Options, Icons & Combos oh my.
Overview
In Wayfarers of the South Tigris, you are wayfarers (travellers by foot), placing dice/meeples/influence in order to gain cards/upgrade tiles/money/provisions, until the end is triggered by one player reaching the far end of the Journal Track. At this point, the player with the most points wins. Simple, right? Anything but.
Now don’t get me wrong. The actions are simple enough, but the complexity comes from the number of choices you have (there are 4 different types of cards, 5 different upgrade tiles, and icons galore). Keep in mind, I’ve only gotten to play this once so this is more of an initial impression as opposed to a full-blown review.
Gameplay
On your turn, you’ll do 1 of 3 actions: Place a die, place a worker or rest. Let me explain a bit about each.
Place a die.
Each player starts with 3 dice, which are rolled during setup. When taking this action, you will choose one of those dice & place it on your player board, matching the die with the particular spot (either on a card or the board itself). The “matching” comes from the column in which the die value was located. For example, at the beginning of the game, the 1 column shows a camel as well as another item (depending on the board). Could be a coin, a provision, or an influence. When using this die, you must place it on a spot that either has a camel on it or is blank (any die works). Once placed, you carry out the action to the right of the placed die, either gathering resources or spending resources for a benefit. As you gain more cards, mainly the Land & Sea cards, more placement spots will be acquired.
Place a worker.
Each player starts with 2 workers (Yellow & Blue). Around the central board (which contains the Journal Track taking up most of it), the various cards will be placed & depending on the type of card determines its location. Certain sections are only accessible by certain colours of meeple & only one colour of each meeple can go there (Green is another colour that will be unlocked later, through the Journal Track). You place your meeple on a card next to a particular action & carry out that action (acquire cards, resources, influence, upgrade tiles, etc). If there happens to be an influence of another player on that card, you must pay that player a resource (coin or provision). If the action is gaining a card & there are meeples on that card (up to 3 depending on the action location), you get those meeples.
Rest
When resting, you’ll get at least a coin & movement on the Journal Track. This is the main way to advance on this track. There are other cards that will give you additional benefits during the resting period that can be acquired. When moving on the Journal Track, you take your marker & move it to the next section, if you’ve met the listed requirements. Many of the sections will give you resources and some if you’re the first to get to certain areas, acquire a Green Meeple. Later sections also unlock additional dice for you to use each turn.
In order to rest, you must have 0-1 die left unused, otherwise, you must choose one of the other options (die or meeple). Once your rest action is complete, you’ll recover all your used dice & reroll them, placing them in their respective numerical position above your grid.
“My grid?”
I mentioned this earlier, the section under each numerical position, that shows different symbols or resources is the grid but let me explain a bit more about that. Many of the spots are prefilled with different symbols/resources but most of them are empty. That’s where the “Upgrade Tiles” that I’ve mentioned come into play. There are several worker placement spots that allow you to purchase these tiles, most of which are 2 sections, either horizontal or vertical but one group is a single spot. These tiles will upgrade (there it is) your grid to give you more resources or symbols in order to make your dice that much better. Some dice placement spots are not even possible until you’ve gotten some upgrade tiles because they may need multiple symbols in the same column.
Final Thoughts
Okay, now my overview really just scratches the surface of this game & again, each action is not that complicated. Where my issues come into play, at least on the first play, is it can be difficult to figure out where to go to accomplish a particular task. For example, the spot to pick up a Townsfolk card is on the opposite side of the board. Not necessarily intuitive. Speaking of the Townsfolk cards, let me quickly explain the different cards.
Land cards go to the left of your board & as mentioned, give you additional dice placement spots or ongoing effects. Sea cards go to the right of the board & give you similar options. Each of these cards will lay side-by-side with the ones before them, so over the course of the game, your player space will increase quite a bit. The Space cards go above the land/sea cards & generally give you an end-game score option. The Townsfolk cards go below the land/sea cards as long as the icons on the cards match (& only one Townsfolk per card). Lastly, you have Inspiration cards which can be added to Space cards to increase the potential scoring for that card.
The other issue with the game is the immense number of icons. I’m sure, once you’ve played this a few times, it’d be easy to figure out (& if you’ve played some of the other Shem Phillips games, some of the icons will be recognizable). So, when you combine the number of icons & the unintuitive locations of worker placement spots, it makes the flow of the game difficult.
Again, I’ve only gotten to play this once (& it took quite a while with 3 new players & a teacher) & I really like many of the previous games, especially the more complex ones, like Paladins & Viscounts. I wanted to like this more than I did & I’m sure, once I get a few more plays in, my rating will increase but as it is, I have to be honest with myself.
First Impressions
Family/Non-Gamer – 1/10
There are WAY too many icons and spots for a non-gamer. If I showed this to my wife (who will play occasionally & does like a few heavier games), she’d be like, “Oh hell no”. Honestly, I wouldn’t even suggest it to a non-gamer.
Average Gamer – 7/10
If you like lots of options & enjoy Shem’s other games, definitely give this a try. Many of my friends really like this one. I’m sure it’ll grow on me but right now, it gives me a headache just thinking about all those icons.
You can find Garphill Games online at garphill.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/garphillgames.
