Soul Merchants proto idea

Gambling economic trade game

Building the first Hardships deck:

Each player gets a hand of 7 hardship cards, and drafts them clockwise.
- For hand a player drafts from, they may choose to draft it face down into one of two deck piles:
  - Outbound hardships: Cards in this deck are used for the first "set sail" round.
  - Inbound hardships: Cards in this deck will be drafted again for the second "set sail" round.
After the draft is completed, the freshly built Outbound hardships deck is shuffled (or not?) and set aside.

Building a fleet:

Each player takes on the role of the owner of a dutch naval trade company, in competition with other players.
For each ship they control, they must load it up with goods they want to bring to the new world, food & water, a captain, and sailors to get the ship to it’s destination.
Problem is, all of these things cost money.
- Denmark Cargo costs money to buy.
- Boats cost (depending on quality) money to commission
- Trade goods cost money proportional to the amount stored
- supplies per ship cost money
- Hiring a good captain and crew is VERY expensive. (had to be trained in naval school, experienced, paid ahead of time, etc.)
- (should be noted that all hired crew get paid for at the END of a successful delivery. If the ship goes down or they die on the way… oh well! Free labor.)
Thus it is relatively inexpensive to load a single very good boat with very good crew and a ton of goods...
- But any number of things could make it sink… and you haven’t diversified enough to cover your loss.
Buying a few fair boats, (or buying an armada of junkers) and distributing goods across them is a smarter idea for risk management.
- But this multiplies the cost of Men and supplies, and increases likeliness of any one ship going down.
To skimp on costs, there is a Soul Merchant deck of very inexpensive men available for purchase.
- These men are cheap, but if they ever out number your paid crew, they will mutiny and fight for control of the boat, at which point the boat is lost.
- They are also weaker (inexperienced, untrained, not used to life at sea), and often become the victims of card effects. Falling ill, etc.
- The Soul Merchant MUST be paid up front per each crew "hired" through him.
Captains must also be paid for upfront.
All non-SM crew members will give the ship some small bonus, or way to mitigate the damage of the Hardships deck.
- Ex: A Doctor might be able to prevent a death by illness, or a traveling Merchant might be able to get you a better exchange rate on selling goods.

Setting sail:

Each player decides how their resources and crew are allocated across all of their ships.
- Which captain goes where? How much of your cargo do you place on which ships? Where do your crew go?
- Do you send along any extra of your starting cash? On which boats and in what denominations?
After all player’s boats are set to sail, disembark.
At this point flip over the top card of the Outgoing Hardships deck and have all players deal with it.
- After all effects, and crew effects have been resolved, flip the next card and so on.
After the hardships deck is empty, and all the effects from all cards have been resolved, all surviving boats, crew, and cargo arrive in India!

Building the Inbound hardships deck:

Five new random cards are drawn and added to the Inbound deck created at the beginning of the game.
The deck is shuffled and dealt to all players as evenly as possible.
The players draft these cards counter clockwise
- When drafting a card, a player may decide to add it to the new Inbound hardships deck face down, or remove it from the game.
The new inbound deck is shuffled (or maybe not?) and set aside

Rebuilding your fleet 2:

First: all players with remaining Denmark Cargo sell it for cash at India’s exchange rate.
All showing crew, captain, and boat cards currently showing in the market are discarded and replaced by new faces.
A second phase begins for building a new fleet. Players take turns hiring on new crew to replace old, buying new boats if necessary, buying new supplies, and buying Soul Merchant victims.
- Players may no longer buy Denmark cargo, but rather may now buy Indian tea at a set price per cargo item, which sells for more back in Denmark.\
Players who lost all of their ships and crew in transit may…? Are we doing player elimination? Can they buy back in?
- Players may use this phase to build a new fleet and cargo from scratch, as if they were starting over from turn one. Let’s say they’re commissioning an Indian company at full price to send goods home.
  - Maybe given a small advantage to get back in the game? Guaranteed an Indian captain with a strong ability like "Can ignore the effects of one Hardship card after drawn."?

Setting sail:

Each player decides how their resources and crew are allocated across all of their ships.
- Which captain goes where? How much of your cargo do you place on which ships? Where do your crew go?
- Do you have any left over money not used on Indian cargo? which boats do you put it on and in what denominations?
After all player’s boats are set to sail, disembark.
At this point flip over the top card of the Inbound Hardships deck and have all players deal with it.
- After all effects, and crew effects have been resolved, flip the next card and so on.
After the hardships deck is empty, and all the effects from all cards have been resolved, all surviving boats, crew, and cargo arrive in Denmark!

Endgame:

Each player sells off any remaining Indian Tea at Denmark exchange rates, and returns any cash on surviving boats back to their supply.
Each player pays off all surviving crew at their promised price.
Tally up, and see who earned the most money!

Other fiddly ideas:

Bigger ships allow more crew on board - which is excellent for making sure it makes landfall, but require more crew to operate - which is terrible if some die, and becomes expensive
- All ships have a "minimum required crew to sail" below which point the boat is lost.
All captains, and some crew have the "navigator" icon. This indicates the training & literacy required to use a map and complete the voyage. If all units with a navigator icon on a ship are lost, the ship is lost.
Maybe all non-SM crew are up for auction? (I’ll pay you 5k !if you make it back alive…)