Game 1: Base game + Sunny Days + The Traveler (with objectives, without events or traveler)
Game 2: Base game + Sunny Days + The Traveler (with objectives, events, and traveler)
Enthusiasm: ❤️🖤🖤🖤
- Inevitably, Altiplano invites comparisons to its spiritual predecessor, Orléans. I have a strong preference for the latter, although that may be due to my not yet having “solved” it yet.
- Unlike the foundational bag building game (Orléans), tiles aren’t reset with each turn. In addition, purchased tiles are put into the “discard” container… all of which the “bag building” system act identically to a standard deck builder. This makes the bag building mechanic fairly superficial, unfortunately.
- Due to the sheer number of components and the variability, setup is painful. Many, many pieces with different counts per-piece depending upon player count.
- Variable player powers (startup roles) is very nice, and the variable location layout adds a few changes to the beginning of the game (it matters less due to gaining carts during the game). The rotating market also ensures that each game plays out quite differently.
- The economy of Altiplano is deliberately too large for a single player to cover, with it becoming difficult (if not impossible, if other players act first) to gain certain resources if you don’t start with them. The Traveler expansion adds more ways to get those resources, but it’s still extremely difficult to build a diversified economy.