This is the first in what I hope will become an occasional series taking a look at some old games people might be missing out on.
It’s often said that ‘modern board gaming’ began with (Settlers of) Catan in 1995, now in its sixth edition, barely changed from the original. However, interesting games did actually exist before then, and I’m not talking about classics like Chess or somewhat more recent games like Monopoly, first published in 1935 as a reimplementation of 1903’s The Landlord Game—though your definition of ‘interesting’ may vary…
I came across a 1967 edition of Sid Jackson’s Bazaar almost by accident and have to confess I was somewhat dismissive to begin with, but it turns out that it was a lot of fun. It’s a two to six player (but could possibly be stretched to seven or eight at a push) abstract game with an estimated playing time of 45 minutes (though my experience is that it can be a lot quicker than that).
How to Play
The aim of the game is to purchase ‘wares’ with coloured coins (gems or stones in later versions of the games) acquired during your turn. The ware cards show groups of five coloured spots such as three white, a yellow and a red, or perhaps five yellows—this is the purchase price of the card. These cards are arranged in four stacks of five at the start of the game with the top cards visible, and the remaining 25 cards returned to the box.
On your turn, you first perform one of two actions: either roll the die and take a coin of the colour shown—one side of the die is a question mark (star in other versions), which acts as a wildcard, letting you choose what colour to take; or exchange some of the coins in your hand for others, depending on the ‘rate’ boards. The game provides ten rate boards, two of which are picked at random to use in the game; these boards each show five (five really does seem to be a magic number in this game!) bartering rules, such as a red coin can be exchanged for two whites, or green and red can be traded for yellow, white and blue—the rules are bidirectional, so the first example could also be used to swap two white coins for a single red.
Next, if you have the right coins in your hand to purchase one of the four ware cards on display, you can optionally do so by returning the indicated coins to the general pool and removing the ware card. Your score for the transaction is based on the number of coins remaining in your hand; fewer is better, which implies you generally want to hold as few coins as you can. (A reason for not making a purchase as soon as you can is that you intend to perform a number reducing trade next, but it could be risky to take the chance that the ware card will still be there when your turn comes again.) Some of the ware cards have single or double stars on them—these are trickier to purchase wares (e.g., all of the same colour), but they score more.
Finally, if you have more than ten coins in your hand, you must discard down to ten.
The game ends immediately when two stacks of ware cards are empty. In one variant of the game, once a single stack is empty, all cards are treated as if they have an extra star until the end of the game; in another, additionally, the unused ware cards are divided up and added to the non-empty stacks, and play then continues until someone reaches a number of points depending on how many players there are.
Conclusion
Bazaar is one of the few ‘old’ games that lives on: besides several reissues, most recently in 2012, the game mechanism was reimplemented with a few minor changes in 1986’s Kombi-Kolor. These days, it can be found bundled with other Sid Jackson games in Samarkand Bazaar, published in 2022. Oddly, the Samarkand game included in the box was originally called Bazaar II, but is actually a very different game—it looks quite interesting, though I haven’t had a chance to play it yet.
To wrap up, Bazaar is a simple looking game which hides a fair amount of tactics. It can be frustrating with higher numbers of players in that ware cards you’re looking for vanish too quickly, and I find that three or four players works best. While the range of ware and rate cards mean that each game is different, I do feel replayability is quite low—you’re doing pretty much the same simple operations on each turn. However, a game is quick and fun, so this could be a good filler game to have in your collection. I also like with the original version that the playing space is the box—everything fits tidily in the insert (apart from players’ tokens and the dice, of course), rather than having cards sprawling across the table surface.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
