Days of Wonder’s Cargo Noir is described on their web site as "a game of illicit trading in which players run ‘families’ who traffic in smuggled goods" in a setting of 1950′s film noir.
Cargo Noir takes place on a multi-piece board, where each piece represents a port. Each port offers a number of randomly-selected cargos. The largest port, Macao, is home to a cargo exchange and casino. Players compete to collect cargos which can be sold for points, which count toward their final score.
At the start of the game, cargos are randomly selected and placed in each slot in each port. A player is chosen to go first. Play then goes sequentially through the remaining players.
On the initial turn, each player sends ships out to locations on the board. Sending a ship to a port, combined with one or more coins, represents making a bid to purchase the cargo in that port. Sending a ship to the black market offers the player the opportunity to trade a cargo in their warehouse for one of the cargos found in the black market or to randomly draw a cargo from the "sack". Sending a ship to the casino allows the player to collect two coins from the pool.
On each subsequent turn, the player "resolves their ships" first. For ships at a port where no other player’s ships have a bid, the player collects the cargo at that port and discards their coins in the casino pool. For ships where another player has placed a bid, the player must decide to either raise the bid or back out. If the player backs out, they retrieve their coins and ship (to be used later).
After ships are resolved, the player will examine the cargo in his or her warehouse (hand). If the player has more cargo than will fit in the warehouse, the player must trade or discard the excess. Trading the cargo in will generate points that can count toward victory. To trade in cargo, a player must build a "set" which is worth a certain number of points. For example, a set of five unique cargo tokens will reward the player with 15 points. A set of five identical cargo tokens will pay 25 points. Therefore, it’s generally better to collect a large set of identical cargo tokens than a set of unique ones. However, the number of cargo tokens of a specific type is limited, so collecting them can prove difficult in the later turns. When a player trades in cargo, he or she receives a card which represents the points they have earned and in some cases provides additional benefits (such as an extra ship or more warehouse slots).
Once the player has traded or discarded cargo, any ships in their hand may be sent to the black market (where a cargo in their warehouse can be traded for any visible cargo in the market, or a random cargo can be drawn from the sack), the casino (where two coins are earned per ship), or out to any of the ports along with a bid.
When play revolves around to the initial player, the turn counter is advanced. When the tenth turn is reached, a four or five player game ends. For larger groups, play continues to the eleventh turn. At the end of the game, each player’s score is tallied by adding up the blue values printed on each card they have purchased. The highest total score wins.
That’s really all there is to the mechanics of Cargo Noir. However, there is a great deal of strategy and thought required to actually play it. For example, if you’re sitting on a bunch of uranium tokens, is it better to turn them in or try to collect more? That depends on how many more are out there and on how far behind you may be in the scoring. Should you spend your points on an extra cargo ship (which may allow you to bid on more cargo or collect more coins, but which is worth fewer victory points at end-game) or on a Villa (which is worth more victory points but doesn’t help you any other way)?
There’s a psychological aspect of play as well. Should you bid a single coin on a desired cargo and hope no one outbids you, or should you bid high and scare off opponents? If you bid high, you may overpay and have to send ships to the casino sooner. Bid too low, and you will tie your ship up at the port longer (as you have to wait for other players to put their bids in and play to return to you).
The randomness of cargo selection, combined with the psychological and mechanical aspects of gameplay, make for a title that should have quite a lot of replayability. You’ll want to explore strategies like "turn over lots of small sets early on to build a fleet of ships and a large warehouse" and "go for points early on and don’t worry about more ships".
The quality of the artwork in the game is excellent (as you can see in the photos), as I’ve come to expect for a Days of Wonder title. The game board is a sturdy cardboard, with a very high production quality. The plastic pieces are as well made as any I’ve seen. The rulebook is printed in full color from cover to cover. It looks and feels as good as any game I’ve seen from any manufacturer.
If you get the opportunity to play Cargo Noir, I definitely recommend it. If you find that you enjoy it as much as I did, you may want to purchase it. As of this writing, Amazon.com has it available for approximately $37. That’s well below Days of Wonder’s $50 list price and even below my convention coupon discount of $45.
