Altiplano - First Play!

19th November 2022

It's a Saturday morning and we're at Bisley for Wogglecon 5 'It's a alive!' - a day of gaming goodness and a bit of charity.

Have you ever fancied travelling South American highlands with nothing but a cart of goods to keep you company, going from place to place, hunting for fish, chopping down trees, trading and so forth. If the answer is yes, then maybe Altiplano is the game for you.

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What's in a game?
Altiplano has a whole shedload of components, so here we go!

• Player boards: Not content with 1 player board, Altiplano gives each player 2 of them.
  • Action board: This busy looking board lists all the actions the player can perform. Actions will have 1 or more action spaces to place required goods to activate.
    Each board has 7 locations which correspond to the game's 7 locations and each location lists the actions related to it. For example; 2 food can be spent at the forest to gain 1 wood. 
    The board also has a movement track with spaces for carts or wheel barrows I guess as well as food.
    Finally, the board has 8 numbered 'planning' spaces to place tokens when they are drawn from the player's bag.
  • Warehouse: Each player also has a warehouse board. These look like grids but actually they are rows and can be used to store tokens which in turn score Victory Points (VPs) at the game end.

Action board and warehouse board.

• ​Containers: Each player also has a container, which in reality is a carboard box that folds together.

Red container.

• Bags: Each player is given a bag to randomly pull their tokens out of during the game.
• Meeple: There's a meeple in each player colour as well as a little wooden cube.
• Cards: There are primarily 3 types of cards in Altiplano.
  • Boat cards: These are worth VPs and more importantly, they allow players to acquire a good of the displayed type and add it to their container. 
  • House cards: These also score VPs, they also increase the VP value of all tokens for the good listed on the card. 
  • Order cards: Players can acquire these cards and when the order is fulfilled (With various types of goods.) they provide the controlling player with VPs.
  • Mission cards (Optional.): Mission cards provide players with hidden scoring opportunities.
• Tokens: Altiplano also makes use of a lot of types of token to represent resources, in fact at least 12 types of tokens. These include:
  • Goods: alpaca, cacao, corn, food, cloth, fish, glass, ore, silver, stone, wood and wool. These are all identically sized circular tokens, except for the corn tokens which are square.
  • Money: Sort of squarish card tokens of various sizes are used to represent different denominations of money.
  • Carts: Slightly larger than the other cubes, brown cubes are used to represent carts.
• Tiles: A large variety of tiles are used in the game. Pretty much all of the tokens and cards except money are associated with location tiles
  • Location tiles: These 7 large tiles are places that the players will visit to perform actions and essentially constitute the game's board. 
    The locations are:
    Farm: Alpaca, cloth and wool tokens go here.
    Forest: Cacao and wood tokens go here.
    Harbor: Fish tokens and boat cards go here.
    Market: Glass tiles and order tiles go here.
    Mine: Ore, silver and stone tokens go here.
    Road: Corn tiles go here (As do cubes in player colours.).
    ​Village: The cart cubes and house cards go here.
    Extension strip: This is not a location but used in conjunction with extension tiles. It has 5 spaces for 5 extension tiles, listed next to each space is a additional cost going from 0 at the bottom space all the way up to 4 at the top space. When tiles are acquired, remaining tiles are slid down to fill the gas and new tiles are introduced at the top. It's a pretty standard conveyor belt mechanic.
    Speaking of extension tiles...
  • Extension tiles: These tiles provide extra actions that can be performed when acquired. They are divided into 4 groups; A through to D.
  • Role tiles: There are 7 of these and they each provide the controlling player with an additional action and also determine their starting resources.
• First player standee: I usually don't bother mentioning the first player tokens because... well it's not too important but Altiplano uses a massive alpaca shaped standee as a pretty cool first player marker.
  Yes, it's a gimmick and I'm easily impressed.

First player marker next to a meeple for comparison.

Right, I think that's it for components.

