Five Tribes Review

There were a lot of great games released at Gen Con this year. Five Tribes, from Days of Wonder and Bruno Cathala, was one of the most talked about - and hardest to get.

Now that the game has finally hit distribution, does it live up to all that hype?

No "board" but still takes up a lot of space!
Looks good doing it, though.

Five Tribes is a part logistics puzzle, part action selection, part point salad game that pits players against one another, each of them trying to best maneuver the five tribes of the "Land of 1001 Nights" in order to become the next Sultan!

The game board is made up of 30 individual tiles, which are arranged randomly before each game. Meeples of 5 different colors are placed on these tiles, also randomly. Players will take turns picking up a group of meeples from any tile on the board, and dropping one off at a time, mancala-style, until they drop the last meeple they picked up. One important rule when choosing which tile to end up at - there must already be a meeple on the tile the player ends with that matches the color of the meeple she is placing on the tile.

Days of Wonder has included some large, but superb player aids.

Once the player finishes distributing the group of meeples she picked up, she performs two actions. First, she picks up all of the meeples on the tile she ended on that match the color of the meeple she placed there (always at least two because of the rule I mentioned above), and executes that tribe's action. If the player was able to pick up all of the meeples on a tile (because they were all the same color of the meeple she placed there) she gets to place one of her camels on the tile, and will score that tile's depicted points at the end of the game. Then, she also gets to perform the action of the tile she ended on.

The leftmost tile allows a player to
buy 2 goods cards for 6 gold.

The actions of the tribes and the tiles are quite varied and give players the opportunity to score points in a variety of different ways. Some allow players to get money right away, which can be used in game, or exchanged 1:1 at the end of the game for points. Some allow players to acquire powerful Djinns which can grant either in-game or end-game bonuses. And others will allow players to go to the market, and attempt to assemble sets of goods card which can be traded in for large amounts of points/money.

Gameplay continues until either one player places all of her camels or there are no legal moves left (no groups of meeples can be distributed in such a way that the final meeple to be placed will be the same color as one already on the destination tile).

The biggest potential problem for Five Tribes is how many options players are presented with, all at once. Five Tribes is not a game that starts off at a reasonable pace, and then ramps up as the game progresses. For the most part, from when the game begins, the number of choices for the players is gradually decreasing, as more meeples are removed from the board, and more tiles become owned by players. That not only can make the game intimidating and difficult to learn for new players, but it can also lead to a lot of analysis paralysis for experienced players. This can lead to awful amounts of downtime for the rest of the table. This also, however, means that player turns are almost never boring, and each point earned by players really feels like the result of proper planning and execution.



One of the most exciting parts of Five Tribes is something I haven't mentioned yet - bidding for turn order. Before each round, players will bid for turn order. There is a bidding track, like in Amun-Re or Vegas Showdown, where the values are fixed, and in turn order of the previous round, players place their bidding pawns on the amount of money they are willing to pay for turn order. This is interesting in itself and leads to a bit of bluffing and gamesmanship, but keep in mind also that at the end of the game, money is converted into points at a rate of 1:1.

The main mechanism of Five Tribes, the manacala-esque distribution of meeples is so much fun and super satisfying. Players are challenged each turn to both get as many points as they can (hopefully more than they bid for their turn order) as well as keep from setting the other players up to either take ownership or a tile or otherwise have a huge turn.

Five Tribes absolutely lives up to the hype that surrounded it during Gen Con. The game is a solid 9.0 in my book - one of my favorite releases this year.

Cave Troll Review

Now it is about time for us to check out the little game of Cave Troll.

Cave Troll, at its core, is an area control game - but with the areas represented by rooms in a dungeon.  On each turn, the active player gets to take a total of four actions.  And, for those actions, they can choose any of the following (repeating them if they so choose): draw and play a card, move a hero or monster, play an artifact card, and use a hero or monster ability.  Certain cards have a picture of a sand timer on them.  When you play these cards, they remain in play as a count down to a scoring round.  When there are more than four sand timers visible, then each room scores a number of points equal to the amount of gold pieces showing on it to whoever has the most heroes in it (with bonus points if a treasure chest or dwarf is in the room).  Once a player's deck runs out of cards, there is a final scoring round, and whoever has the most points wins the game!

My first pro for Cave Troll are the Cave Troll cards.  Shouldn't this be obvious?  The game is named after them!  Basically, the Cave Trolls are nuclear bombs that you can drop on a location.  When you play them, each player can move one of his units out of the space where the Cave Troll is played, but after that, it's like the space no longer exists - treasure chests are destroyed, nobody scores points for it, and you can't even move through it.  Additionally, the Cave Troll also cannot move.  In the games that I've played, the Cave Troll generally doesn't wind up doing much damage.  But, because of the threat of someone playing him, it forces players to diversify their actions.  This helps there be less spaces on the board where players collect all of their units trying to pile up all of their different bonuses.

Cave Troll the destroyer

Well, honestly, the Cave Troll isn't the only special unit that I like in the game.  I guess, ultimately, I would list all of the special figures as a pro - they really add some spice to the game.  Without them, it would simply be a dry mechanical puzzle more than an enjoyable game.  There is a thief that can immediately move to anywhere on the board, a dwarf that doubles the gold value of a room, and a knight that prevents opponents from moving through his space.  Oh, and you also get monsters!  (Monsters could be considered a third pro.)  The monsters don't even count towards you controlling a space.  You use them only to harass your opponents!  For example, there is an Orc that can kill heroes, and a Wraith that can push them around.  (And, of course, there is also the Cave Troll, which is classified as a monster.)  It's also nice that they provide an alternative sets of cards for the figures - this lets you play one game with a "Knight", and the next game with a "Paladin", each with its own abilities.

However, even with the extra set of cards, my main con for Cave Troll is that I don't really view it as very replayable.  I think this is because the strategies are fairly straightforward.  Ultimately, you're simply trying to spread out and get as many rooms as you can for as minimal a cost in units as possible.  And, you want to get one high value room with your dwarf in it, and make sure that you can keep it.  That's about it.  Now go make that happen, and you'll win.

My next con for Cave Troll is that there probably need to be more special units.  I realize that grunts are important, as they represent standard pieces in area control.  And, if everything were special, then nothing would truly be special.  However, the problem lies in the fact that the deck is randomly shuffled, and you draw the top card.  Which is probably a grunt ("adventurer").  And then probably another grunt.  And another one.  And, though the Orcs and Knights and Barbarians are cool, there is a good chance that you will not draw them until the end of the game, whereas your opponents may get them immediately (or vice versa).  This can highly skew the game - especially if one of the first things drawn is a dwarf, which can enhance actual scoring.  Essentially, because of this aspect of the game, you really need to view Cave Troll as a fun little game to play instead of as a strategic challenge.

Don't stack too many special figures together

The last con that I will mention for Cave Troll is that there is quite a bit of a "pile on the leader" element, at least if you play with more than two players.  Since you score a few times in the game, it is very obvious who is winning.  And, in order to catch them, you must stop them from scoring additional points while also improving your own score.  Which makes sense and is the valid way to play most games.  However, when you have three players that are all attempting to take points away from the same player, it can be a frustrating experience for that player - especially if they wing up losing not because they played poorly, but because all of their opponents targeted them.  (Though, you could argue that they played poorly by making themselves a target.  But we won't go into that.)

Overall, I give Cave Troll a 7.5/10.  I was pleasantly surprised with the game.  Whereas I will probably wind up trading my copy, I did enjoy my time with the game and would probably be willing to play it in the future if someone else brought a copy.

If Cave Troll sounds interesting, you might also check out Babel, Defenders of the Realm, and Smash Up.

In the Shadow of the Emperor Review

A neat little game that I got in a trade is In the Shadow of the Emperor.

