The scholars are here!

How do they keep doing it? Garphill Games keeps coming up with such brilliant games. 😍 Looking at them from afar, these games might look similar with the shared iconography and resources, but they are all so different. There are always either fresh new ideas or unique twists on well-known mechanics, skillfully combined in fun ways. I am always amazed. 😮 The newest title, Scholars of the South Tigris is here, which is the second game of the South trilogy. After Wayfarers our expectations were really high, but they were easily met. ✌️

The South trilogy games use dice 🎲 worker placement as their main focus, and you have a ton of innovation again. First of all there is bag building: you start out with a dice pool and will add and remove dice from it as you play. Each time you take a Rest action, you will draw some dice from your bag and discard your used ones. Each turn you can play an action card and place 1 or 2 dice on them, and the value and/or color will be important depending on the action. And now comes the coolest idea: you can do color mixing with your dice! 🤯

Dice are either white, 1 of 3 primary colors or 1 of 3 secondary colors (but those are rare). So for example if you place a Red 3 and a Blue 5, you actually get a Purple 8 action. There are some rules on how dice combine, but they are quickly understood. This is ingenious! 🤩 You can also get neutral workers that can increase dice value or “paint” 🎨 your dice and actions.

These 6 colors are also found in sections on the game board, so you see at a glance where you need them. But what do you do with these dice? In Scholars you travel around the known world, gathering scrolls containing all kinds of scientific knowledge, and hiring linguists to translate these to Arabic. You also gather influence in the 3 guilds of the House of Wisdom while trying to impress the Caliph.

💭 Stay tuned for more! There is so much to say!🤩