Raiders of Scythia Review: To Raid or Not to Raid
Intent: Inspire you to try playing Raiders of Scythia
Being a hero and commanding your fleet of raiders is no easy task. With an eagle overhead and horses charging, you’ll need to prepare and raid the lands of Cimmeria, Assyria, Persia, and Greece. Raiders of Scythia designed by Shem Phillips, illustrated by Sam Phillips and Shem Phillips published by Garphill Games is competitive worker placement game for 1-4 players in which you compete to fulfill raids and quests to gather the most victory points. Will you plan ahead tactfully, or will you improvise and adapt as the game prolongs?
Overview
In Raiders of Scythia, you compete to score the most victory points by raiding, completing quests and collecting various resources, horses, eagles and crew. There are three colors of workers, red, blue and grey. To start off the game, you get a blue worker, a player board, and a hero paired with a crew member. On your turn you’ll have to decide between two choices: to raid or to train.
If you choose to raid, you will have to follow the requirements under each raid tile in order to gain loot and victory points. Requirements include the color of the worker you need to place, amount of crew members, and provisions and wagons you must spend. Success is determined by the power you manage to accumulate during the raid, which comes from your crew, horses, eagles, and the dice you roll depending on the placement and contents of the raid. You’ll collect your loot, reveal a new quest and take the worker from the top slot. It’s important to note that the worker you place will permanently stay in that spot, marking that that specific raid is complete.
If you choose to train, you will have eight locations your worker can go, with actions corresponding to each of those locations. These actions are generally used to gain silver to recruit your crew, provisions to raid, kumis to heal, eagles and hawks to strengthen your crew and to complete quests to gain victory points, which usually require specific quantities of loot or discarding cards equal to a specific amount of power. The unique element of this game is that once you place a worker at a location and take an action, you also get to take off a worker off a different location and take the corresponding action as well. Every turn you choose to train, you get to take actions from two locations. This allows for some great combinations but also planning as there are only three workers present in all of the eight locations at a time and you’ll have to adapt as your opponents play and take off workers in and from various spots. The color of the worker matters as well as some actions in spaces are restricted to that specific color.
The game continues until there are only two raids or two quests left, at which point everyone including the player who triggered this takes an additional turn and points are scored. Will you be the most glorious Raider of Scythia?
First Game Impression
We actually own all of the West Kingdom games from Garphill Games, so we were thrilled to try out Raiders of Scythia! Paladins of the West Kingdom happens to be Tylor’s favorite game, so expectations for this game were certainly high and to no surprise they were met and exceeded!
Our first game was incredible! The rules in this game were extremely straightforward. We understood the game right off the bat, no videos needed to be watched, no questions needed to be googled, the rulebook laid it out smoothly. I have to say, this has been the best experience I’ve had learning a Shem Phillips game thus far. Even better, explaining this game was a piece of cake. The decision tree is nice and simple and the fact that players always have to place one worker and take off a worker regardless of what they’re doing is a fantastic element!
As our first game progressed, we quickly began to see various strategies one could take, the most intriguing part was certainly observing each other and waiting to see what we were going to do. There were many times I was hoping Tylor would place his worker in a place that would benefit me but he was witty and paid attention to my game as well, and made choices that often did not benefit me. The player interaction is just the way I like it, you never directly harm another player but you certainly take away choices from the. Indirect conflict is just a beautiful thing.
Before you know it, the game ended, I was fairly behind but with both of us counting up the points and adding all of our quests I managed to secure my victory, which was just the icing on top for this wonderful game, as Tylor typically wins this genre of games.
Thoughts After Five Games
We really enjoy Raiders of Scythia. It’s such a smooth and clever game that just keeps you coming back for more!
My favorite aspect of this game is how accessible it is. It’s fairly easy to explain the rules and to start playing. You don’t often feel overwhelmed by too many actions as you only really have one worker, so the decisions are all narrowed down as your turn progresses. It’s a great resource management game as well, as there’s just so many options on how to optimize what you have but not all of them may work out.
I love that turns are fairly quick and the raids are exciting and engaging, as when you reveal a quest other players are motivated to pay attention as they want to know if they have resources to complete it. Raiders of Scythia provides for an engaging experience but certainly allows for a social setting as well. We’ve introduced this game to a variety of individuals and both groups really enjoyed the experience. It was a certainly a hit!
The artwork initially seemed quite busy to me but after further playing and spending time with the game I cannot take my eyes off of it, the immaculate details are an absolute visual pleasure. I also love that the champions have names, while characters just have a title such as “adventurer,” it allows for some immersion as you can really bond and create backstories for your crew. An individual we often play with built a crew entirely of women and commented that she often cannot do that in games, love to see representation as it promotes inclusivity! Having said that, I would love to see more racial diversity and representation for people of color in this game.
One thing I’ll definitely keep an eye moving forward is building certain crew combinations, taking two town centre actions is also interesting because you can technically take one action from the workers while another taking two town centre actions again, potentially creating infinite loops? I didn’t see anything specific in the rulebook about this and obviously playing in good nature we don’t want to allow such actions but it’s unfortunate when they can be conjured up in the first place.
EDIT: Someone pointed out a section in the rulebook on page fifteen that indeed states you cannot take the same town centre action more than once.
MERIT Report Card
Overall Letter Grade: A-
Strengths: Easy to teach. Easy to grasp. Lots of replayability and depth within the game. Sticks out and accessible for individuals who play board games and others who do not. Many informative educational aspects including adapting to new circumstances, putting yourself in others shoes and resource management.