In the Shadow of the Emperor is an interesting political game in which the different players attempt to gain the most victory points by moving their house forward in different areas.  Each turn, the players start by collecting money based on what they control.  Next, all of the aristocrats (pieces) on the board "age," and if any of them die as a result, then they are removed from the board.  Third, all of the players check to see what kind of descendant they have produced - this is based on what action cards you selected in the previous turn.  Finally, the bulk of the game begins - the action phase.  Players alternate turns selecting from a limited number of action cards.  In order to take an action, you must first pay the amount of money listed, and then take the card.  These actions can help you get more people on the board, move people, place knights, build cities, marry foreign princesses, and attempt to become the new emperor.  After everyone has completed their actions, each of the different areas of the board is scored to determine if there is a new elector (thus giving the new player both the elector spot which provides an extra power, a vote in the emperor phase, and two victory points).  Once all the electors have been decided, then the players get to vote on a new emperor.  The winner of this election becomes the emperor (if he wasn't already), and he gets to take the emperor actions (which generally consist of collecting victory points, but may also give him another bonus).  At the end of five rounds, whoever has managed to score the most points through careful advancement of his aristocrats wins the game!

Different ages for aristocrats

The first thing that I like about In the Shadow of the Emperor is the aging mechanic.  Each aristocrat has the numbers 15, 25, 35, and 45.  When they come onto the board (aside from initial placement), they come in at age 15.  At the start of each subsequent turn, they will advance to the next highest number, and if they age beyond 45, then they will die.  However, there is also an action in the game (the "doctor") that allows you to either make a piece older or younger by one turn.  This can be very important as you can kill off some of your opponent's older pieces that are challenging you in various places (or protect some of your crucial pieces); and, since the number of actions is limited, you may even be able to take this action and prevent him from being able to retaliate.

The next series of pros that I have all center around the actions, and the different strategic elements that go into choosing which action you want to take.  First, I like that the actions are very limited.  Some of the actions only have one card, some have two, and some have more.  So, when performing an action, you must decide which one you want to take, and when doing so, you realize that there is a good chance that many of the other options will no longer be available by your next turn.  Additionally, actions cost money.  This gives you a bit more knowledge on what may be available on your next turn.  If you have significantly more money than your opponents, then you can expect that the higher cost actions may still be around on your next turn - so, you might be better off selecting a lower cost action that will run out instead of the higher cost action that is more critical (but will still be available).  Balancing these decisions is a wonderful aspect of this game.

But, there is another element that factors into making these decisions - the actions that you take determine what kind of descendant you will produce.  The actions are color coded either blue or pink.  If you select more blue actions than pink actions, then you produce a son, and you can place a new aristocrat on the board at the start of the next turn.  If you select more pink actions, then you produce a daughter, which you can attempt to marry off to one of the other player's aristocrats (helping them because a married couple is worth two influence instead of one, and helping you by scoring victory points), but if you are unsuccessful, then you get a few coins (as she becomes a nun).  Whereas I won't really judge how this works thematically, strategically it is brilliant.  It really encourages you to take actions that you might not otherwise consider.  In addition to their listed bonus, the different actions might also give you the bonus of a new aristocrat on the next turn.

Blue/Pink Actions

The last pro that I will mention for In the Shadow of the Emperor is that I like that you score two victory points when you become the new elector for a region.  Holding on to an elector position is still good - it gives you a vote for the emperor, and you can use the elector's ability (which can be very powerful).  But, because you gain victory points for taking an elector space, it really encourages you to move your aristocrats around and repeatedly take different positions (even at the cost of losing ones you already controlled).  Balancing taking the new positions, losing your old ones, and maximizing the benefits of whichever power you have at any given time are the keys to winning.

However, though I really like In the Shadow of the Emperor, there are a few cons that I will mention.  First, the rules are awful.  I will admit that I didn't learn this game from the rulebook - but I have consulted them throughout my games.  However, the person that I was learning the game from had several important rules highlighted in his rulebook so that he could actually find them later, as certain rules aren't where you would expect them.  Plus, the copy that I have came from a trade - and it included "How the game works: An explanation in plain English," as the previous owners of it had apparently also struggled with the rulebook.  The game is worth playing, though, so I'd encourage you to persevere through this issue.

