Roux Dat #65: Merchants Cove, River Valley Glassworks, & Nations: The Dice Game

We missed a week of gaming with traveling for some family events, but we opened up the Gumbo Pot for a great session of board games last night. My wife had time for a game, so we set up River Valley Glassworks and even threw in one of the expansion cards. 

River Valley Glassworks is definitely going to be in my top games of the year, even in a year where there are so many good little box, breezy, easy to teach games. It’s really been a bumper crop of good small games. In RVG, players are collecting river stones and adding them to their board in an attempt to score points vertically and horizontally. For some people, it reminds them of a stream-lined Azul with less player interaction. 

I really dig adding one or two cards from the expansion to each game. In this one, we added the River Treasures cards from the River Valley Glassworks: River Glass and Other Sundries pack. Each player gets a random card that awards bonus points if they collect a set number of a certain shape. I focused on my goal of getting the circle shapes for a while, but then really worked hard on building two good rows and a very lucrative right side tower of stones to pull away with the win.

Next up, we played the game that was the impetus for the game night. After much trouble and toil, we finally received our copy of the Merchants Cove: Master Craft game box, containing our pledge of the new game box, the four new factions, a bonus faction (Merchants Cove: Game Maker) and the Kickstarter loot box. 

Merchants Cove is probably the game that Jerod and I have played the most together. We’ve streamed the game at least a half dozen times on our Twitch Tuesdays show, and I think I have another six or eight live full plays. By now, I’ve played just about every character at least once or twice. 

This time, I played the Game Maker (an homage to our friend, Jonny Pac), Mitchell played the Treasure Diver (a bag building, push your luck character), Jerod played the Mushroom Farmer (I cannot remember what she does), and Doug was the Detective (a card crafting character). 

Does anyone else hum the tune of Watching The Detectives every time someone plays The Detective character? 

Anyway, I absolutely loved the Game Maker character. Yes, the rulebook that is supplied is trash, leaving out some pretty important information that I kind of pieced together myself based on our experience with the game. I’m pretty sure I played it correctly, but still came out in last place. The funny thing is that I was having so much fun building up and manipulating my own board that I kind of forgot about the competition to make goods, to my detriment. 

I’m sad that FFG blew up, and we likely won’t see any more content for this amazing game. That being said, we have so much content that we still have another dozen or so plays just to explore what we have right now. 

Finally, we wanted a quick game to wrap up the night and Jerod pulled out Nations: The Dice Game. I am usually terrible at this game, but snuck out the win on the last turn by meeting the famine and war goals.

If you haven’t played Nations: The Dice Game, it is a dice based version of its bigger cousin and is VERY breezy. Three player games for us barely take a half-hour or so, and yet, you get the feel of a very miniaturized civ game. We used to play this all the time at our Gumbo Game nights at Bradly’s house, until we discovered The Flow of History, which kind of replaced Nations: The Dice Game as our breezy end of the night civ game. 

I’m glad we got a chance to re-visit Nations: The Dice Game. It’s time to keep the dust off and play it a few more times. 

Next up, we will be diving back into Moon Colony Bloodbath, which is turning into my favorite game experience of 2025. I’m hoping to have a full review up soon and maybe another playthrough on Twitch. 

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo