Game review - Five Tribes

Mechanics: Mancala/action selection

Game difficulty: above average

Duration of the game: 60-90 min

Number of players: 2-4

Best number of players: 3-4

Language: language skills are not required

Even if you don't follow foreign board game companies, there is one company that is definitely worth following. It's Days of Wonder, whose best-known games include Ticket to Ride, Smallworld, and Memoir '44. Days of Wonder stands out for only releasing 1-2 games per year, but they are polished to perfection, with awesome components, good game depth, and family-friendly rules. This time, a description of the Days of Wonder game that is the highest rated on the BGG chart - Five Tribes .

Subject matter

The theme of the game is "1001 Night Tales" in the world when the old sultan is dead, and now players try to control five different clans (wise men, viziers, builders, merchants and assassins), each of which, surprise, surprise, allows players to obtain in different ways points. I won't try to fool you, the game is not very thematic, but the feeling is very successfully conveyed with a phenomenal choice of components and thoughtful graphic design. Plus, the theme is aided by stylish gins.

Components

If you also have a friend who always enjoyed and played with Carcassonne figures, then Five Tribes is for him, because there are 90 of them in the game. Also, the game has a lot of charming figures of camels, palm trees and mosques, which are big, durable, colorful and made of wood. Even the 30 location squares are very thick cardboard. The graphic design is a bit dull, but it is a necessity, otherwise the playing field would be too colorful and could no longer function. It should be noted that the magnificence is given with 22 gin cards. They even look like they're from another game, but that's not inappropriate - after all, genies are magical and mystical creatures. Overall, the components are top-notch, special mention for the excellent game rules summary page for each player.

Mechanics

In the core of the game, there is a rather rarely used mechanic, which can most simply be called by the name of another game - mankala. How does it work? During their turn, players choose one space, take all the little people from it, and place them one by one on the adjacent spaces until the last little person is placed. In the space where the last little person is placed, one of five possible actions can be taken, depending on its color. After that, all the people of the specified color are removed from the square. But it doesn't end there, as there are five different types of fields. Depending on their type, one of the special actions takes effect.

Therefore, during the turn, the players must be able to find a good square to move the figures from, they must be able to find a square where the move action should end, in order to get the most benefit from placing the figures, they must be placed in such a way that the other players do not suddenly create too good opportunities for the future . Also, if a square is activated and all men are removed from it, that square comes under the control of a certain player and yields very valuable victory points.

In the game, every turn you have to think about your choices, every turn the game has created a crazy math puzzle, which I think is absolutely great, but it also has its downsides. The game, with its free options, can seriously freeze someone's brain and make them unable to make a move. In that case, I recommend encouraging players to pick 1-2 clans to focus on and try to develop a strategy with those clans. The other good news is that there are 30 squares and 90 workers at the start of the game, but each turn gets smaller and smaller, and it becomes much easier to make the right choices late in the game.

In many cases, certain moves are much better than others. This is handled in the game with an interesting auction for the order of play of the round. Each round, players participate in an auction where higher bids allow them to make an earlier move, but the catch is that the auction is paid in victory points, so you always have to calculate the value of going early. Usually it's not that important, but at certain times it's really critical.

Another interesting aspect is the genies. In certain squares, players can summon genies. Genies give various powerful abilities that help you to more successfully utilize the playing fields and clans. Although powerful, djinns are fairly balanced and give additional options and different strategic decisions in each game.

Multiplayer

If you buy Five Tribes, then it will be a game that already in the basic set can be played with passion for years, but if that is not enough, the game already has 3 expansions, which then make the possibilities of the game almost endless.

Rating

I believe this is the best Days of Wonder game ever released. It has very elegant mechanics, a lot of meaningful decisions, a high but not evil level of interaction. The gameplay is accessible and understandable, but note that Five Tribes, although with easy rules, is not an intuitive game, so immersion of the players is expected, but when it does, the game is excellent, one of my favorites. Rating 9 out of 10.

The game can be purchased at Brain Games stores on the 1st floor of Rīga Plaza or K. Barona Street 55, or at the online store: Five Tribes

Board Game Geek rating: 7.8

Author: Kristaps Auzans

Pictures from Board Game Geek