My second con is that I think that there is quite a first player advantage in this game.  Or, more specifically, I think that there is a last player disadvantage.  To start the game, a first player is selected.  That player becomes the emperor.  Then, in turn order, every other player gets to select an electorate to control.  After this, the game begins, starting with the first player.  So, the last player gets both the worst elector power and has the last choice on actions.  Whereas this disadvantage isn't large enough to cost them the game, it is still a bit more hefty than I would like.

Finally, I'm not sure how well this game plays with less than four players.  Why?  Because my group has played with less than that and refuses to do it again.  So, I take that to mean that it doesn't play especially well with less than four.  (And, looking at the game and how the tension plays out in a four player game, I can see how that would be true.)  But, again - my games were all four player; if you've played with less, feel free to relate your experience in the comments.

Overall, I give In the Shadow of the Emperor an 8.5/10.  I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but one of it's main drawbacks is that it is hard to get to the table.  However, each time that I have managed to play it, I've enjoyed it quite a bit.

If you're interested in other games with a political nature, you might also check out Twilight Struggle, Quo Vadis, and 1960: The Making of the President.

Terra Mystica Review

An insanely popular game right now is Terra Mystica. So, when I was offered an opportunity to try it out, I gladly accepted.

In Terra Mystica, each player represents a fantasy race that is attempting to expand.  Unfortunately, only one habitat is viable for them to build upon, and so they must regularly terraform different parts of the world in order to spread out.  The game is played over six rounds, and in each round players first collect income, then they alternate taking actions, and finally, they collect bonuses.  The different actions can include terraforming and/or building  a dwelling, improving their shipping, improving their skill at terraforming, upgrading a structure, improving on one of the "cult" tracks, taking a "power" action, taking a "special" action, or passing for the round.  Each of these actions requires a different combination of workers, gold, and priests.  And many of these actions will give you victory points as you perform them.  At the end of the round, each player has the chance of gaining additional bonuses (like free terraforming actions) based on how far he has moved along one of the cult tracks.  At the end of the sixth round, players get extra points based on how far along they have moved on each of the cult tracks, and also for how many connected structures they have.  Whoever then has the most victory points is the winner!

My first pro for Terra Mystica is all of the different races.  And, I especially love the fact that each of the races is truly different.  There are 14 different races in the game, and though they can all perform the same actions, they each have strengths and weaknesses for you to exploit.  Some races will be able to upgrade structures very inexpensively, but will not have many workers that they can collect.  Others can move quickly up the cult track by allowing other players to gain "power" (something I haven't talked about yet).  One race is amazing at shipping, and can easily connect structures that are significantly far apart, whereas another race can convert money into victory points (and back) in order to give them the flexibility to do whatever they need on any given turn.  Now, with this pro, I will freely confess that, though the races seemed balanced when I played, I have not played the game enough to authoritatively say whether or not they are all balanced or if one of the races might be better or worse than some of the others.  Regardless, the different races in the game make it a much more enjoyable experience and help each game to feel unique.

Player board showing resources and power pools

The next pro that I have for Terra Mystica is "power."  There are a few different ways that you can gain power in the game - either by collecting it as part of your income, or when an opponent builds (or upgrades) a structure adjacent to you.  When your opponent builds a structure that is adjacent to you, you have the option of gaining power equal to the "power level" of your adjacent buildings.  But, this power comes at a cost - you lose victory points equal to the amount of power gained minus one.  (So, if I gain three power, I lose two victory points.)  And, to track power, you have three "bowls."  When gaining power, you first move power from bowl one to bowl two; then, if bowl one is empty, you can move power from bowl two to bowl three.  When spending power, you spend it from bowl three and move it back down to bowl one.  This is a very interesting mechanic, because you can start spending power as soon as it is in bowl three - but if you do this, then you will make yourself wait a bit longer before you can "recharge" any power back into bowl three.  Alternatively, you can wait until you have a bit more power in bowl three so that you can do several power actions before recharging.  Ultimately, it still takes the same amount of power, but you have control over when the power is available to you.

