Medici

Where to start with this wonderful game by Kiniza?
 
Medici is a pure auction game featuring a one bid per player per auction mechanic.  This may seem to be a weak mechanic to build a game on, but it works masterfully.
 
The game spans three days of trading in which you fill your ship's holds (your ship has 5 holds for carrying cargo) with one of five different types of cargo.  Each player gains gold for the highest values cargo, as well as the most cargo of each specific commodity.
 
During each day of trading, the players will go through the deck of cards once.  Each card represents a cargo (dyes, cloth, grain, spices, and furs are the five commodities) with a number from 0-5 representing the value of that cargo.  Each cargo has one card of each value, except there are 2 cards with a value of 5 for each commodity.  Additionally, there is a gold card worth 10 points.  During a player's turn, they turn over 1-3 cards from the deck for the players to bid on.  He may see what he has turned over, before determining if he will add another card to the auction. 
 
This is one of the central parts of the game, as a great auction can be made worthless  with the addition of a card that a player does not value, or a poor auction could turn into a fierce bidding war with the addition of a valued commodity.
 
Each player gets one opportunity to bid.  The high bidder moves back the number of spaces bid on the scoring track, and play continues with the next player drawing the cards for the next auction.  After the deck is exhausted, the player total the value (the number of each of their cards) of their shipment.  The player with the highest total gets 30 florins (points), 2nd gets 20, 3rd - 15, 4th - 10, 5th - 5, and 6th - 0.  Then the players determine who shipped how many of each commodity.  The player that shipped the most of each commodity scores 10 points, and the player that shipped the 2nd most scores 5.  The total holds for each commodity carries over from day to day, so if you can get a lead in one of the commodities, it can score big for you if you can hold on to the lead.  Additionally, if you have shipped 5 or more holds of one commodity, you get bonus points, 5 for 5 holds, 10 for 6 holds, and 20 for 7 or more holds. 
 
Repeat this three times, and you have played a full game!
 
Today, Alan, Brock, Kristen (?), Jaime, Neil, and I played what turned out to be a contest for second place.  In the first day's worth of trading, all the players were fairly close in the scoring, as we were only separated by 10 points from 1st to last.  However, Alan had laid the foundation of his dominance by shipping 4 furs in the first round!  This meant that all he needed to do was ship 3 more furs, and he would get 20 bonus points each turn thereafter!  That is EXACTLY what he did the second day.  There was an auction for 2 furs and a 1 grain, unfortunately, I was the only other person interested in fur.  However, Alan bid before I did, and he bid 18 florins, which would be made up by the bonus he would get for the cargo.  I was too far behind on the fur track, and it would get me to 4 holds shipped which would put me just below the bonus scoring.  So I let him have it.  Rather than bore everyone with the details, this gave Alan 40 bonus points in fur alone for the game.  He finished with 125+ points which is virtually unheard of in this game.  Second place was hotly contested by Jaime, Brock, and me.  I nailed down second place honors with a very respectable score of 97 points, which would have been enough to win most games!
 
All in all it was a fun game, even if we were only playing to see who would win second.  Then again, I guess had I been there for the game of Princes of Florence they played before Medici, every one would have been playing to see who would finish behind me in that!

My Rating:  a very respectable 8 of 10! 

John