Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Gambit. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Five Tribes; Euro style game
Topic Started: Feb 12 2017, 10:34 PM (271 Views)
lgm
Member Avatar
Demogorgon
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
We also played Five Tribes this weekend with our oldest son. It's a Euro style strategy game from the same people who made Ticket to Ride.

It's 2 to 4 players who vie to take control of the land of a recently deceased sultan. It would take too long to type up the game play so I'll just say that it's very deep in strategy. There are eight or more ways to gain victory points and you won't know till the end of the game who has amassed the most for victory. Victory points come from 'collecting' people, elders, gold coins, trade goods, djinn, resources, cities and more. What gives you victory points can many times be used up for an advantage. Just traversing the tiles that make up the randomized board is a strategy in itself too.

With random tiles and randomly placed people, there is huge replay value. I also like how a couple players can't gang up and make the game less fun for another. The bidding on turn order and having assasins made me think just a bit of the original Shogun game.

I highly recommend if you like Ticket to Ride or Axis &Allies but want more enjoyable strategy and thinking.
Edited by lgm, Feb 12 2017, 10:36 PM.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Benevolance
Member Avatar
Ancient Wyrm
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
That sounds really cool. What's the expected game length?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
lgm
Member Avatar
Demogorgon
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
It plays in about an hour. We're still new to it so we go over that time. If you have a group that likes to really study the board, you'll be going over the hour mark easy enough too.

Here's a review that matches our experience.

The one negative point at the bottom of the review is how the theme and art doesn't really match to the game. The Arabic mythology is filler. You could have slapped any theme and art onto the game since the game play doesn't translate to anything. Still, I'd rather have artwork and a theme instead of nothing at all.

Edit to add: The game has high quality pieces. Heavy cardstock tiles, playing cards are thick, and the game pieces are wood, not plastic. It's not a cheap game but is of high quality design.
Edited by lgm, Feb 13 2017, 06:37 PM.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
lgm
Member Avatar
Demogorgon
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
We played 5 Tribes again last night and there's nearly too many avenues to victory. There's quite a bit to think about as other players vie for victory points. My son was almost completely ignoring picking up any people and was grabbing all the high value land plus any land that had an oasis or city for extra points. Elmira was picking up viziers and a few elders for points. I countered her and grabbed the most viziers and a djinn that gave me extra points for viziers (plus having more viziers than another player grants bonus points). I also started picking up regular people to gain stuff from the markets to net myself more gold coins. My strategy barely beat out my son but failed against Elmira who really took advantage of the markets toward the end of the game and gathered up a good bit of builders. I bid too much gold to bid for turn order and Elmira ended up almost never bidding. She amassed so much gold at the end of the game that it shot her forward well ahead of the rest of us in victory points. We were at 101 and 109 while she was at 130+ in points.

I had to change strategy when I saw my son outpacing me on valuable land which led me to start using gold to go first each round in which I saw things open up. When Elmira saw that I swept up more viziers, she adjusted to start taking advantage of Builders and the market. The last two rounds is when her strategy surged ahead of ours. The tricky part is not being able to know if you may be winning or losing. I only had a faint idea she may be winning a round before the game ended.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Andrul
Member Avatar
Ancient Wyrm
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
That's your wife all right! Quiet as a mouse until you hear an evil chuckle as the knife slides into your kidney.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · Games · Next Topic »
Add Reply