The last pro that I will mention for Terra Mystica (there are several others that I'm skipping) is that I like the rewards of upgrading - and for that matter, I like the balancing of resources all together.  Based on what buildings you build, you get different resources.  If you build a lot of dwellings, then you will get a lot of workers; if you build trade houses, you will get money, and if you build temples, you will get priests.  However, each time that you upgrade a building, you return the previous building to your player board - and thus you lose whatever bonus you had for the returned structure.  So, if you upgrade a dwelling to a trade house, then you will no longer receive a worker, but you will start to receive money.  The upgrades that I especially like are upgrading to temples/sanctuaries, and to strongholds.  When upgrading to a temple (or sanctuary), you get a "favor" token.  These tokens give you bonuses in the game and can help you in a plethora of ways.  The strongholds, however, unlock something different for each race.  So, some races will do extremely well if they can build their stronghold quickly, whereas others will do fine building their stronghold on the last turn of the game.  The strategies that go into what to build, or when to upgrade, are critical decisions that will influence you in a number of ways.

These structures will now peacefully co-exist

Now that I've covered some pros, there is one thing that you should be aware of about Terra Mystica before moving on to cons - there is no direct conflict in this game.  From reading through the summary and such, I was really expecting that I would be directly engaging my enemies more in this game.  But, that is not the case.  There are definitely ways to affect your opponents - building dwellings where you see that they are planning to build, surrounding them with your own structures, and selecting various actions that they may be planning on taking.  But, with all that said, once you successfully build something on the map, it is going to stay there - your opponents will not be able to remove it.

Now that we've come to the cons section of Terra Mystica, there is only one con that really jumps out to me.  There is a lot going on in this game.  And, to a certain extent, you will probably ignore a fair amount of it, based on which race you are.  In the games that I have played, most players have never taken at least one of the different available actions.  For example, if you use the Engineers, then you will build a lot of bridges, and will probably never improve shipping.  Conversely, if you are the Mermaids, then you will very rarely have a reason to build a bridge.  Depending on your strategy, you may also never choose to improve your ability to terraform.  Now, some people may actually see this as a positive, as you have the ability to make different choices from one game to the next, and you aren't forced to do the same thing every time.  However, it makes me wonder if the game could have been a bit more streamlined, and thus played a touch faster.  This isn't a major problem with the game, it is simply something that I think might have been able to be improved.

Overall, I give Terra Mystica an 8.5/10.  I enjoyed my plays of the game and, though it is a bit longer than I normally prefer, it is a game that I can see myself continuing to play and explore.

If Terra Mystica sounds interesting, you might also check out Caylus, In the Year of the Dragon, and Notre Dame.

I would like to thank Z-Man Games for providing me with a review copy of Terra Mystica.

Fealty Review

An interesting area control game by a small publisher (Asmadi Games) is Fealty.

Fealty, at it's core, is a very simple game. The (full) game consists of eight rounds, in which players each place a single piece. Specifically, each player starts with three cards in his hand. Each player selects one of his three cards and all of the players reveal them at the same time. Whoever placed the lowest numbered card places first, followed by the other players in ascending order. Finally, each player draws back up to three cards. There are a couple of rules to note when playing pieces (your cards each correspond to one of your pieces), though. First, you cannot place on the same "duchy" (one of the boards that makes up the playing area) as another player in a single round. Also, you cannot place in the same row or column that you have placed a figure in earlier. Finally, you can't place on top of "obstacles" - mountains (apparently there are no dwarves in Fealty), other pieces, etc. At the end of eight rounds, you add up influence - again, starting with the lowest numbers claiming tiles, and continuing until all of the pieces have claimed everything that they can. Whoever has the most influence is the winner.