Areas of Improvement: The artwork and components certainly make the game more daunting than it is. Uniformity between components would be valuable as well, as sometimes it feels like you’re playing from components from various games.
Memorability: A-
How often do I think about the game? The strategy in this game is endless, but it’s certainly more about being able to adapt on the fly. I really enjoy the probabilities and in the moment trying to figure out if it’s more worthwhile to raid or to complete quests. I really enjoyed the artwork, this game certainly sticks with me after each session and I’m eager to introduce it to more individuals.
How often is the game brought up by the individuals I play with? The individuals we’ve introduced this game to loved their experience. Many expressed wanting to play again and were really intrigued by the first experience. The ease of learning this game definitely helped a lot.
How many memories can be built from this game? A fair amount, it certainly feels legendary to raid Greece and get a larger power ranking through multiple combinations and dice. Player interaction is absolutely wonderful, it almost feels like someone is falling into a trap if they place a worker where you want them to as you get to take two desired actions rather than one. There’s certainly lots of laughter, tension and memorability.
Education : A-
The most obvious here is resource management, you really have to plan ahead and hope that no one is attempting to do what you are doing, there’s many factors to consider and your brain certainly gets to work as you attempt to optimize your game play.
The less obvious is the ability to put yourself in other people’s shoes. You really want to understand what other players are wanting to do as you can better predict where they will place their worker, in turn making your game a more enjoyable experience. This is a fantastic skill, which translates heavily into many important aspects of life. In conflict, in happiness, professional or personal it’s always nice to understand and see where the other person is coming from. Practicing this skill in a game environment allows you to form these connections in your brain and pause and think to try to understand before you act.
Other quick one I’ll talk about is adapting to new information, as you’ll be seeing a lot of quest tiles flip over, you’ll have to constantly adjust your strategy. This game really pushes you to keep on your toes throughout the entire game!
Other than that, there’s a fair bit of simple mathematics, which is always nice to get your brain working. Overall quite a few good educational elements present that certainly keep you engaged and constantly learning and improving.
Replayability: A-
This game is heavily replayable. With eight heroes to choose from, seventy six crew member cards and thirty six animals, although some repeating, there’s definitely a lot of variety for combinations. The quest tiles are all random and as some do not get placed also provide quite a lot of variation as well. Overall, it’s really tough to come up with the exact same strategy, but adapting to the surroundings is a fantastic element of this game.
Beyond adding more cards, there’s not much this game can add to keep it fresh each time, I can see us playing this game many many times and applauding replayability each and every time!
Imagination: B+
Building your own crew to raid these unknown wealthy lands taking the power from the rich for yourself? Can it get anymore exciting than that? I love the concept of this game and really like the thematic integration of having to train before you’re off to raid. You keep coming back, knowing that you still need to rely on your community no matter how far south you raid.
The components and the quality of the game is wonderful as well, the resources certainly could have been slightly different in shapes but with how busy this game already is, I’m glad they are not. Uniformity between resources would have improved the game slightly for me. The artwork is the other hand, is out of this world. The details on the board are something you must experience as you’ll be praising Sam and Shem within a matter of minutes.
ANIMALS! You can add eagles to each of your crew members and give them a horse as well, I absolutely love that. I also appreciate that you get to build your crew, and immerse yourself by chatting about potential names, personalities, backstories or even thinking about them is a great experience as you really want to make your crew proud as you raid through the various lands. The one downside I think here is just how busy the board is, it’s all fantastic once you digest it but as a newer player coming in, there’s quite a lot going on and that can definitely feel daunting.
Target: B+
For those who appreciate and follow Garphill Games and Shem, this is a game you’ll likely love! The artwork is gorgeous, the mechanics are wonderful and the overall experience feels like an improvement from his other games (not fully sure on Viscounts yet, as we haven’t played it too many times). The rulebook is extremely well done and the theme and art is certainly inviting to other gamers as well.
Unfortunately I don’t think this is necessary a game that appeals to the masses, it’s not something one of my friends who does not play many board games would look at and be excited to try out. This is alright though, as there’s people like us that can introduce these folks to this game and they can have a wonderful experience and tell more individuals about it. Inclusion, accessibility and inspiration for other individuals to play games is something I always seek in a game as I want to share this wonderful passion with more individuals.
As I don’t believe the intention is to have this game appeal to the broad masses, I won’t be scoring this low. Many people really enjoy Garphill Games and their creations and considering it drew us in as well and got us excited for another fantastic game with a unique new art style!
Tylor’s Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I’ll start with saying that I have a high bias towards worker placement games because they are my favorite board game mechanic. Typically, that is because they have pieces of strategy and a variety of paths when trying to win the game. Raiders of Scythia is also made by the same individuals that make my favourite game: Paladins of the West Kingdom.
Now, Raiders of Scythia does not beat out Paladins but it is a great game! I think the idea of communal workers and taking the action of one you place but also of one you take off is a very neat mechanic. It also comes down to adaptability and thinking more on your toes based on what is given to you on the board. Planning ahead is not as beneficial for this game as Paladins in my opinion but that’s what makes it so great and unique enough to play more of! I really enjoy this game and I think it is a good worker placement game to get started with! Four stars for this one, it will definitely see a lot of play time from us!
Final Thoughts: If you haven’t played many Garphill Games before, this is a fantastic one to start with. The mechanics are super straight forward and the game is easy to grasp, with lots of depth and strategies. The animals, customizable crew, and variety of differing actions provides for an immersive experience that keeps you coming back for more.
MERIT Report Card Letter Grade: A-