcomers and seasoned economic gamers.