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Altiplano, a bag-building game along the lines of Orléans set in the South American highlands of the Andes — the Altiplano — is not a simple game, presenting players with new challenges time and again. There are various ways to reach the goal, so the game remains appealing to try out new options and strategies, but success or failure also depends on whether your opponents let you do as you like or thwart the strategy you are pursuing. The competition for the individual types of goods is considerable — as is the fun in snatching a coveted extension card from under another player’s nose!
Each player starts with a unique role tile, giving them access to different goods and methods of production. Players have limited access to production at the start, but they can acquire additional production sites throughout the game that give new options. The numerous goods — such as fish, alpaca, cacao, silver or corn — all have their own characteristics and places where they can be used. For example, while silver can be sold for a high price at the market, fish can be exchanged for other goods at the harbor and alpaca can produce wool that can then be made into cloth at the farm.
Aside from building up an effective production, players must fulfill their orders at the right time, develop the road in good time and store their goods cleverly enough to fill their warehouses in the most valuable way. Often, a good warehouse keeper is more relevant in the end than the best producer.
Ages | 12+ |
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Players | 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players |
Play Time | 60m – 120m |
Designer | Reiner Stockhausen |
Mechanics | Action Points, Contracts, Deck, Bag, and Pool Building, Variable Player Powers |
Theme | Economic |
Publisher | Angry Lion Games, Arrakis Games, Baldar, dlp games, GaGa Games, Giochix.it, Meeple BR Jogos, Pixie Games, Surfin' Meeple China, White Goblin Games, Arclight, Reflexshop, Renegade Game Studios |
ajax013
+ Excellent combination of building up your abilities, shaping your long-term goals, and making tough tactical decisions each turn; The movement of your player pawn and the spatial considerations there make the game that much better for me. - I really want more for this game, some way to keep it fresh play after play after play. Why it's previously-owned: Too little variety from play to play. Even with the different characters, they really didn't make it feel like the game was any different than the time before it. I enjoyed this game, but it got played out.
baddice
Thoughts after three games, all two player. This has gone down well with Mrs B and myself, playing in about an hour and 15 minutes. I've never played Orleans, by the same designer, so can't compare it with that, but it has obvious similarities with deck builders. A key difference here is that you are drawing a certain number of counters per turn and can in effect “park” ones you don't immediately use on your player board. This means that you can plan ahead for a particular combo, it doesn't have to come up in the same hand. The game amounts to a competition to build the most efficient machine, which you can do by increasing the number of counters you draw each turn, the number of moves your meeple can make between the board locations, or by selling goods for money that can be used to buy additional action options. But if you focus too much on these choices you'll fall behind an opponent who's busy using cheap goods to get more valuable ones. These in turn help you to complete order cards and rows in your warehouse. Both these moves can produce lots of VPs but you need to judge carefully when to carry them out, especially early in the game, because doing so will remove the necessary counters from your supply. There are some fine balances to be weighed. There's no direct player confrontation but it's not multi-player solitaire – there's competition for the dwindling resources which becomes crucial towards the end of the game as you find yourself needing the last cloth or silver or whatever to complete a high-scoring order card or warehouse row. Your ability to get it might depend on something as basic as having one more food counter, itself worth 0 VPs, that lets you make one more meeple move. That makes for a tense endgame. Rating increased to 8.5 after more two and four player games. I had to increase it on account of the number of requests to play it's getting. Some critics have called it multi-player solitaire, and one even said that there was so little player interaction they took their actions simultaneously rather than going round the table. This is wrong. In most games I play you'll hear the cry “I wanted that” as one player takes a card or last resource token wanted by another. Admittedly this is infrequent, but it happens often enough to make it important to plan for something you need. If it is multi-player solitaire then it is only in the sense that the Olympics 100 metres is multi-player solitaire: the runners might not actually be trying to trip each other but their success is measured against their competitors. Same in Altiplano: there's no take-that, but you'll only win if your engine is working better than that of anyone else.
AndySzy
Bag building. It's been a long time since I played Orleans, so I can't make the natural comparison. Automobiles is a race game and feels very different. I think the most interesting element of this was how certain resources are simply not available to every player - if you don't start with a cocoa or get a cocoa canoe, you get no cocoa. The bag building itself seemed a bit inconsequential, as I was drawing nearly all my tokens every round. Interesting, I would play again but don't need to look for it.