Raiders of Scythia is a game of working hard and raiding harder.
What better way to unwind?
Many centuries ago, the Greek, Persian and Assyrian empires controlled vast amounts of land and riches. Yet, despite their fortifications and imposing armies, rumours began spreading of a formidable foe in the lands above the Black Sea. They came on horseback. Fierce warriors, both male and female. Skilled with the sword, axe and bow. But they weren’t mindless savages. Their artisans were renowned for their ability to craft detailed trinkets of gold. They fashioned leather armour and improvised the recurve bow. They trained eagles for hunting and war. Some even believe they inspired the Greek tales of the Amazons. But they were more than legend or fable. They were the Raiders of Scythia.
Raiders of Scythia Game Play
This is a fairly comprehensive overview of the game at the top level and will give a good idea on how the game plays.
In this game, you control a party and will either ‘Work’ to gain resources etc or ‘Raid’ to steal resources etc
When working, you place your meeple on a location in town and take that action, but you also remove a meeple from a different space and take that action too.
Working
There are several spaces:
Stables – Spend 2 silver to gain an eagle or spend some equipment to gain a horse. Eagles go above members in your party and make them better or make their ability usable by the ‘town centre’ actions. Horses go under and increase their hit points.
Barracks – Add a new member from your hand to your party or spend a Kumis to heal 2 health from your party.
Silversmith – Gain Silver. You can gain more silver by using a blue meeple which is the colour you start with. Grey and red meeples are available by raiding.
Farm – Play a blue or grey meeple to get 2 provisions, play a red meeple to get 2 provisions or a wagon.
Chief’s Tent – Pay 1 Livestock to gain 2 Provisions and 1 Kumis, or complete 1 Quest. More on quests shortly.
Meeting Tent – Draw 2 Cards or draw 1 card and gain 2 Kumis.
Market – Discard a card to gain 2 Silver, or discard 2 cards to gain either a wagon or equipment.
Town Centre – Play 1 Card from hand and use its ability, or use the ability of someone in your party with an Eagle as mentioned on the stable action.
Raiding
Instead of taking a work action, a player can Raid.
They must have the correct colour worker to place, a big enough party (as shown on the raid space) and enough provisions and wagons to spend to get there.
Players now decide if they want to spend as many Kumis as they like to gain +1 strength per one spent.
Then, roll a number of dice shown on the raided location and also roll a yellow dice per settlement in that location that contains gold. This not only shows the total strength rolled (Plus party and kumis strength) but also how many wounds the player will take.
Players score points depending on how much strength they have, they may even take wounds. They also take any equipment, wagons, livestock and gold from that settlement.
It also turns a quest face up in that settlement. These can be cashed in by trading in the required resources, tokens, cards etc to gain the points using the Chief’s Tent action.
Wounds go on individual characters. If they would take more than their limit, they are killed and discarded.
Game End
The game end is triggered when there are either only 2 Raid Spaces or 2 Quests left on the board.
Players gain VP for Party Members and Animals shown on some of the cards plus leftover resources. Most points win.
Theme
I don’t know much about this time period but I know people raided, killed and stole back then so it’s fine with me.
Setup
It’s a euro with pieces everywhere, I usually let the game owner deal with this while making myself available to shuffle, sort, and stack whatever needs doing.
Components & Artwork
The components are nice. I’m not sure if the metal coins and nice wooden components are in the retail version or if this is some Kickstarter bonus thing. But they are nice.
The art is OK. It’s not my style but fits the theme. Some of the faces on the crew cards look like obscure celebrities, not sure if that was on purpose or not but we had good fun pointing them out.
Ease of Teaching
It’s fairly straightforward with only cards in hand as hidden information. Anyone that has played a worker placement and/or resource management game will be fine.
Raiders of Scythia Summary
This is my first time playing a game in this series. I know these are very popular but this is the first chance I had to play one. But this reminded me of Champions of Midgard as you equip up then raid. That game is more fantasy than reality. Raiders of Scythia seems to be based in history, I’m assuming so anyway.
But I like the worker placement part. You place on space to take the action, then remove one from another space to take that action as well. This frees up that space for the next player.
When raiding, you place on the space and take one from the settlement. So you still have a meeple to play and you lock that settlement off. It’s a very clever way of doing it.
So while this theme and style of game will never be for me, I did enjoy it. It’s got some really nice mechanisms and that worker placement system is really cool.
Jesta ThaRogue