How to Play Century: Spice Road – Merchant Cards & Spices
Century: Spice Road is a resource-conversion engine game. You build a hand of Merchant cards that produce and upgrade spices, then spend those spices to claim Point cards.
Scope: standalone Spice Road, not Eastern Wonders, A New World, combined Century modes or the Golem retheme.
Take exactly one of four actions
- Play: play a Merchant card from hand and resolve its production, trade or upgrade effect.
- Acquire: take a Merchant card from the market, placing one spice on each card skipped to the left.
- Claim: pay the spice cost of a Point card and take it.
- Rest: return every previously played Merchant card to your hand.
Spices have an upgrade order
The current rules order spices from turmeric (yellow) to saffron (red), cardamom (green) and cinnamon (brown). Upgrade effects move cubes upward through that sequence one step per upgrade.
Trade cards can be repeated
When a Merchant card shows a trade, you may repeat that conversion as many times as you can pay the input during that single play, unless the card text indicates otherwise.
Market position changes acquisition cost
The leftmost Merchant card is free to take. To take a card farther right, place one spice cube from your caravan onto every card you skip. When another player later takes a card carrying cubes, they receive those cubes too.
Point cards can include coin bonuses
Pay the exact listed spice requirement to claim a face-up Point card. The leftmost and second-leftmost positions can also award gold or silver coins while those coin supplies remain.
Your caravan holds at most 10 spices
At the end of your turn, discard excess cubes of your choice until you are back at the 10-cube limit.
Claiming enough Point cards triggers the final round
The current rulebook ends after the round in which a player takes a fifth Point card, or a sixth Point card in a 2–3 player game. Then score Point cards, coins and eligible leftover spices.
Source: Next Move Games 2024 Spice Road rules. Checked September 21, 2026.