Altiplano's components are for the most part solidly made, the tokens, boards and tiles are constructed of thick card and feel sturdy.
The containers made of equally sturdy material but are supplied as flat components that need to need folded into their shape. They sort of clip together but some of them had a tendency to break open. It's not a problem really and nothing that a dab of PVA glue wouldn't solve but even so, it feels a little like a cheap oversight. 
Cards are pretty average but also smaller than typical cards which allows them to fit on the tiles.
Finally, the meeples and cubes all feel like nice wooden components.

Altiplano is a game with a South American theme and consequently has a South American folk art themed art style to it.
There's a lot of bright solid colours with stylised line art that mixes with slightly cartoony illustrations to be found on the tokens, cards, board and tiles. It's all solid artwork, brash and colourful which is how I like it.
The only criticism I have is for the colour schemes for the cloth and wool tokens, which in less than good light can look similar.

Between all the location actions, tokens, extension tile actions and so on, there's quite a lot of iconography to Altiplano. Luckily, much of it is intuitive and easily comprehended but some of it will - particularly the extension tiles - will require referring to the rulebook, fortunately it contains fairly extensive explanations.
​It's not a gamebreaker but there's definitely a bit of a learning curve here.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Game area: Set the central playing area up.
  • Location boards: Randomly arrange the 7 location tiles in a ring shape.
    • Tokens: Sort all the tokens as per player count and add them to their pertinent location tiles. Only food and money do not go on to a location tile.
    • Cards: Add the boat, house and order cards face-up to their pertinent location tiles.
  • Extension strip: Put the extension strip in the centre of the ring.
    • Extension tiles: First sort the extension tiles as per player count, then sort them by type (A, B, C and D.) and shuffle each type into face-down stacks. Finally arrange them into a single face-down stack, with the A stack at the top, going down to the D stack at the bottom.
    • Place extension tiles: Draw and place 5 tiles from the stack along the 5 spaces on the edge of the extension strip.
• Players: Give each player an action board, warehouse board and bag.
  • Meeples: Give each player the meeple, cube and container in their colour. Each player's cube should go on the '0' space on the road location.
  • Role tile: Randomly assign a role tile to each player. The tile should be placed adjacent its location on the player's action board.
    Each player should then take their starting resources as indicated on the tile, goods and food should be placed them into their bag. Money should be put to the side in a personal supply.
    Finally each player should take a brown cart cube from the village location and place it in the topmost space in the movement track on their action board.
• First player: Determine a starting player then each player places their meeple on any one of the 7 location tiles. Now we're ready to play.

On to play
In Altiplano players will be making plans to travel around the location tiles and use their goods to carry out the actions specific to those locations.
This is done over 4 phases:

