Garphil – Let's Game More

Top 5: Ancient Anthology

February 18, 2026 Luiz Gustavo Mendes

Garphil’s Ancient Anthology is a very interesting group of games. They started as individual outings apart from their other sagas, but because they shared an overall theme and starting to get numerous, they became their own thing.

With two more coming soon and many more I hope in the future, here is my top 5 games in the line. And, just to be clear, there 7 games and all 7 are really good. These are the ones I play the most.

5 – Assyria

Though not originally from the series, or even from Garphil, Assyria found a new home and it fits perfectly.

It’s a game with a lot of elements: action points, auction, resource management and even light engine building. But it all comes together in a very fluid and intuitive flow.

Assyria feels like a gateway to heavier euros, where it presents you with a ton of interesting choices, but never weighs you down with rules overload.

4 – Raiders of Scythia

The main reason this game is only on fourth is that its older sibling exists to share the space. The core elements that made Raiders of the North Sea amazing are kept here, but lots of improvements and ideas inspired by the expansions make this just as impressive.

Raiders of Scythia shows that the core mechanisms in North Sea are as good as ever, but it has enough identity to shine on its own feet.

3 – Skara Brae

Do you like resource management? Well, there are few games as resource-y and management-y than Skara Brae. Aided by drafting and worker placement, but the heart is managing how you earn, spend, trade and store the whopping 16 types of resources. But, even though it’s a huge number, it never feels excessive.

In its surface, Skara Brae is a simple game in terms of rules. But beneath there is a tense and rich game of resources where efficiency, planing and perfect timing are crucial for winning.

2 – The Anarchy

Why do we build the wall, my children, my children?

A game that was up until very recently one of my favorite verb and writes, Hadrian’s Wall, is not even on this list. Why? Well, The Anarchy exists.

If you like both verb and writes and amazingly complex systems, both games are mandatory for your collection. The essence is receive workers, than spend them to advance different tracks, earn more works, rinse and repeat. All in hopes to raise defenses and prepare for attacks.

The Anarchy is everything that made Hadrian’s Wall amazing, but it streamlines what was excessive and expands on its more intesting parts. It’s equal parts intense and rewarding.

1 – Ezra and Nehemiah

This is one of the heaviest games Garphil ever put out, and at first it does look daunting and intimidating. But once you start playing it’s surprisingly intuitive. The heart of the game is playing cards and adding banners, which will allow you to do certain actions better. But the one card you play have so many raficiations and possibilities that can make your head spin.

Ezra and Nehemiah feels like an amalgam of the best systems Garphil put out, but combined in a manner that feels unique. It’s a hard game to master, but one that offers something new each play.

Review

Let’s Review More: Raiders of Scythia

December 4, 2023December 4, 2023 Luiz Gustavo Mendes

1-4 Players

Designer: Shem Phillips

Artist: Sam Philips

Publisher: Garphil Games

About the Game

Garphil Games released an amazing game called Raiders of North Sea with two expansions and it’s still regarded as a modern classic. Then they went back on the system and released Raiders of Scythia. How does it fare against its predecessor and on its own?

Gameplay

The core premise remains: you start your turn with a single worker, you end with a single worker. One of your options is to work, where you will place your worker on one of the top locations and activate that to get or trade resources and cards, play crew or solve Quests. Then you pick up a worker from a different space and activate that too. Or you can raid, where you must have a number of crew members and spend provisions and Wagons to get all resources in one place and points depending how strong your crew is plus the dice from that region. However, the dice also place wounds on your crew, reducing their strength or even killing them.

Solo Gameplay

On the AI turn, they will block off one space, where you can’t place or pick workers from, and then proceed to try to raid. They check if there is an available spot on the right region, if they have enough provisions and enough strength from horses. If any of these are false, they either get a quest or more of whatever is missing. Otherwise, they clean up the spot and get a fixed amount of victory points.

Components

For the most part, the components are Garphil level quality. Great cards, great art, meaningful symbology. I love the Kumis and provision tokens, and the coins, specially on the Deluxe, are amazing.

There are some snags though. Unlike North Sea, all bag resources are hexes, just with different colors. However, the brown and black are hard to tell apart in some lights. This is specially jarring since brown ones (Wagons) are necessary to raid lower regions.

I also feels like the board is way too crowded. The art is great, but it is a busy background and can be visually overwhelming.

Comparing Raiders

Raiders of Scythia is basically Raiders of the North Sea with some of expansions integrated, but there are new things.

