Presidents Day 2021,
Today there is no conventions to be at which still bums me out. But yesterday my wife and me played a few games. One was Altiplano and the other was Raiders of Scythia.


Altiplano is one that we got 2018 after playing it at KublaCon. Where our friend Karen introduced us to it (note here is a quick plug for Karen’s game Consumption that you should check out). When we got our own copy of it she was happy to come over and play it with us and help us break it in. after that Lisa and I had got a bunch of two player game in with it. 
Altiplano is a bag building engine builder where you are a merchant on the shores of Lake Titicaca during that age on the Incan Empire. You go from village to village taking various actions to build up your engine. It is a point salad type of game where there are multiple paths to victory.
The thing that I have found with Altiplano Is you cannot allow someone to get a monopoly on something or specialize on something unchallenged. I am talking about that Cacao Bean here there is you will need to buy extensions here to get these and if you don’t is seriously limits the number of things that you can do in the game. Also, you need to keep an eye on opponents that can build an efficient engine that allows them to buy canoes, and houses. Unchecked those can rack in a lot of points. Then, let’s talk about orders. These are another huge source of points and you need to keep and eye on these. 
One other thing that I want to mention is that this was the first time I had pulled the game out since I got the folded space organizer. This made setup and tear down significantly quicker and would highly recommend it if you have this game.


Raiders of Scythia entered my collection last year. I was a fan of Raiders of the North Sea but I didn’t have it, so when this came up for preorder, I did just that. This is the third Shem Philips game that I have got (the other two being Circadians First Light and Paladins of the West Kingdom). I also like the way the Sam Philips illustrates the game as well; nice and clear without losing the theme. The production quality of this is great as well and of course I sprung for the metal coins on this as well.
With this game you need to build up your warband to pillage and quest to score more points than you rival chieftains. You can score a few points here and there using other methods, but the name of this game is Raiders of Scythia and to win you need to successfully raid. 
If you are familiar with Raiders of the North Sea this will be easy for you to pick up as it also has the place a meeple, take a meeple mechanism. There are a bunch of items that are included in this that were expansions for RotNS. I think that this incorporation made for a much tighter game out of the gate. I would thing that the only expansion that you would really want is for more players. But that would be it. This game has a pretty quick turn time and I think that five or six player variant could work for this. 
So if anyone is keeping track of this Lisa beat me at Altiplano 104 to 84 and I beat her at Raiders of Scythia 60 to 54.