Raiders revamp hits retail shelves

“I first had the idea to create a new game. I immediately did some research into other civilizations known for their brutality, much like the Vikings,” Shem said in an email communication. “When doing some initial reading on the Scythians, there skills with the bow and arrow, horse riding and love for gold stood out to me.

In addition, Mihajlo Dimitrievski’s distinctive art style—present in both Philips’ North Sea and West Kingdom trilogies, along with other titles—is absent, replaced with somewhat more serious-looking illustrations from the designer’s brother, Sam Philips.

“Sam is my older brother. I love working with them both. Very different styles, but they are both so easy to work with and so insanely creative,” Philips wrote.

The new illustrations depict a diverse cast of Scythian raiders.

“Some historians believe that they inspired the Greek legends of the Amazons,” Shem said. “The fact that they were are strange mix of Eastern European and Asian lineage meant we could have a good amount of diversity in the character art.”

The mechanical changes include the addition of animals, horses and eagles, with which you can upgrade your cast of raiders. Valkyries have been changed into wounds, which are a bit less punishing to your team.

The new board design replaces the four types of raiding locations in the original game, Harbours, Outposts, Monasteries, and Fortresses with four civilizations: Cimmeria, Assyria, Persia, and Greece. Furthermore the board is flipped, with the worker-placement village at the top rather than the bottom. Some readers on BoardGameGeek.com deemed this a potential issue.

“The action part of the map is on top of the map itself. You do a lot of movement of pieces during player turns on this side of the map, putting it on top means that if you’re sat on the side where you read the mapboard … you’re stretching all over the board to reach the action side,” BGG user @NeuroNicky wrote on the forums for the game. Shem responded that it never came up as a problem in playtesting.

In both games, you’re competing against opponents but not usually directly attacking each other. Your competition with them is built around getting to the best locations fastest.

If you are interested in buying either “Raiders” game, please consider patronizing your friendly local game store to support them in this challenging economic time.