The heroes now are not one special type of crew, but your character that has an unique action that can be taken on the Town Centre without discarding a card. Also, gone is the armor and Valkyrie tracks (not big fans of Odin those Scythians). Instead, the damage from Fields of Fame are integrated on all raids. Also, you now can get horses and eagles to boost strength, provide victory points and add more actions to the Town Centre.

From Hall of Heroes, mead to strength up your attacks becomes Kumis, and the Quests are mixed with the chieftain tributes and are a single thing.

So, strictly speaking, do you need both? No, you don’t. There is plenty of overlap between them that having one makes you not miss out big on the other. But is there space for both? Absolutely. I own both and play them in different times for different reasons.

For me, if you want to pick one it boils down to if you will get just one box of each, or if you would get North Sea complete. As a base game, Scythia is more robust and interesting. But, when complete, I like the options of North Sea better. Also, visually I like North Sea way better.

Conclusion

What about on its own? Raiders of Scythia is absolutely fantastic. It gets a simple premise with simple rules, and transforms it into this game with an ebb and flow play style where every turn is a question of efficiency and opportunity. And it took its big brother and condensed into this fantastic amalgam that is truly bigger and better than all its parts.

It’s not without its faults, components being the biggest. But, in the grand scheme, those are fairly minor

Score:9/10

Review

Let’s Review More: Raiders of Scythia

December 4, 2023 Luiz Gustavo Mendes

1-4 Players

Designer: Shem Phillips

Artist: Sam Philips

Publisher: Garphil Games

About the Game

Gameplay

Solo Gameplay

Components

For the most part, the components are Garphil level quality. Great cards, great art, meaningful symbology. I love the Kumis and provision tokens, and the coins, specially on the Deluxe, are amazing.

I also feels like the board is way too crowded. The art is great, but it is a busy background and can be visually overwhelming.

Comparing Raiders

Raiders of Scythia is basically Raiders of the North Sea with some of expansions integrated, but there are new things.

From Hall of Heroes, mead to strength up your attacks becomes Kumis, and the Quests are mixed with the chieftain tributes and are a single thing.

Conclusion

It’s not without its faults, components being the biggest. But, in the grand scheme, those are fairly minor

Score:9/10

Review

Let’s Review More: Scholars of the South Tigris

November 20, 2023November 20, 2023 Luiz Gustavo Mendes

1-4 Players

Designers: S. J. MacDonald, Shem Phillips

Artist: Mihajlo Dinitrievski

Publisher: Garphil Games

About the Game

We have the second game on Garphil’s third trilogy, this time about transcribing knowledge from all around the world. As usual it’s hard to follow up a great first game in Wayfarers, so how do Scholars fair?

Gameplay

On your turn, you either play a card or rest. To play a card, you chose one of the actions on you board and play a card and 1-2 dice. The dice will not only determine the value of the action, but also the color. Some actions care about just value, some just color, some both. Primary color dice will also combine color to secondary ones. Each dice can also be modified by up to two works to either change their color or to improve its value. There are less actions this time, mainly getting more translators, adding scrolls to be translated and translating them, and going up on the different scientific tracks.

When you rest, you rest, you get the income of all the cards you play. Those are either getting some dice or activating the income of one of the tracks. This dynamic makes the timing of acting and resting really interesting.

Solo Gameplay

As usual, we have a dedicated solo board, and it uses the 2 color system that Wayfarers used. This 6 card solo deck means that the AI is just interested in getting translators and dealing with scrolls, ignoring the science tracks. However, it still feels like a realistic, though abstracted, opponent.

One big difference is that we don’t have “personalities” this time around, but difficulty levels. I appreciate that route, as it would be difficult to isolate or incentivize too much one aspect.

Components

This is a standard Garphil production, with all the good stuff that comes with it. Great art, great components, lots and lots of symbols but a pretty good rule book with a back dedicated to symbology. It also uses all the familiar components, with the little flag for tracks, asterisks for influence and lots of familiar symbols.

One aspect I think they did great is accessibility. For a game that uses color as one of its central mechanisms, I believe that the way the symbols of the primary and secondary colors differ on more than just color, and the color of the dice and pips were chosen make this fairly color blind friendly. I’m no expert in the matter though.

Conclusion

Scholars feel smaller in scale, but that is actually a good thing. All systems in Scholars feel tighter and more connected. When comparing to Wayfarers, Scholars felt a bit more intuitive though no less of a challenge to optimize.

There is not much to criticize here. It’s what you expect from SJ and Shem, but it feels like a step towards a cleaner and less comborific fashion. And it works really well.

Score: 9.5/10