MERCHANT OF VENUS
Ranking: Four stars
Review
The ultimate in nonconfrontational games, every player can piddle around optimizing their own routes. It's fun to uncover asteroids and discover planetary resources, and it's good that the board changes every game, with resources in different places. All the little fiddly bits of cardboard are neato, but hard to keep separate. We like the quirkiness. Our only complaint is that there is absolutely nothing for the other players to while the player whose turn it is is moving and trading, so that the game really can wear you down in the third hour. We seldom play the nova ball combat version; maybe that would spice things up.