The first thing that I like about Fealty is it's simplicity. Essentially, the designers have been able to distill area control to it's core; and what is left is the game of Fealty. Everything you need for a quality area control game is included, but there is really very little excess. This allows you to have a game with depth, yet it can be played in around 30 minutes. You are able to have a give and take interaction with other players where you can block them from claiming influence (of course they'll do the same to you), or you can peacefully each try to claim as much as possible (well... at least theoretically you can do this - I've not seen it.  Of course, I'm normally the one doing the underhanded blocking of my opponents, so maybe I'm the wannabe warmonger in this scenario.) Due to the nature of the scoring, it is entirely possible to remove most of the value of your opponent's early placed piece by placing a piece of your own (with a slightly lower number) which will claim several of the squares around your opponent - thus cutting off his access to other tiles.

The next thing that I like about Fealty is it's replayability. The game comes with double-sided terrain, and also comes with two different sets of pieces. You can play the game where all nine of your cards are available to you from the beginning, or you can play where you draw three at a time. You could even play where you get to pick cards from each of the two sets, if you really wanted to.  These fairly minor inclusions add quite a bit of replayability. I could play it repeatedly (which is really the definition of replayability - which Blogger keeps telling me isn't even a word; stupid Blogger, it should play more board games) and not feel like I always know where the best placement of my figures should be on the board (since the board will be different every time).

The third thing that I will mention is the collapsing options throughout the game. I thought this part was very interesting. Since you can't place in the same row or column that you have previously used, the number of options you have throughout the game will decrease (and the importance of some of the pieces' powers that allow you to move will increase). This adds quite a bit to the strategy (though I'm far from having mastered it). You have to decide whether you want to use your large pieces, which can claim a lot of territory, in the middle of the board early (while you can still legally place there); thus opening yourself up to having your opponents block most of your scoring, or if you want to wait until the end to place that large piece. You have to decide if you should leave an open spot somewhere in the middle for your piece(s) to be placed towards the end of the game - and hope that your opponents don't take it from you. As the game progresses, your options become more and more limited as you eliminate a row and column each round, and if you're not the first person to place, your opponents will even be eliminating entire duchies!  By the end of the game, you may only have about 5-10 legal placements.  And these placements may be horrible if you don't plan ahead (author's note: this is from experience; my final placements in Fealty are often horrible).

However, I did have some cons with Fealty. First, I felt that the rules were unclear on some points. Fortunately, there were examples, so I was able to figure out what I think the correct rules are, but I'm still not entirely sure. I wish that they had addressed some of my issues more directly. Specifically, (I will admit that I may have missed these things in the rules) I never saw the rules explain what a "conflict marker" does (we assumed it was an obstacle). I also never saw it clearly tell me if an opponent's influence marker counts as an obstacle to prevent you from drawing a path through them to claim tiles on the other side. (An example suggests that opposing influence do count as obstacles, so we played it that way).

The other con that I have is harder to explain. Because of how the scoring works in the game (and that the person influencing any given tile might change from one round to the next until final scoring), the first game or two will be very hard to see how well each player is doing. Until the end when you place all the influence markers, you won't know if you are doing winning or getting obliterated. However, once you get past this initial blindness, you run directly into "Analysis Paralysis" (taking a long time to decide what to do on a turn because of too much information or too many choices). Since the influence is not immediately visible, you will have to continually look around the board to determine what positions might be valid. And, inevitably, once you finally find the correct position it is illegal because of your previously placed pieces (there's an alliteration for you), and so you have to start looking all over again!  This is almost begging for a computerized version of the game that allows you to highlight where each person is successfully influencing (and where you can legally place).

Overall, I give Fealty an 8.0/10. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised with the game. It's not something that I'm going to yearn to play repeatedly, but I thought that it was very intuitive and really a very solid title. This is now the second game I've played by Asmadi Games (Innovation being the first), and I am pretty impressed with this small publisher!

If you like Fealty, you might also read about Princes of Florence, Smallworld, and Alien Frontiers.

I would like to thank Asmadi Games for providing me with a review copy of Fealty via Game Salute.