• Drawing phase: This phase is carried simultaneously with all players drawing tokens from their bag and placing them on their planning spaces.
  At the start of the game, players can only use 4 planning spaces, thus only draw 4 tokens from their bag. However, by moving their cube up the road location, players will unlock more planning spaces which mean they can draw and use more goods tokens.
  Empty bag: If at any time a player needs to draw 1 or more tokens from their bag and it's empty, then they tip the contents of their container into the bag, give it a good shake and continue drawing.
  Taking tokens back: Obviously, this does not apply during the first round but before drawing tokens, a player can choose to take tokens they have previously placed on action spaces but not resolved off of those action spaces. However, these tokens must be placed on planning spaces which consequently lessen the number of tokens they can draw. Money retrieved in this manner is returned to the player's personal play.
• Planning phase: This phase is also performed simultaneously. In this phase players take goods from their planning spaces (Or money from their personal supply.) and place them on action spaces on the board. This includes the movement track and also extension tiles a player may have acquired.
  All actions require specific goods to activate them.
  Most locations have 1 or 2 spaces, except the village which has 3. Some actions require 1 good (And thus may be performed more than once.) while many actions require 2 goods.
  A player may choose not to place all the goods on their action spaces but this would mean they draw less tokens in the following round.
  When placing goods and money, players do not need to complete the action to place them. If an action requires 2 tokens, they can place just one of them even if it won't complete the action. It's a useful way to keep planning spaces free.
• Action phase: This phase represents the bulk of the game's activities and thus has many elements.
  • Turns: Unlike the previous 2 phases, starting with the current first player, actions are carried out in turn order one action at a time. The active player resolves one action, then play progresses to the next player.
    Passing: If a player cannot complete an action, they must pass. Additionally, a player may choose to pass even if they could complete an action. In either case, when a player passes, they are no longer involved in the action phase for the current round.
  • Movement: Movement does not count as an action but can be performed as part of an action.
    Timing: Movement may be performed before or after an action.
    Moving: Each player starts the game with 1 cart cube. A player can slide it to the 'used' side on their movement track to move their meeple up to 3 location either way around the circle of locations.
    Additional movement If a player has put food on to other movement track spaces, they may 'spend' it to move during another action. However they can only move 1 location unless they have acquired additional carts, in which case they can move 3 locations.
  • Actions: There are lot of actions a player can perform and several rules associated with them.
    Location: A player's meeple must be at the action's location in order to perform that action, this includes extension and role tiles.
    Paying tokens: Actions require players to pay the required tokens to resolve them. Other than money, anytime a token is 'spent' the token(s) are not actually spent instead they are put into the player's container and will ultimately end up going back into the player's bag. Only money is actually spent and returned to the central supply.
    Acquiring goods: When acquired, most goods tokens immediately go into a player's container. The exceptions are money which goes into the player's personal supply and corn, which is explained below.
  • Resolving actions: Each location has one or more actions which can be resolved by players.
    • Farm: cloth, food and wool can be acquired here.
    • Forest: cloth, food, glass and wood can be acquired here
    • Harbor: Fish and food can be acquired.
      Boat cards can also be acquired here which allow players to add tokens to their container. A player may choose any available boat card.
    • Market: The market has several actions.
      Sell goods: Some goods can be sold for 1-3 coins each, as with all actions, goods that are sold are actually put into the player's container.
      Buy extension: A player can purchase 1 extension tile per round. The total cost is the cost on the tile plus the cost from it's position on the extension strip. If a extension is bought, it is not replaced until the last phase.
      Order cards: These can be bought here too, which allows the player to choose any available order card.. A player may only have 1 unfulfilled order card at a time.
      Deliver goods: This action allows the player to move goods placed here on to an order card. When a order is completed, it will earn the controlling player VPs during the endgame, generally it will also give the player a corn token, more on these later. 
    • Mine: Silver and stone can be acquired here.
    • Road: Completing the road action may have 1 of 2 effects. Either it unlocks a planning space for a player or it provides them with a corn token, again, more on corn below.
    • Village: The village also has several types of action.
      Buy cart: Players can buy a cart and place it on an available space on their movement track.
      Buy house card: A player can buy any available house card. House cards increase the VP value of the displayed good during the endgame.
      Store goods: This action allows the player to move goods off of the action spaces and into their warehouse. There are however, several restrictions here.
      • No food: Food tokens cannot be placed into the warehouse.
        Same goods: A row can only have 1 type of good in it. Thus if the 1st good in a row is a fish token, all the subsequent tokens in that row must be fish tokens. Additionally, there can only be 1 incomplete per type of good. A row of fish must be completed before a second row can be started.
        Bottom-to-top: When a good is placed in the warehouse, it must be in the lowest available space, either in a new row or an existing one.
        Left-to-right: A good must also be placed into the leftmost open space in the row it is placed into. A row is considered complete when the rightmost space has been filled.
      • Corn: There are several rules regarding corn.
        Store immediately: Regardless of how a player gains a corn token, when they gain it, it must immediately be stored in the warehouse.
        Wildcard: Corn can be used as any type of good for a row that has already been started. E.g., if a player has started a row of fish, it can be added to that row and even complete it.
        If there is no incomplete row to add the corn token to, then it starts it's own row!
        Corn rows takes priority: When storing corn, if there is a row that was started with corn, then corn tokens must go into that row before any other until it's completed!
• End of round phase: Once all players have passed, the game goes to end of round and several events occur.
  New first player: The first player marker is passed on to the player on the left who will be the new first player.
  Reset carts: All carts are put back to their initial positions.
  Manage extension strip: If any extension tiles we bought during the action phase, remaining tiles are slid downwards to fill the gaps and new tiles are added to the gaps now at the top.
  If no extension tiles were brought during the action phase, the bottommost extension tile is discarded, the other tiles are slid down and a new tile is added to the top.
  Now a new round begins with the first phase.

