- Publisher: Garphill Games
- Players: 1 – 4
- Time: 60 – 80 minutes
Raiders of Scythia is a game of raiding locations on a central game board rather than raiding your opponents. Each player begins with one hero card, one crew member card, and a worker pawn. Both the hero and first crew member are selected in a reverse player order at the start of the game. The goal is to score points by raiding locations in Cimmeria, Assyria, Persia, and Greece. Successful raiding yields points and resources. Those resources can be used to complete and score quest tiles that become available throughout the game as successful raids are completed. Some crew members and animals can also bring points at game end along with any extra resources a player may have ended up with.
Each player starts with one blue worker. Gray and red workers will become available as raids take place. Each player plays the entire game with only one worker. However, throughout the game, the color of their worker will change.
On each turn players will place their worker on either an action spot or a raiding location that accepts the color of that worker. For action spots, first take that action and leave the worker there for future use. Next, remove a worker from a different action spot and take that action. This now becomes their worker for their next turn. Actions allow players to gather coins needed to hire crew and provisions needed to launch raids. Additional actions allow drawing crew cards into a players’ hand, or to pay the coins to hire a crew member from their hand. Crew size is capped at five. Each crew member brings fighting strength and an ability that can be triggered by the use of an eagle. Eagles and horses can be added to a players’ crew to enhance fighting strength and special abilities. Once players have crew into fighting shape it is time to go raiding.
Alternatively, when placing on a raiding location, perform the raid, leave that worker, and take a worker assigned to that location during setup. This now becomes their worker for their next turn. Side note: workers placed in raiding locations remain there for the remainder of the game and are not available for reuse. To conduct a raid, a player must meet the crew size and provisions required by that location. Dice are then rolled that provide additional strength and to deliver wounds to their crew. Any crew member taking more wounds than they have fighting strength will parish. A successful raid will yield points and any plunder on the raided location. Plunder can consist of gold, equipment, wagons, and livestock all of which can be used later to claim quest tiles that are revealed after a successful raid.
Game end is triggered when all but two locations have been raided or, all but two quest tiles have been claimed. When one of these conditions is met, each player gets one more turn to score as many points as possible. Whoever has built the most dangerous crew and survived its many wounds will have accumulated the most points to be the champion Raider of Scythia.
| CONTINUE TO CHECK IN FOR THE LATEST IN BOARD GAMES AND JIGSAW PUZZLES. |
- Located at 30 NW 2nd Street in Historic Downtown Gresham.
- We have a full range of family games, strategy games, Euro-style games, war games, card games, dice games, and more. Additionally, for the jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts we carry quality puzzles from Ravensburger, Cobble Hill, White Mountain, Dowdle, Pomegranate, and New York Puzzle Company.
We proudly serve Gresham and the greater Portland and Vancouver area.