Traders & Raiders is a medieval fantasy strategy game. On a player's turn they place a player token on an action space. Players choose a group action, meaning all players take that action, or choose a solo action, pay a resource, and act alone. Actions include moving their character standee from one town on the map board to another, trading goods in the town where they are located, recruiting follower cards that give new abilities to the player, buy special weapon tiles that help in defeating monsters, build market tents (wooden tokens) that give more options when trading, build building cards for points and to produce additional goods, fight monsters (tokens of unknown power) and retrieve their plundered goods, and collect goods found in their current location. Strategies to win include managing resources, maximizing trades, building cards before other players, gaining the right combination of followers so each turn can produce the most resources, gold, and points. The game ends after 8 rounds when the eighth fortnight tile (or round tile) is placed on a special fortnight board. The player with the most points wins. Points are totaled up from building cards, follower cards, gold, monsters defeated, and certain followers' special abilities.