What the fuck did I just waste five hours of my life on?
Ok, I’ve hidden my opening sentence. I try hard to never just rip into a game. But Wayfarers of the South Tigris is going to be a challenge. To be perfectly blunt, it was one of the worst gaming experiences I’ve had in a very long time. Because of the length, possibly ever.
For context, I played in a group of four very experienced gamers, who are not unaccustomed to bigger and/or longer games. All four days at the convention we were at had at least one 4-6 hour game played. The game was right up their alley, and we were all excited to play it.
We went through the rulebook as a group, and after over an hour still didn’t get it. Two of us went online to watch a how-to-play video and two of us wandered over to another area of the convention, where someone was teaching it to another group. After another 20-30 minutes of that, we felt ready-ish and came back together. We all agreed —and the person who taught us felt the same as well— this was one of the WORST rulebooks that you could imagine.
The first few turns of the game went slowly and felt like we were still missing something. After a few rounds, we fell into a good pattern and things sped up. We started to understand the iconography and make a bit of a plan. Unfortunately, this was nothing more than a short-lived honeymoon period. Soon we found ourselves hindered by a lack of resources and mired in unattainable static market choices. After hours of mostly frustration, someone finally triggered the end game.
I was especially happy at them doing so since I was two-three turns away from being able to do anything even remotely beneficial at that point. I was stuck unable to advance on the journaling track, and virtually every available card had prerequisites I didn’t have or didn’t provide the prerequisites I needed to change that. There were actions I could theoretically take, but none that actually mattered. As I mentioned, the markets are effectively static, unless you gamble on burning actions to change one of them and hope the rest of the players don’t land you back in the same situation again.
That was probably the biggest issue with the gameplay, that all of us encountered at some point in the game. The markets are completely static, with no way to rotate or clear unwanted cards. We would go for rounds until someone had no other choice than to take an unwanted card, and if something worthwhile came up to replace that card, it was snapped up almost immediately, often leaving that market to sit until someone again had no better option.
It’s very likely that a second or third game would go much quicker and easier. It wouldn’t change the glaring pitfalls, but at least we would know to expect them and maybe be able to avoid some of them. All of us agreed on that point. We were all very open to playing most games a second time because it’s not unusual for a game to play smoother the second time around. But none of us were even remotely interested in sinking any more time or energy into Wayfarers. I hate to say this, but the best part of the game was putting it away.
I will say the art is very good and if you’ve seen anything from Garphill Games, you know what you can expect there. The basics of the gameplay aren’t inherently bad. Actually, the game has all the potential to be quite good. I’m sure we could house-rule away most of the problems, but the experience was just so demoralizing that I can tell you for certain that none of us are likely to seek out the chance to ever find out. I won’t say it’s a bad game. Bad luck? Maybe. Bad experience. Certainly. Bad rulebook? Understatement of the year. But I can’t bring myself to play it enough to call the game itself bad.
One of our other writers, Tony, was hoping to have a chance to play Wayfarers. It took a bit longer than he planned, but his review will be going live in a few days. In an earlier draft of this review, I said that if/when he does get to play and I hope he loves it. I truly hope that what we experienced was nothing more than an unlikely stroke of bad luck and that other people will play this and have an amazing time. But there’s simply no way to sugarcoat how it basically ruined half a day that I can’t get back. (You’ll have to come back in order to find out id he did.)
After the West Kingdom and North Sea trilogies, Wayfarers of the South Tigress is intended as the first of a new trilogy of games, to be followed by Scholars of the South Tigris later this year and Inventions of the South Tigris sometime next year.
You can find Garphill Games online at garphill.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/garphillgames.