Ocean Trader
BGG rank
BGG #23,290
BGG rating
6.4

Ocean Trader

1988

Rules assistance for Ocean Trader

Plain-language explanations of turns, card effects and disputed situations, with official source references and saved question history.

  • 2–6 players
  • 45 min
  • Complexity 2.0/5

Rules assistant for Ocean Trader

What would you like to know?

Answers come from the official rulebook, with the page to check.

Ocean Trader is a board game released in 1988 for 2–6 players and 45 minutes per game. It was designed by John Rudford and its main mechanics are Roll / Spin and Move, Commodity Speculation, and Pick-up and Deliver.

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About the game

Ocean Trader is a game which attempts to recreate all of the risks and rewards of the 19th century world shipping trade. Players use their ships to pick up and deliver commodities from a variety of ports around the world. This is complicated by the fact that for every demand only the first two deliveries receive payment, with the first delivery paying twice as much as the second. Players may buy commodities with no current demand and speculate that demand will appear close enough to make a delivery worthwhile. Players may purchase "shares" but these are merely a game-ending mechanism; once a player has a majority of them they may declare it. Twelve more turns are played and that player wins if they still have the majority (and at least one ship and enough cash).

Questions and answers

Ocean Trader supports 2–6 players according to the catalogue. This range comes from the publisher’s listed player count, so the game can be set up for any group size within it. Some setups, rules and scoring details may still vary by player count, so check your edition’s rulebook for the exact configuration.