Tips & Strategy

Plan the city row, economy and protection around twelve turns.

How to teach it

Introduce the turn sequence first, then have players look at one row: the active site gives its own action and every own building in the line can produce resources. The short teaches by Gaming Rules! and Nithrania both foreground the compact twelve-turn structure; that is the useful planning frame for newcomers. Show the two invasion years before anyone chooses their first building, so protection is part of the plan from the start.

Your first game

Make each activation pay twice

Build where the active row can already produce useful cubes, then activate a site whose action spends those colours. Activating a rival’s building grants its owner resources from that site and its row upgrades, so weigh the shared benefit before choosing that line. The example playthrough from Getting Games makes this productive-row pattern visible across the full turn sequence.

Buy influence before you need variety

Influence opens higher-value contracts and raises the number of spice types you can keep. Plan a route up the track before taking a spice that would strand you at the one-type limit; once a type is in your collection, it cannot be discarded. The Nithrania teach makes the track’s thresholds clear, and the rules confirm their strategic consequence.

Build around a scoring plan

Courtiers reward the collection you intend to build: scrolls, caravan cards, goods or mosque advancement. They cost favour every year, including when the associated collection is empty. Choose a hall that you can keep supplied and maintain enough favour to score it. The videos’ sample turns show the trade-off between spending on the engine and placing another courtier.

Protect what compounds

Buildings score each year they survive and also produce resources when their line is activated. Save a soldier or wall for a high-value site, especially before the year-two and year-three invasions. A wall may protect two adjacent sites and can earn up to four influence, while a soldier is flexible but clears after each invasion.

Use the market in batches

Trading posts take actions to establish, but each post can open repeated purchases in later turns. In a strong market action, buy one good from each connected city where you have a post, then spend camels to reach extra cities. Goods stay valuable after being committed to a contract because they still count for the Hall of Trade.

Video-based teaching notes

The explanations by Gaming Rules! and Nithrania are useful for introducing the turn loop and how the six action sites differ. Getting Games’ playthrough is useful for seeing how resources generated along a row feed the chosen action. The Italian tutorial by Il Meeple Con La Camicia, German rules overview by Brettspiel Dude, and Spanish tutorial by Escapando del Espacio Reticulado provide additional explanations in those languages. These are teaching aids; the printed rules govern costs, order, and edge cases.

Sources

• Merv - How to Play - Full tutorial video — Gaming Rules! (rules)
• Game in a Nutshell - Merv (how to play) — Nithrania - Game in a Nutshell (rules)
• Merv - Tutorial Playthrough — Getting Games (playthrough)
• MERV - Tutorial — Il Meeple Con La Camicia (rules)
• Merw - Das Herz der Seidenstraße - Regeln und Ersteindruck — Brettspiel Dude (rules)
• MERV [TUTORIAL] — Escapando del Espacio Reticulado (rules)

For clarifications, see the BGG Rules forum FAQ and the publisher’s Merv rulebook.