I'm not married to plastic pieces either, Mad Dog...maybe it's against the AT dogma, but it doesn't matter to me as long as they actually mean something and it's appropriate to the game. I wonder if that might be a generational thing, the newer players are probably more plastic-inclined but us veterans came from cardboard chits and magazine paper-stock cards...
TRADERS OF GENOA is great, but is it really a business game? You're not actually running/managing a business, it's more of a negotiation thing. Who knows what that tower is supposed to represent...there's an old-timeyness to the game I really like, it's very Sid Sacksony in a way.
I usually don't like pure negotiation games much, but my one game of Traders of Genoa with 5 players wasn't too bad. It ran a little long though. A couple times I offered players gold just to end their turn so the game would hurry up.
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