​Endgame
Play continues until one of the following 2 criteria are met.
Any one location becomes fully emptied of all tokens, cards, etc.
Or, a space along the extension strip cannot be filled, i.e., the extension tiles supply has emptied.
In either instance, the current round is completed and 1 further round is played, then the game goes to scoring.

VPs will come from a variety of sources.

• Goods tokens: Tokens can score 0-4 VPs each depending on the type. Tokens on a player's action board, warehouse, in their bag and container all count.
  Tokens on order cards are not counted.
• Warehouse: Each completed row in a player's warehouse will score it's associated VPs.
• Cards: Boat and house cards earn their respective VPs. Completed order cards also earn their VPs.
• Bonus VPs: If a player has house cards, they will earn bonus VPs for the corresponding goods.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
As you can see from the write up so far, there's quite a lot going on in Altiplano and a lot for players to think about.

There's a recognisable quandary going on with the bag building mechanic.
Players will naturally be looking to acquire tokens to carry out actions but invariably there will be times they end up getting pulled from the bag when they're not needed and unneeded tokens can 'water down' a player's strategies.
Unwanted tokens can of course be left on planning spaces but most players will find that irritatingly suboptimal. Alternatively, they can placed on spaces for action that a player does not immediately want to perform but they will eventually end up coming back  to again though. Another option albeit fairly situational, is to put them on to order cards, although removes the goods from the remainder of the game.
Finally, they can be put into the warehouse, this means those tokens have greater scoring opportunities but again, permanently removes them from a player's container/bag which may or may not be a good thing. layers will have judge the merits of storing tokens contextually - except when dealing with glass tokens. The thing with glass tokens is that they don't produce any other type of token, all they do is produce the most VPs per token, storing them in the warehouse where they contribute to more VPs and declutter a player's bag is a no-brainer and usually I consider no-brainers a bad thing for a board game but I feel this is a deliberate decision on the part of the game - more on that below.

If you've been paying attention (And I'm sure you have!) you will also have noticed that several goods such as a cacao, alpacas and even something that seems that it should be common such as fish cannot be produced from the action board.
So how are these acquired?
There's a couple of opportunities to get them, namely boat cards, extension tiles and possibly role tiles.
However, this brings me to a bit of a bugbear I have with this scarcity mechanic. It means there can be a race by experienced players to get those hard-to-produce goods, particularly cacao which produces glass which can be worth so many VPs. In fact I feel the whole of the forest location is especially strong location since cacao alone is used there for 3 separate actions in the same location. A player who can produce cacao and concentrates on doing so can soon be producing lots of goods at the forest.
Having said that, the game is a bit of a point salad with various avenues to scoring VPs, it's just that I feel going for glass is the strongest way and experienced players will end competing in that tactic.

While the bulk of the game's activity takes place during the action phase, the planning phase is where players will do most of their well... planning. They'll look to optimise there actions to get the most out of their available tokens.
Because players will generally need to move around to perform multiple actions, efficient use of the movement track is important, especially so in the early game when food tokens will be scarcer. A player can move their meeple before or after an action may make it seem unimportant but sometimes players will need to think ahead about where they need to be at the start of the next round.
As well as having to think about movement and balancing their goods with their bags, players will also have to think about gaining extensions, house and order cards, as well as boat cards if they are needed. 
Add to this increasing their planning spaces and acquiring corn to fill out their warehouse and players have lot of ways to approach the game
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In this regard Altiplano does that thing which presents players with lots of options but frequently not enough opportunity to do everything they want, forcing them to make tricky decisions, which I consider a good thing in games.

Altiplano is a mid-to-heavy game with a longish playtime, it's probably not for beginners and perhaps could be criticised for being a bit over-elaborate although personally I didn't find it that much of a problem
In conclusion; the mechanics blend together to give players choices and essentially problems to solve in optimising their actions. If bag-building style games and resource management are your thing, Altiplano is worth a try.